Would it surprise you to learn that by next year a quarter of the world’s population is expected to be a mobile gamer? Cell phones are everywhere, and even in developing nations smartphones are a lifeline to services that would otherwise be difficult to reach by traditional methods. It comes as no surprise, then, in a world where over 60% of the people in the world have a cell phone that many of them are using them for entertainment. After all, it’s your payment method, your camera, and more on top of being your primary means of communication to the outside world. Mobile gaming is on the rise, and the latest technology is making it better than ever.
Mobile gaming has been hugely popular even since the days of snake on your old flip phone. Once smartphones became more prevalent we started to see the rise of games like Candy Crush and Words with Friends. With 10 million downloads, Candy Crush Saga has garnered $71 million. Fortnite was released on iOS in March of 2018, and by December of that year it had been downloaded 83 million times and boasted a monthly rvenue of $64 million. In 2019 Clash of Clans was the top grossing game in the App Store, generating $1.54 million in sales every single day.
By next year, mobile gaming is expected to rake in $90 billion. Engagement with mobile gaming grows by 10% every single year. As people become accustomed to the new way of gaming, which requires downloads, accounts, online play, and in-app purchases, the revenue will roll in faster and in greater volume.
The pressure is on to get these apps to market as quickly as possible in order to get a piece of the revenue pie. Artificial intelligence is being applied to not only the development of games, but also to the testing and to the gameplay, as well.
AI can be used to fill in maps based on developer specifications. Once the gameplay is developed, AI can be used to test the gameplay in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take developers – from weeks to check one map down to less than an hour.
Self-learning AI in video games will also greatly enhance the gameplay, leading to a more challenging game for players and greater personalization. Artificial intelligence can learn from a player’s gameplay and responses to create more detail and harder challenges. It can help characters to learn and grow from the player and personalize gameplay to whatever players like or expect.
Artificial intelligence is driving innovation in mobile gaming while also powering the development of new games. AI can burn through 100 human lifetimes’ worth of experience in a single day, making this a valuable tool to augment human game developers.
AI game testing is one of the biggest time-savers in mobile gaming development right now, taking on the testing of speed and performance while looking for glitches and other issues in gameplay. It can help speed development time and get games to market faster.
Learn more about the use of AI in mobile gaming below.
