GDC Europe: Dyack Gets Fervent On The Rise Of Cloud Computing

[PLOWKILL]

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24866

"He suggested that a fairer, more level playing field for all games would result. Thus, games like Resistance and Gears Of War wouldn't really compete against each other -- because they were on different console systems.

If all shooters could compete against each other on a cloud platform, the "artificial walls that have been built up by proprietary consoles" will be broken down, Dyack suggested -- actually encouraging better games as a result."

"In addition, Dyack said that the "endless bickering" over which console is better "really hurts the community", and so he hopes -- perhaps idealistically, but for the benefit of developer economics -- that as hardware becomes irrelevant, the games become everything."

Really good article, nothing really new that we havent heard before but explained really well. :D

(I cant find the orginal thread so this will have to do!)
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gamelife/images/2007/09/05/dyack.jpg

[theALLseeingEYE]

Front paged Plow! now hopefully we can get some traffic in here.

Definitely an interesting topic. It would definitely be cool to play Crysis at max settings on any comp. Currently, I can essentially stream HD video content from Game Trailers, as soon as I click the start button. I'd imagine I wouldn't have massive lag either, so this could be really cool.

On the other hand, streaming video at full, artifact free 1080p likely won't happen for a few years now, and I love my video clarity.

As far as not ever owning a boxed copy of a game any longer, as long as I can forever play a copy of the game, I'm ok with that. These services just need to ensure the pro's ouotweigh the cons of a service like this, otherwise they'll falter.

[sir woimz]

This sound really interesting, it also sounds like their going to make the gaming industry into a cable company? It could also be a cheaper target for customers that can't afford to buy a counsel.

[Batou079]

I'd agree only to a certain point, with Denis.

Until the United States (or the rest of the world for that matter) gets better overall infrastructure, Cloud techology cannot become fully realized and would remain a very minority specific technology.

The majority of United States do not have access to broadband/fiber speeds.
On average 2mbps DSL services are the most common, of which a large majority have much worse speeds. For cloud technology to really become an effective service, not only would the United States infrastructure need to get broadband speeds available to the majority of the nation, but cloud technologies would have to advance enough to encode at bit rates that would not create lag when streaming the same potential feeds to millions of homes at the same time.

Sure it currently exists, and works.
But again, for only the rare minority.
To become a nation-wide effective service, i think we are still looking at 20+ years, or more!

[theALLseeingEYE]

I can't disagree with you there. I think Denis says as much in his speech too. Until bandwidth is hugely available and improved all over the world, this isn't going to take off.

Then again, simply having cool services like this, especially if service providers see a big value in the market could help speed up adoption.

I'm interested to see how this changes the landscpe for software. Telltale games is already proving that episodic games are very viable. Perhaps we could see much more of that in the future, along with even ad-driven, low-cost, cable-TV-like programming? to go along with all the big bidget blockbusters.

[GameFM]

I have a feeling it will take around 10 years rather than 20 years.

[Zutroy]

These episodic games, and the move to re-release Fable 2 in increments, I really don't see the innovation in this. To me, it really just looks like a return to the Shareware model of the early 90's. Maybe someone can correct me on this.

[Redenbacher09]

I don't like the idea of episodic games, unless they were major 'episodes' as Blizzard plans to do with SC2.

Giving me 30 minutes to an hour of game play a week would drive me insane :p

[theALLseeingEYE]

Telltale adventure games were usually 2-3 hours long, no? That should be a decent length imo.

The other really important part, which is where Valve failed, was in having the games ready, and on-time for a regular schedule. For example, I beleive Telltale develops an entire season at a time, then release each episode on-time, every 2 weeks or so.

Now, add on that you could play these episodic games, for nothing more than paying the basic subscription fee, and having access to numerous espisodes of episodic game every month, I think it could be cool. Or at least I'm interested in the idea. For the most part, I'd rather just play full games though.


By the way Alan Wake has an episodic structure eh? hmm. Considering Fable 2 is releasing episodically (which, I agree Zutroy, doesn't seem that special to me), I would hardly be suprised to hear that Alan Wake will release in episodic chunks at some point too.

[blincoln]

I have trouble believing this will ever work. Bandwidth is only part of the factor. The latency of the connection is also vital for this type of application. There's not a whole lot anyone can do to speed up photons traveling over fibre, or electrons through copper, and there is always the added overhead of all the routers, switches, and firewalls in-between the source and destination adding latency as well.

I do have an inherent distrust and dislike of centralized computing, especially when I'm not in control of the centralized computers. No one can push a button and deactivate my Eternal Darkness or Blood Omen discs. If I want to play them, it doesn't matter if my DSL is working or not, or if there was a fire at the game company's hosting facility and it's currently offline.

I also think it's a waste of the astounding processing power that's available in consumer technology today. My G1 phone is more powerful than a Cray supercomputer from the 70s or 80s. But somehow a dedicated gaming device isn't capable of delivering the performance for a game, so it has to be offloaded to a datacentre?

The computing world has been through the centralized model once already. I can see how some people would find it attractive, but I at least don't have any interest in revisiting those days. If things do swing in that direction, at least I have the last 30 years or so worth of existing games to keep me occupied :).

[Art of Stealth0]

ready for it and just cant w8

[blincoln]

Supposedly one of these companies (OnLive, I think) is entering a beta test phase, so it appears there will be some conclusive results as to whether or not it's practical, and if it is practical, what the constraints are (physical distance to the closest datacentre, resolution of the video, etc.).