If you have taken a trip on the train recently, you may have noticed something different about the way people keep themselves occupied during their journey. Yet perhaps you didn’t notice because you are part of the masses of daily commuters who own a smartphone, regularly playing games or checking on the device to pass the time. It would appear that the book has been replaced by the less cumbersome smartphone as a means of entertainment while travelling.
In the US for example, the gaming industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the entire economy – but not necessarily because more people are playing big titles on traditional gaming consoles like Xbox or PlayStation. Along with the growing popularity of smartphones, the gaming sector was given a serendipitous boost from millions of people began playing games on their smartphones, giving rise to gaming apps.
DFC Intelligence, the institution responsible for carrying out research on the digital game and entertainment industry, has revealed in recent research that not only has the gaming sector enjoyed an increase of popularity in recent years, but it is set to continue to rise steadily in the future. The global market value for the gaming sector has been predicted to reach a staggering $82 billion by 2017, a big jump from $67 billion in 2012.
The smartphone revolution has transformed the gaming sector in many ways, one of which was by introducing new demographics to the gaming sector that were previously sitting idle. Not only were woman introduced to gaming en masse, they actually transformed the market so drastically that they now account for 52% of gamers. However, the article suggests that woman tend to gravitate more towards puzzle, word, and problem solving based games. So much so that the massively popular Candy Crush generated more than £865m from in-app purchases in 2014.
More recently, however, women are shown to be more interested and integrated into the action side of things. One of many racing titles found on Browsergamez, The Fast and the Furious features playable female characters, such as those portrayed by Michelle Rodriquez and Jordana Brewster in the original film franchise. This is a strong step towards erasing the prejudice of women being capable of handling tasks that are typically associated with men. Check out a clip below of Rodriquez’s character Letty, not backing down against a race with Dom (Vin Diesel) in Fast and Furious 6.
