The Future of Gaming, James Gwertzman, General Manager for Gaming Cloud, Microsoft

A childhood inspiration doesn’t always lead to an adult dream-come-true. But for James Gwertzman, an early fascination about the technology behind the art of games and movies was what led him on the path to a career in tech. And where he wound up in his career would probably make a younger James do a double-take. Today, James is the General Manager for Gaming Cloud at Microsoft, where he builds the best possible cloud platform for video game developers that allows them to keep creating the worlds that had him transfixed as a kid. On this episode of Future of Tech, James discusses how he got to this dream job, and he explains how technology has made it possible for more kids just like him to get into game creation easier than ever before. Plus, James takes us behind the scenes of the technology that has made gaming the massive industry it is today, including the creation of cloud-based solutions that allow creators to focus more on the creative aspects of game building and worry less about the backend infrastructure. Enjoy this episode!

 Main Takeaways:

• More Than A Game: The world of gaming has come a long way from the days of Pong. Today, gaming is more about community building and content creation. Gamers can connect with other gamers via streaming platforms and they can build their own games or build aspects within games more than ever before.
• Free To Play. Hard To Build: Free-to-play games have become all the rage, and they have democratized the gaming industry. But creating those games is more difficult than it seems. As the gaming industry has evolved, the expectations of games have been set higher, which means that all games — free or otherwise — are expected to have an entire ecosystem and story behind them. This requires a sophisticated backend system and well-designed infrastructure. New cloud-based technologies are making this easier, though.
• A 5G-Filled Future: Thanks to 5G, mobile gaming will likely become as intricate and well-connected as PC gaming. Multiplayer functionality will improve and innovative, connected experiences will begin to enter the mainstream.

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