Gaming APIs

Gaming APIs are collections of tools useful for the development of digital games. Developers can use gaming APIs to create gaming applications that will allow users to enhance their in-game experience. Gaming APIs offer developers the chance to create third-party applications that can improve the user experience for each specific game, it also allows the developers to use APIs as a marketing tool, making games more popular.

Some use case examples of gaming APIs are:

• 1. Guide to game prices
• 2. Esports Event details
• 3. Fetching system requirements
• 4. Social media applications integration
• 5. Hosting in-game events
• 6. Extracting game-related data
• 7. In-game voice chat

There are over 90,000 video games on traditional platforms such as PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam. In 2021 alone, over 10,000 have been released on Steam. Considering that there were over 3 billion video game users worldwide in 2021, the wide variety of gaming prices on numerous platforms can sometimes confuse video game buyers. There are APIs that get you the current game prices from these multiple stores and platforms, and it draws which store brings you the best price. Considering the game environment and player count, usage of game APIs will be beneficial to users and developers.

Gaming API example: Game Prices API

With the advent of video games, and the gaming world, competitive gaming has become increasingly mainstream. The total market value of the Esports industry has been estimated at $1 billion, with a worldwide audience size of over 530 million people in 2020.

Considering such statistics, developers have created gaming APIs that inform the user of Esports tournaments, matches, event details, schedules, team standings, etc.

Gaming API example: League of Legends Esports API

With the evolution of video games, many modern games demand computer systems to be equipped with adequate performance specs to run a game. On top of minimum requirements for running a game, there is usually a recommended requirement section to get the most out of a game.

Many modern games demand highly capable GPUs, among other system specs such as CPU and RAM. Gaming APIs are developed to identify if a person’s system can run a specific game. The API does that by fetching the game’s system requirements and comparing them with the user’s specifications. It concludes the process with whether the user can run the game or if they can run the game on which settings and on what Frame Per Second (FPS).

Gaming API example(s): Can I Run It?

Social media integration is one of the use cases of gaming APIs, especially for mobile game developers where a specific game would require or advise a player to connect their Google, Facebook, or Twitter account to increase the interaction between players and friends.

Video game developers can use social media integration APIs as a marketing tool and as means to add social features to the game. Such APIs allow users to integrate social applications like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Discord into video and mobile games.

Gaming API Example: Overwolf API.

Live video streaming platforms such as Twitch gained success thanks to the many aspects of video-game streaming. Twitch has over 15 million daily active community members with an average of 95 minutes of gaming content. Following this success, there have been various APIs to help the content creators, and developers organize competitions and tournaments both in-game and as a Twitch extension.

Gaming API example(s): GameOn Tournament Organizer, Amazon GameOn API.

Considering the large number of players who play popular games such as Call of Duty, PUBG, Rocket League, Lichess, Souls Games, etc. There is various real-time game data such as player stats, challenges, and game analysis. Gaming APIs retrieve the mentioned game data by exposing REST HTTP, JSON format API.

Gaming API example(s): Lichess API, Dota 2 API, Riot Games API.

With the evolution of the gaming industry, playing games is not just for entertainment; gaming is now considered a meeting place between friends. With the increased interaction levels in modern games, developers have developed in-game voice chats to provide instant communication. With voice APIs, in-game chat allows the game to run seamlessly. Players do not have to type messages every time they want to communicate. Many modern games allow access to built-in voice chats that can be customized, see Figure 2.

Game API example(s): Discord, Plivo Voice Chat API, Built-in voice chat APIs.