The gaming industry keeps going from strength to strength. Players have a continual pipeline of new options to explore, including entirely new titles and major updates to existing ones. The real money gaming space keeps on growing too with new live dealer games and unique video slots being released almost daily. Not only that but many sites are trying to one-up each other on the bonuses they offer to new customers as they try to build market share and attract loyal gamers.
This torrent of new content is great for players as there’s always something new, exciting, and fresh to sink their teeth into, regardless of what they’re interested in.
But just like in clothing, music, and even movies, the fashions and tastes in gaming are constantly evolving. This means the developers and publishers trying to produce new content need to always stay abreast with all the latest trends if they want to remain relevant.
So what trends have we seen so far in 2022 and how could this affect gaming for the rest of the year?
Indie Gaming is Booming
Indie gaming certainly isn’t new. Enthusiasts have been making their own titles from their bedrooms and basements for as long as there have been computers to do it on.
Over the years, there have been some hugely popular titles released by indie gamers that have enjoyed fame and success through a combination of being immensely fun to play and extremely lucky.
Some of the most notable indie games are:
- Minecraft – Although it’s owned by Microsoft now, it started out as the work of Markus Persson and grew into the best-selling video game of all time.
- Flappy Bird – A basic side-scrolling platformer that achieved almost instant overnight global fame. Its success was so fast its creator pulled the game from app stores to hide from the limelight but demand remained high and some people took to eBay to sell phones containing the game for huge sums.
- Untitled Goose Game – A puzzle stealth game that racked up more than one million downloads in its first year.
But while indie games have always existed, their popularity has been growing and in 2022 they’ve been in demand even more.
Just this year, titles like Wordle, Amid Evil, and Papers, Please have become global phenomena.
Most of the big indie games of 2022 were not released this year but they’ve become hugely popular among players since the turn of the New Year. This is often the case as indie developers don’t have the resources to commit to large marketing campaigns.
Part of this has been helped by Roblox, a platform that has gone from being just a game into a platform of more than 50 million user-generated titles.
More Diversity
Video game publishers were once reluctant to deviate from the traditionally male-dominated titles. When they did, they got it completely wrong, creating aggressively pink titles that leaned heavily on gender stereotypes. Since most women weren’t interested in these titles, sales were low and it incorrectly confirmed the assumptions that men were the only market for video games.
Thankfully, that has changed and we’re beginning to edge closer to equality in gaming.
In the last couple of years, we’ve seen titles like Animal Crossing and The Last of Us Part II becoming hugely popular among women. In the case of The Last of Us, this is partly down to the lead protagonist being female, something that was once rare in games of this type.
2022 has seen a slew of female-led titles go on sale too, including:
- Horizon: Forbidden West – A sequel to the 2017 game Horizon: Zero Dawn that puts you in the shoes of Aloy, a woman in a post-apocalyptic future version of the USA that’s on a quest to defend humanity.
- Forspoken – An entirely new game from the makers of Final Fantasy XV that features Frey, a young woman that finds herself taken away from her home in New York to the magical world of Athia and tries to look for a way to get back.
- Open Roads – A game about two women on a road trip who are looking to find the properties owned by deceased relatives.
In addition to these, there are several other big female-led titles expected to drop in the coming months, including Mara and Senua’s Saga: Hellbalde 2 and Unknown 9: Awakening.
Saying Goodbye to the Previous Generation
The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X were first released in late 2020, just ahead of the busy holiday season. They were, as is always the case when new consoles launch, two of the most in-demand items in Q4 as people rushed to get their hands on the devices.
However, developers continued producing content for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, even throughout 2021 as they sought to maximise their sales. This was especially important as supply chain problems meant that gamers were finding it difficult to find stock of the latest generation of consoles even into the start of 2022.
That has now begun to ease and the PS5 and Xbox Series S/X are building market share in the console space.
We’re beginning to see more current generation-exclusive titles hitting markets as developers ditch support for older hardware so that they can take advantage of the increased performance that the new machines offer.
Examples of these new-gen only games include:
- Starfield – Xbox Series S/X only
- Redfall – Xbox Series S/X only
- Avowed – Xbox Series S/X only
- Fable – Xbox Series S/X only
- Forspoken – PS5 only
- Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora – PS5 and Xbox Series S/X
- Dead Space – PS5 and Xbox Series S/X
- Gotham Knights – PS5 and Xbox Series S/X
- Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League – PS5 and Xbox Series S/X
- Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 – PS5 only
Graphics Cards Are Becoming Affordable
For the same reason that new consoles were hard to come by in 2021, PC gamers have struggled to get hold of graphics cards for their computers.
Even when they could buy a new GPU to put in their machine, the prices have been astronomical as demand for the hardware has been driven higher by crypto miners. But with rising energy costs and lower cryptocurrency prices in 2022, this has changed.
Today, graphics cards are the most affordable they’ve been for quite some time, and PC gamers are rejoicing.
I'm a published author and proud US Army veteran who happens to be a gamer, so I decided to combine the two and love every minute of it! Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments and I'll be sure to get back to you.
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