Gaming And Betting Have Gone Mainstream – Is This Our Future?

I don’t play video games and I don’t place bets on sporting events or buy lottery tickets. Increasingly, I appear to be part of a shrinking minority as the world is becoming an online gamer and bettor’s paradise.

Let’s first look at the growth of computer-based and online video gaming. Just how many gamers are there today? Active gamers continue to grow. By 2023 over 3 billion will be playing online games.

And according to Mike Allen at Axios, gaming is on course to move to the centre of the entertainment and pop culture universe this coming year. Today the industry does U.S. $184 billion. The growth of online gaming is one of the reasons Facebook has turned itself into Meta in an attempt to dominate a near-future virtual world. It is why streaming services like Netflix, HBO and others are adding video gaming options for customers. Gaming has become multi-generational. The parents of today were the children in the 1980s who were the first gamers. And they have passed along their interest to their children.

Where Gaming is Headed

The COVID-19 pandemic may have proven to be the best thing that ever happened to video games as people found themselves isolated and using the Internet to stay connected to friends, business associates, and family. Playing online interactive games helped pass the time for so many.

Not for me. I haven’t played video games for quite a while. During the pandemic, I have been reading lots of books and magazines, researching and writing articles like this, watching lots of movies, streamed media, and television, and doing crossword and jigsaw puzzles. My first exposure to gaming began with Pong, Space Invaders, and eventually Flight Simulator. I must admit I enjoyed the latter two. But when we got a promotional gift of an X-Box and tried the games that came with it, I just couldn’t get into them and quickly lost interest. The X-Box has long departed.

The same was true for me in trying virtual reality environments like Second Life. It never invoked much excitement. So I am a dinosaur when it comes to the world of gaming. That doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t see the merits of gaming.

The technology behind video games continues to evolve both in hardware and software. Players today compete in real-time across the world. Artificial intelligence (AI) entities have joined with human players adding a whole new dimension to the gamer experience. And game designers are increasingly using AI to enhance their offerings.

Gaming is also revolutionizing education. Video games were first introduced into classrooms in the 1980s. I remember titles like Oregon Trail, Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? and Reader Rabbit, the latter was particularly popular with my daughter.

Gamification is a descriptor for how gaming elements and principles get used in education whether in classrooms or on the shop floor. Minecraft, Kahoot, Quizzizz, and ClassDojo are free gaming environments that can be used by parents, teachers, and employers to gamify learning experiences. And gameplay describes a brain process by which players enhance their critical thinking, planning skills, collaboration and communication through the playing of video games.

So although I may not be the quintessential gamer,  I recognize the value that video games bring to our world. Now if we can only get young boys and increasingly girls out of basements and outside to appreciate what is in the real world, I will be that much more accepting.

Online Betting is Another Matter

Online gaming and betting have grown hand in hand, and it seems this year has turned sports into nothing more than a place for online bets.

I remember when betting was bingo at the local church or synagogue, poker nights, mah jong tournaments, horse and dog races, bricks-and-mortar casinos, and government lotteries. But now with the Internet combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, gambling has increasingly taken over the virtual world.

There has always been betting on sports. And in the past betting was illegal. That’s why we had behind-the-bar bookies. And there were scandals. Baseball had the Black Sox World Series fiasco. The NBA in the early years saw players accused of shaving points for bookies. Boxers took dives so gamblers could get big paydays. And half the Irish Sweepstakes tickets ever sold were counterfeit.

But today gambling is legal and ubiquitous. This season broadcasts of football games whether Canada’s CFL or the U.S. NFL, are preceded by betting line discussions. Who will win? What will be the over-under, the point differential? What players will pass, run and catch their quota of yards? I used to enjoy the talking heads that preceded football games. Not anymore, because now the discussion is less about analysis and more about the odds.

As I previously stated, gaming and gambling are inextricably linked because both have grown on the Internet. Today, online gaming is popular and even online gamers are bet on. Our smartphones provide access to thousands of gaming apps offered by Apple and Google’s online stores. Placing bets has never been easier. And as one recent television commercial describes it, our world is just “a series of bets.”

Just how big is the online gambling world, and how much bigger is it going to get? Worth U.S. $57.54 billion in 2021, it is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 11.7% from today to 2030. And along with this growth has come a parallel increase in cybercrime. Then there is the rising addiction to compulsive gambling. And as we continue to be preyed upon by “legal” bookies and enticed by games of chance that once were the domain of mobsters, we are all being gamified.