The World of Entertainment Gaming

Introduction

From Tic-Tac-Toe’s humble days in Alexander (Sandy) Douglas’ bedroom, to the video game crash in the 1980s to the current next-generation video gaming consoles, the subject of gaming and the gaming industry has evolved and taken on a whole new meaning. No longer just another hobbyist’ pastime, it is a now a multi-billion-dollar business that many countries in the world have identified it as an important industry to compete and grow.

Through a mere 50 over years, the e-gaming industry has seen a good many players. From Atari as a console maker in the early days, we now see Microsoft with its Xbox 360, Sony’s PlayStation series, and Nintendo's Wii. On the web front,  the conceptualization and realization of the internet as a global information superhighway produced another gaming development platform for game developers. Flash-based games arose with the popularization of Macromedia’s Flash platform technology and they were in fact, the building blocks for the concept of virtual gaming worlds, from the likes of Linden Lab’s Second Life to Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft.

The rapid advancement of its underlying technology in the last decade has pushed entertainment gaming to its utmost popularity, especially among the young generations. Gaming addiction became an issue while the increase in violence and sexuality content in games met with outcries from the government and public alike. IBM became the first company to come up with a set of guidelines for its thousands of employees who were exploring the virtual gaming world of Second Life. On the other, the likes of virtual worlds brought about new ways and perspective to develop skills such as leadership and thinking abilities. Developers and practitioners in serious games are paying more and more attention over learning and applying appealing features in the entertainment games to incorporate in their teaching lessons and training sessions.

With the proliferation of online entertainment games, economy in game industry booms not just in sale of user subscriptions but in many diverse areas such as in-game advertising and gold farming. While the number of gamers worldwide continue to grow day by day, multiplayer games seem to be attracting the majority of attention. This has added the boom in virtual economy. 

We have compiled here writings that take a brief and closer look into each of these aspects in entertainment gaming.  Hopefully they will provide serious gaming people a background sufficient for them to further explore into possible venues to bridge across.