Given how much online entertainment is engrossed with science fiction and the future, it would be ideal if we could say for sure where multiplayer gaming is headed over the next few years. Of course, no one knows. There’s no way to predict what changes will arrive out of the blue, but we can still make some educated guesses. Observation of the trends currently gaining market traction can lead us to reasonable extrapolations about what this decade will bring to players worldwide.
Ready? Game on.
Game Authoring and Hosting-as-a-Service
Creating software from bare code is time-consuming; creating software from ready-made tools and templates is much easier. Similarly, hosting a game development testbed on-premises can be very costly, especially for large-scale multiplayer games. But as in so many other industries, we’re seeing the cloud and hosting services emerge to deliver new services models to game developers.
Unity may dominate today’s game authoring scene, but it’s easy to see Amazon Lumberyard representing the next wave of authoring. Lumberyard runs on AWS infrastructure and uses Crytek’s CryEngine along with a range of in-house enhancements. Lumberyard is cross-platform and supports exporting to Windows, Xbox, PlayStation, Android, and iOS. It also supports VR development for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, Twitch livestreaming, and Twitch ChatPlay. Amazon is very clear about where and how it makes money with Lumberyard. For developers who want to create single-player, client-based games, Lumberyard is completely free. For multiplayer, community-driven games that will almost by default connect to the cloud these days, developers will need to use AWS services and pay for them accordingly.
Lumberyard is remarkably versatile, but it’s not without downsides. Obviously, there are AWS costs, including paying for multiplayer game hosting on Amazon’s GameLift service. You’re also locked into Lumberyard’s design limitations, which some may find constraining. There’s no C# support, and professionals accustomed to Unity and Unreal engines may face a steeper learning curve. In short, Lumberyard is great, but it’s not for everyone, and it leaves the door open for hosting alternatives using other engines.
We can even foresee a more decentralized model in which datacenters with excess resources might make some of their infrastructure available for game hosting. If these data centers are on a highly managed, low-latency network like Subspace, coordinating these resources becomes much easier and more rewarding for users. No matter what, game authoring services look likely to grow in prominence, increasing the spread and diversification of ever more multiplayer games.
Cloud Gaming
Cloud-based applications accessible via web browsers reached gaming in the late 2000s. Developers first tried to go mainstream with the OnLive service, which promised to make top-name games available to players with the same visual quality and latency that could be found on client-installed multiplayer titles. In practice, it didn’t pan out. Compression artifacting was too heavy, and lag proved erratic across titles. It was a good idea before its time.
In 2019, Google took a swing at browser-based gaming with its Stadia service but ultimately fared little better than OnLive. Google offered its own game controller and operation through either Chrome or Safari browsers. Google haltingly expanded access to a range of smartphones after favoring its own Pixel line. Many users didn’t like Stadia’s front end, and reviews were lukewarm overall. Google shuttered its Stadia Games and Entertainment group in February 2021 and now reportedly anticipates making Stadia a publishing platform for third-party publishers, which seems much more in line with Google’s core expertise. Perhaps the lesson of Stadia echoes a general maxim about disruptive technologies: It’s not enough to be better. If you’re not 10x better than the dominant paradigm, the odds of success are long.
That said, some heavy hitters are still trying to own the cloud gaming space. On top of games offered as part of the service subscription, NVIDIA’s GeForce NOW lets users install their games to cloud-based virtual machines so those games can be accessed from Windows, Chrome, iOS, and Android devices. Notably, GeForce NOW is the first and so far only service to pull titles from Steam Cloud Play. Amazon has its Luna service, complete with the Luna controller, which can play across a host of device types. Users pay a subscription for the titles in Luna’s roster, and they can pay a second (higher) subscription fee to add Ubisoft’s game collection, much like adding something like Paramount+ to a Prime Video subscription. And naturally, Microsoft has its Xbox Cloud Gaming now in beta, which finally liberates the console platform’s games to a much broader scope.
In the OnLive days, network and client technologies weren’t ready for multiplayer gaming. Today is different. New evolutions in edge networks and 5G open fresh opportunities here, especially for mobile, and it’s quite possible to get real-time, 4K gaming to players with 50 Mbps connections, provided the underlying network can handle the sustained performance demands. There’s room in the market for more than one cloud gaming titan, just as we saw with consoles in the last decade. The viability of these services is now being proven.
Virtual Reality (VR)
VR-based gaming has come a long way from Virtuality’s hulking VR pods in 1991. By now, the pattern should be familiar: first efforts that promise to offer blazing breakthroughs in gaming experience crash and burn when they underdeliver on technological execution. Early VR lacked the graphical horsepower to create convincing, fluid worlds, never mind render them in a shared multiplayer environment. Fortunately, things change.
The most recognizable name in VR gaming by far is Oculus, which launched a Kickstarter campaign for its initial Oculus Rift design in 2012 and was acquired by Facebook in 2014. According to Counterpoint Research, Oculus commanded 53.5% of the “extended reality” headset market in 2020, followed by Sony (11.9%), and HTC (5.7%). Statista shows the Oculus Quest 2 as the market-leading headset by far, outselling the runner-up PlayStation VR by roughly 9x in the fourth quarter of 2020. At $299, Facebook is pushing hard to lower the barrier for consumer VR entry. Reviewers note many places Quest 2 cut corners to make this price possible, and Facebook’s transition from making Facebook account linking optional to mandatory has drawn a lot of community wrath. (Said wrath was exacerbated further by reported cases of Facebook banning Oculus headsets when there were issues with associated Facebook accounts.)
Still, given that gaming will likely account for 90% of VR revenue through 2025, we can safely make two predictions for VR in the 2020s: 1) Facebook will face competition in the sub-$300 range for technically superior headsets because that’s just how the efficiencies and advances of technology work. There will be more affordable options. 2) High-quality, VR-based gaming experiences will get cheaper, possibly to the point of free, as users accept advertising and/or allow their information to be sold to partners. We don’t like saying this, but a decade of proof from social media and the rampant popularity of “freemium” games makes the trend clear. There’s no reason to think VR gaming will be any different.
Grand View Research predicts that the VR gaming market will exhibit 30.2% compounded annual growth to reach $92.31 billion by 2027. This seems within reach given that 23% of U.S. households now have access to a VR headset. Of those who do use VR, though, 32% do so daily, up from 15% in 2018.
As the decade progresses, we expect this rising multiplayer VR adoption to begin intersecting with other VR manifestations, especially around social environments and metaverses. For example, VRChat and Decentraland both involve gaming as well as broader entertainment opportunities. However, rising adoption and ever-greater expectations around realism and seamless rendering will place a heavy burden on underlying networks, especially as multiplayer group sizes increase. Developers and service providers will need to update accordingly.
Esports Explosion
The pandemic poured gasoline on the already en fuego field of esports. With the world stuck inside and traditional sports suspended, esports became a go-to form of entertainment for millions. In 2020 alone, esports grew by 69%. Business Insider reports that investment into the esports industry has exploded by over 800% annually since 2018, including advertisers as varied as AT&T, Bud Light, Marvel, Old Spice, and Tencent.
Naturally, esports revolve around multiplayer gaming. Valve’s Dota 2 towers above the field, touting over 1500 tournaments and nearly a quarter-billion dollars in awarded prize money to date. These events are massively inspirational and help to fuel game adoption around the world. Gaming market analysis firm Newzoo notes several esports trends that will prove influential in the near future.
- Mobile esports. With widespread adoption throughout Asia and Latin America, mobile gaming has helped propel two titles, PUBG Mobile and Free Fire, onto esports’ top five list.
- Traditional sports overlap. With the rising popularity of esports now impossible to ignore (especially for advertisers) and more than a few traditional sports players who are also video gaming enthusiasts, look for increasing cross-pollination between these two worlds.
- Non-play growth. Twitch and other non-play opportunities (think merch sales) continue to expand game community involvement and audience breadth.
- Rise of leagues. It’s only natural for some players who admire esports competitions to want their own regional sense of a similar experience, so expect league creation and participation to flourish.
Mainstream esports acceptance is arriving, especially as MENA (the Middle East and North Africa) and other regions fuel expansion. Much like the Olympics, we look forward to esports breaking down regional barriers and fostering a greater global sense of gaming community.
Continual Lag Improvement
Not surprisingly, we expect the 2020s to be a leap forward for multiplayer gaming’s efforts to leverage higher-performance networking. Perhaps no area is in more need of better networking than netcode. Put simply, netcode issues occur when what you see in a game and what your opponent sees are out of sync. This animated graphic expresses the problem beautifully. When a game compensates for the milliseconds of latency between two points, players have the same experience. When the sync breaks, a bullet hit that registers for one player looks like it should have been a miss for the other. Madness ensues.
Rollback is an increasingly popular solution to the netcode problem. A complete explanation is lengthy and detailed, but the gist of rollback is that the game simulates a series of frames, essentially buffering a “likely future.” Then, when a player initiates an action, the game state reverts a few frames back in time to begin rendering that action. The result looks like a slight hiccup in playback, but it’s decidedly better than bad synchronization resulting in flawed gameplay.
There are ways of fine-tuning rollback, such as by hybridizing it with delay-based netcode. There’s also Good Game Peace Out (GGPO), which also uses rollback. These software approaches can improve the multiplayer gaming experience, but even in the best cases some issues will remain. Improvements in the underlying network will remove pressure from developers and publishers, minimizing the need for such software workarounds and enabling a more fluid gaming experience. We hope the 2020s find a host of companies augmenting their offerings with the improved network and gameplay their users crave, because the original public internet simply doesn’t cut it.
In short, as we dive into this decade, we’re bound to find that some things stay constant. People want more gaming immersion—which is why VR continues to struggle into the limelight. People want more options and mobility. They want to create and consume as the mood suits them. They want to be included and recognized. They want to escape with their friends and enjoy seamless, fantastic experiences. Smart, successful developers will do everything possible to deliver on all of that.
As multiplayer games continue to evolve and the demands on the networks they rely on increase, network quality will remain an integral part of multiplayer gaming success. Community experiences and diversified ecosystems are only likely to grow.
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