The journey from Pong to Elden Ring

 By Martin Šelle

 The gaming industry has been around for a long time since its first appearance with the first consoles, and come a long way from Pong to modern award winning, thrilling games such as Elden Ring and God of War.

This industry of course has many branches, so this article will focus solely on advancements in portability and graphics. 

 Image: Pong, MZTV Museum of Television

 One of the biggest changes in terms of portability is in fact due to the same reason most of us play games, the internet. Nowadays you can play any game in any place in the world just by accessing the WiFi.  For example, cloud gaming gives you the option to start the game on one device and finish it on another, or the option of remote play, meaning for example you can play games on your phone, with the actual game running on a computer and streaming to your device via WiFi. That gives you the opportunity to play games that would require very expensive hardware as your device wouldn't be able to handle the game itself. This brings us to another evolutionary step in games - graphics.

 Image: Remote Play, Google Play

 According to statistics, the gaming industry worldwide is worth US$384.9billion, making it worth more than the music and movie industries together. 

 Graphics have undergone enormous changes, basically in every aspect they provide. I want to talk about Unreal Engine 5 which is by far the most graphically advanced engine out there. 

But what are game engines anyway? 

Game engines are the basic building blocks of games, which are made inside these Game engines. They power the whole game and combine together their codes and their graphics. A lot of engines specialise in different things, but Unreal Engine 5 specialises specifically in graphics. 

This engine is capable of rendering light in such an unbelievably realistic way when combined with Envidia's Ray tracing, which is a third party program built into Envidia's graphic cards that simulates light by shutting millions of rays at an object in simulation, before you can even see it. Meaning that this whole process happens in a matter of milliseconds.

 The results are astonishing graphics that are a pleasure to look at. This of course leads to higher prices of hardware, hence the previously mentioned Remote play.

 Image: Unreal Engine logo, Epic Games, Inc.

 Overall the gaming industry has been developing a lot. Whether we talk about portability, graphics, or small things such as game ads, it has quickly become one of the biggest industries in the world. 

 Image: ELDEN RING, Sony Interactive 

 According to statistics the gaming industry worldwide is worth US$384.9billion, making it worth more than the music and movie industries together. All of this indicates that the gaming industry is still expanding enormously and we can expect great game developments to happen in a short time.

Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc. “How to use PS Remote Play on mobile devices” https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/games/playstation-remote-play-on-mobile-devices/

EDUCBA. "What is Unreal Engine?” https://www.educba.com/what-is-unreal-engine/ 

Condé Nast. “What Is Ray Tracing? The Latest Gaming Buzzword Explained” https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-ray-tracing/

Statista.com “Video Games - Worldwide” https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/digital-media/video-games/worldwide#revenue