Gaming has taken a massive leap from real-life poker and rummy game tables to a digital and immersive experience on handheld devices. If technology brought about this sea change, it is technology again that is embedding newer innovations into gaming. As we race to 2025, be prepared to experience gaming like you have never experienced before.
So, put on your smart gear and open up your rummy app to find a world of difference. The next-gen wearable technology is here.
All About Wearable Technology
Microprocessors and the capacity to interact through the internet are features that have been incorporated into all types of things these days. And often with great effect, be it the smart glasses with biomarkers or rings, straps and headbands that track physical movement and vitals. Then there are wristwatches that do all that and can also receive calls and texts.
Wearables are everywhere and have revamped the expectations of the consumer from these everyday items. From $186 billion this year, the wearable technology market is expected to be close to $500 billion in the next five years. That is an estimated CAGR of around 17.6% till 2029. The gaming world is not left behind in this revolution. It is coming up with innovations that are getting rave reviews from the gaming community.
Gamers can give their fingers some rest now, thanks to motion-tracking wearable devices. You can now control a game with your gestures and body movements, thanks to these devices. Haptic feedback in controllers are already in place to give the gamer the feel of, say, a gun recoiling. Now, that experience is available in wearable haptic gloves. Looking like something straight out of a sci-fi movie, these gloves can simulate the perceptible sensation of virtual objects.
AR and VR headsets are seeing massive growth prospects of their own. Its market size is expected to grow at over 35% CAGR between 2023 and 2032 – growing from $9.2 billion to an astounding $142.5 billion! These devices offer an immersive gaming experience, as do smart glasses. These wearables are also known to reduce screen glare and, consequently, eye fatigue. Which, one would agree, also adds to the experience positively.
How Wearable Technology Enhances Experience
Thanks to the comfort of wearable technology, we can now see the glaring gaps when and if we go back to gaming with traditional controllers. These devices take you to the heart of the action, adding a sense of presence and realism to the gaming experience.
Another reason for the rising popularity of wearable technology is its portability. These devices are convenient to use and carry around as well. Most smart glasses, for instance, weigh less than a hundred grams. A feature-rich SenseGlove Nova haptic VR glove weighs only 320 grams and fits right into your backpack.
Wearable devices have made gaming more physically interactive by responding to your movements and biometrics. Needless to say, wearable technology hands a licence to game developers to innovate further in this direction. Gameplay mechanics are getting more sophisticated as haptic and biometric features are designed to give even better feedback.
Impact on Game Development
With the emergence of wearable technology, developers are designing games that fit into it. Pokémon GO was designed as a location-based AR game where you could play in the real world, looking for the famous lead character. At the peak of its popularity, more than 232 million gamers were playing this game in a year!
The simple yet immersive Beat Saber is designed as a rhythm-based VR game. It is an example of game development keeping wearables, perhaps solely, in mind. Then there’s a game like Zombies, Run! where players must run to complete their missions. It is, of course, played using GPS trackers and wearable fitness trackers.
If you are playing a game like Ingress, you would be gaming using an AR device and receive notifications and track progress through smartwatch integration. Numerous such games are being played and developed as we speak.
In the future, we are likely to see many more such games where AR/VR functionalities, haptic feedback and motion-sensing will be integral to the gaming experience. It will come at a higher cost of development, as building a very simple AR/VR gaming app can cost upwards of ₹50,000. But given their popularity, it is an amount developers are willing to invest.
The Future of This Integration
By using these wearable devices, your next game on a rummy app like RummyCulture could be completely different. You could be sitting across a virtual rummytable, hearing cards shuffling and interacting with fellow gamers in a much more realistic environment.
As wearable technology gets more and more integrated into gaming, we will see more immersive experiences and interactivity in gaming. You can expect an advanced haptic full-body suit that may look like an affordable and comfortable version of the Teslasuit. Companies like Neurable are working on neural interfaces and brain-computer interactions. Wearable technologies of the future may respond to brain activity and translate them into in-game controls. Similarly, biometric data like heart rate and body temperature can be interpreted by wearable devices, helping the gamer in real-time gaming scenarios.
Massive developments in tapping the biometrics, neural and haptic feedback would certainly make gaming more immersive, engaging and personalised in the days ahead.
