The Digital Entertainment Revolution: What’s Driving the Next Wave of Innovation?

Friday nights used to involve a walk to the video shop and a slow lap of the new releases wall. Games came on discs you could lend to a mate and never get back. Most of that now sits on a phone, though the technology underneath it rarely gets much thought from the people using it. It probably should. A fair bit of it is changing fast, and not always in ways anyone would have guessed five years ago.

The Algorithm Knows Your Habits

Netflix got there early. In the late 2000s, it ran an open contest, the Netflix Prize, offering a large sum to whoever could make its rating predictions noticeably more accurate, and recommendation systems have been central to streaming ever since; Spotify’s Discover Weekly, from 2015, is probably the best-known example in music. Online casino platforms lean on the same sort of data, so an offer of free spins might be pitched at whichever games a player tends to open, not unlike a streaming app pushing a crime drama to someone who binged the last one. It’s all machine learning under the bonnet. Whether that feels clever or slightly creepy depends a lot on the person.

Games Without the Console

Connection speeds have quietly done a lot of the heavy work. Fibre keeps creeping out to more of Ireland, 5G coverage is wider than it was, and 4K streaming barely raises an eyebrow anymore. Cloud gaming is the more interesting bit. With Xbox Cloud Gaming or Nvidia’s GeForce Now, the game runs on a server somewhere else, and only the video comes down the line, so a fairly ordinary laptop can manage titles that would normally need a pricey console.

Google tried this with Stadia and pulled the plug in January 2023, a little over three years in. Lag is still the awkward part. Nobody minds a split-second delay during a film, whereas in an online shooter it’s the difference between surviving a fight and staring at a respawn timer.

Where AI Fits In

Artificial intelligence is mostly working backstage. Studios use it to stress-test game levels and generate background clutter that nobody wants to design by hand, and some streaming platforms have been experimenting with automatic subtitles and dubbing, with mixed results so far. The speed of it all has caught official attention, too.

Ireland set up a dedicated body at the end of July. The AI Office of Ireland is independent, coordinates how AI is overseen nationally, and has Paul Byrne, who came over from the Medical Council, as its first chief executive. Promoting innovation and AI literacy is part of the brief, and there’s a regulatory sandbox where startups and smaller firms can try out new systems before taking them further. Game studios and media firms working with AI here could well find their paths crossing with it.

Strapping on a Headset

VR has been on the verge of going mainstream for a decade. Augmented reality had its big moment in 2016, when Pokémon Go had people wandering around parks staring at their phones, helped by the fact that it was free and easy to pick up. Headsets are another story. Meta’s Quest line and Apple’s Vision Pro (out in 2024) are impressive.

Watching Is Turning Into Taking Part

On Twitch, the chat scrolls past while the streamer plays, and every so often they’ll read a comment out and answer it. Fortnite went further again and held concerts inside the game, with fans showing up as avatars, an idea that would have got a funny look in the early 2000s.

Phones sit behind most design choices. Quicker log-ins and more secure digital payments owe something to nobody wanting to type a long password with their thumbs, though every shortcut leaves security teams with something else to guard.