Online gaming escaped Australia's social media ban - but critics say it's just as addictive Wednesday afternoons have become a ritual for 15-year-old Sadmir Perviz. It's a circuitous route from home in Perth to the Fiona Stanley Hospital - but it's worth it, he says, to sit down for a game of Dungeons & Dragons with people he may not know but with whom he shares a great deal in common. Sadmir and his board game companions are just some of the 300 patients at the gaming disorder clinic, Australia's only publicly-run institution of its type, helping patients wean themselves off excessive online gaming habits. The room where they meet is a simple space in a faceless hospital but in the corner, there's a pile of boardgames on a chair. Jenga, Uno and Sushi Go are also popular choices at the informal group which is attended by both patients and clinicians.

News that GOG.com has delisted 29 games this month is a sobering reminder that at any moment the games you own could vanish from your PC game libraries at any time and there's not much you can do about it. Admittedly, GOG's games include titles that many gamers may not have heard about. But history has shown that this happens to well-known titles too and on platforms with millions of users like Steam and Origin. So how is it that something you've legitimately bought can be whipped away in a heartbeat? Don't we have consumer protection laws against that?

Ahmedabad-based blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions provider, Yudiz Solutions Limited said it will strengthen its position in the gamification solutions for applications in corporate workplaces and industry uses. The company eyes non-game environment targeted to improve employee performance and customer engagement with deployment of gamification solutions in corporate use. Yudiz currently gets about 40 per cent of its reported revenues of ₹18.76 crore (March 2022) from gaming that also involves other technical tools such as AI, Blockchain, virtual reality among others. "We believe that the Indian gaming market will grow from $3 billion to $5 billion by 2025. And we expect to increase the share of games in our total revenues to 60 per cent," said Bharat Patel, Chairman, Yudiz Solutions. "In the next two years, we also plan to open a gaming studio," said Patel adding that the company plans to hit the capital markets with a public issue in the SME segment of NSE Emerge platform in June 2023.

As technology advances at an exponential rate, the gaming industry has been one of the early adopters of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance user experiences. With the global AI market expected to reach $190 billion by 2025, and the global video game market expected to reach over $268 million by 2025, the combination of both of these has the potential to revolutionize e-gaming. With the ability to create more immersive and personalized gaming experiences, AI has already begun to positively affect the gaming sector by providing gamers with smarter and more realistic opponents, advanced game mechanics, and an immersive gaming environment. With AI-powered gaming platforms, gamers can expect a more sophisticated and dynamic gaming experience. AI-powered games can adapt to players' skills and provide customized challenges that are tailored to their abilities.

As we will now have to prepare ourselves for migration from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, it's important to understand the tools and technologies that will play a central role in building a Web 3.0 ecosystem. Although this area is still evolving and will take some more time to come to a mature state, a few technologies have already paved their way into the Web3 world and have been embraced by the Web3 developer communities. Those technologies are Blockchain, some 3D design & modeling tools & platforms, AR/VR and a few other JavaScript & CSS-related packages, and of course AI & Machine Learning. Let's discuss them one by one in a bit more detail. One of the core philosophies driving Web3 is decentralisation, unlike Web2 which works in a centralised fashion.

The metaverse may be on the horizon, but precursor and metaverse-like experiences are already a reality. Yet most people aren't sold on the concept of the metaverse. An early 2022 poll taken by news site Axios and AI platform maker Momentive found that most respondents were ambivalent about the metaverse, with 60% indicating they were unfamiliar with the idea of the metaverse. Although far more respondents were "scared" than "excited" about the metaverse, 58% said they were neither scared nor excited about the coming immersive digital world. As envisioned by analysts and researchers, the metaverse will be a persistent, immersive shared digital environment where people can interact with each other and transact with businesses.

Minecraft will not allow non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to be used on the popular gaming platform, with the company describing them as antithetical to Minecraft's "values of creative inclusion and playing together". NFTs confer ownership of a unique digital item, typically an image or a video, with the ownership recorded on a decentralised digital register known as a blockchain. Digital files can usually be copied or deleted for free, but a NFT identifies the owner of the original file for the purposes of buying, selling, or trading the ownership – usually for cryptocurrency. The hype around NFTs led to a boom in sales peaking at US$12bn (AU$17.4bn) However, coinciding with the downturn in cryptocurrency, sales recently began crashing to a 12-month low of US$1bn (AU$1.45bn) in June.

Our world is becoming more and more digital every day. Artificial intelligence and machine learning continue to grow strongly. Talking or chatting with a virtual robot is becoming more common, and we are even getting used to it. It is no longer necessary to look up the information yourself or review the FAQ section; even if you want to get a precious piece of info outside the working hours of the customer care team the automated Chatbot will help you! Also, you can simply ask the virtual assistant.

One of the most popular gaming platforms is about to go public. Roblox is expected to start trading shares in the growing video game company on Wednesday. It will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "RBLX." Earlier this month, Roblox Corporation said it expects to rake in between $320 million and $335 million during the first quarter of 2021, nearly double from the previous year. If you're a parent, then it's likely the only time you ever hear about Roblox is when your kids play it – or discuss the endless activities they complete with friends.

In March 2019, Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco to tell gamers what he owed them. He wasn't a big gamer, he admitted. Google, though, was indebted to games. Games were the entry point for countless Googlers into computer science. Games like chess and G o helped train Google's DeepMind AI.