As the decades have gone by, gaming has become more than a casual pastime. It’s evolved from light-hearted, arcade-style gameplay to more serious, strategic gaming in all its latest guises.
Below, we celebrate five of the major cities innovating the newest gaming conventions and themes, both on and offline.
Seoul
South Korea is one of the most competitive markets when it comes to the global Esports industry. In fact, many of the best professional Esports teams hail from South Korea and its capital city of Seoul. South Korea benefits from some of the fastest fibreoptic internet connectivity, making it highly suitable for staging the biggest Esports events on the planet.
The Seoul suburb of Seongnam-si is the epicentre of the South Korean gaming scene. The Seongnam Game World Festival has been one of the best gaming events each year since its inception. It’s also linked to the Indie Craft K-Game Festival, a virtual metaspace created to showcase the best indie games designed and built by Korean talent.
It’s said that Seongnam-si is home to approximately 17 industry leading gaming companies, which is more than twice the amount in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley.
Dundee
That’s right, Scotland’s fourth-largest city is considered a major hub in the gaming world. Famed for its nautical heritage and regenerated waterfront, Dundee’s modern-day reputation is founded upon its fast-growing video gaming cluster. The city is home to a string of pioneering video game development studios, some of which have been responsible for award-winning titles like Grand Theft Auto, Lemmings and Minecraft – generation-defining games.
Dundee’s Abertay University is also a hotbed of game development talent. It was the first college to offer a dedicated degree in video game design. Even the Princeton Review recently named Abertay as the best university for undergraduates to hone their video game design and development skills.
The icing on the cake for the city is the talk of an Esports arena, which would cement Dundee as arguably the gaming capital of Europe. The Scottish Esports League is growing fast, with five-figure cash prize pools increasingly up for grabs.
Las Vegas
There’s no doubt this corner of the Nevada desert is one of the most gaming-orientated destinations on our planet. Las Vegas is home to world-class gaming resorts which line Las Vegas Boulevard on what’s famously known as the ‘Strip’.
And the game which people love to enjoy when visiting Vegas is poker. There are dozens of dedicated poker rooms along the Strip, most of which offer Texas Hold’em poker games and tournaments. This is comfortably one of the most popular versions of the classic card game, with a host of tactics and strategies capable of being used to keep the format fresh and interesting for both offline and online players.
Vegas casinos are also home to thousands more table games and slot games, and the city is also pivoting towards the Esports scene in a big way. The Strip’s HyperX Arena in the Ancient Egyptian-themed Luxor is Vegas’ leading professional Esports stage, with this modular facility the first of its kind for competitive video gaming in the city.
Tokyo
The Japanese capital of Tokyo has long been considered a gaming mecca. The city is home to multiple AAA game development studios, with Tokyo the original base for gaming powerhouses like Nintendo, Sega and Sony too. The sheer scale of Tokyo makes it a gaming paradise. There are two generations of citizens engaged and passionate about gaming, with millennials and Gen Zers flocking to the city’s biggest gaming events.
These events include Real-Time Attack, which has become an iconic fixture on Tokyo’s gaming calendar. It’s a celebration of many gaming titles, where enthusiasts attempt to learn the games inside out and complete them in record-breaking times, usually with the aid of bugs or glitches.
Seattle
In many ways, Seattle is the undisputed gaming hub of America. The city in Washington state is home to some of the biggest gaming companies on the planet, let alone the US. Microsoft and Valve are both headquartered here, as is Electronic Arts. In fact, there are an astonishing 300-plus gaming studios established in Seattle, employing a combined 16,500+ game designers, developers and publishers.
It also happens to be the home of the US subsidiary of Nintendo. It’s even attracted social games brands like Big Fish Games, Bungie, Pokémon Company and next-generation gaming companies such as Oculus VR.
This quintet of gaming hubs are well and truly leading the way for pioneering gaming, with the cities almost certain to power the gaming metaverse over the coming years.
