Definition of Insanity

The second post I ever made on this blog was way back in April, 2009.  The topic was about "OnLive".  Essentially, It was a cloud gaming service in which people could purchase games and play them on a variety of streaming devices.  It launched in June 2010, but failed to gain much traction and by August 2012 all of the employees had been laid off.  It was bought out for a tiny fraction of its previously estimated value.  Sony then resurrected the service in March of 2014, only to shutdown OnLive for good in April 2015.

Sound suspiciously familiar?  Google Stadia is basically the same thing.  Actually it's worse from a consumer standpoint in that there's a monthly subscription fee on top of having to buy games.  All the same technical problems remain; bandwidth shortages, data caps, infrastructural limitations...the list goes on and on.  Then, there's the issue of less customer freedom.  People using Stadia (much like OnLive) can't borrow, lend or trade games.  They can't resell games either.  If the service ends then say goodbye to all those games you bought.  Yes, Google is a big company, but have you taken a look at a website called "Google Graveyard"?  There are over a hundred-and-seventy projects that the company has abandoned or shutdown over the years (no reason why Stadia couldn't become one of them).

I've also been seeing some odd comparisons to streaming movies or music (from the director of the project no less).  First off, neither of those forms of media are interactive.  Second, the amount of time invested in watching a movie or listening to a song is typically orders of magnitude less than the time spent playing a single video game.  Even small studio indie game experiences are almost always longer than big Hollywood blockbusters.  Aside from some techno and classical music, songs typically don't go on for more than a few minutes.  If anything the closest media relative of video games are books...possibly choose-your-own-adventure books.  Guess what?  There aren't any streaming services for novels.  Sure, Amazon has their E-book reader and distribution system, but if you buy a digital book from them and download it to your Kindle (or whatever device) it's yours as much as buying and downloading a game from GoG is.

Perhaps the best question to ask is, "who's this service for?"  Hardcore gamers aren't going to go for it.  They want their own personal software library and some tricked out piece of hardware to run anything in it...the possibility of input lag alone will be enough to turn most of them off right away.  Casual gamers aren't going to go for it either...the service is too expensive.  Plus, the only place you're going to get the wireless bandwidth you'll need is via a 5G network...but here's the catch - transmitters for 5G have a really short range meaning that it's really only going to be available in the downtown parts of big cities.  If you live in the suburbs or (heavens forbid) the countryside then no Google Stadia for you.  Don't worry though I suspect it will go the direction of OnLive in very short order...a pity that Google doesn't seem to realize how ludicrous the idea of a cloud gaming service was and still is.

Back for a Rematch

A little over three years ago I made a post on this blog about the decline of PC gaming.  You can read about it here.  I still stand by the six reasons I gave as major hindrances which keep the PC from dominating the video game industry.  That said a lot has happened, and as the current generation of home consoles grow older the PC is starting to make a comeback in a big way.  Why?  Well, here's six reasons:

1# Scale-ability.  One of the nice things about PC games is the ability to adjust the visual performance to suit your own preferences.  This can mean better than current console graphics, but on the flip side I tend to think of it as stuff like toning down resolution to get the most out of particle and shadow effects when trying to play Doom 3 on old hardware.  Consoles on the other had give you no such option.  Whatever the settings are your stuck with regardless of your priorities, which brings me to my next point.

2# Mod-ability.  Ever heard of Black Mesa Source?  DayZ?  Europa Barbarorum?  How about Day of Defeat?  These are just a few mods to come out for the PC over the years.  They're free, and many are practically complete games in their own right.  Best of all I've just barely scratched the surface of what's out there.  Not all mods are overhauls either you got everything from a duck tape mod that lets you attach that trust flashlight to your gun to improved UI.  Integrated support for modding is also becoming increasingly common which is great for less tech savvy PC users.

3# Freedom of Distribution.  You make a game for Xbox360 and your looking at licencing fees, Microsoft's tedious certification process and only one digital means of distribution.  Go with PC on the other hand and you got none of the corporate imposed hurdles, plus options like Steam, GOG and even self-publishing.  Not to mention non-standard means of funding such as community supported in-development financing like what we've seen for games such as Minecraft and Kerbal Space Program.

4# HDTV and Controller Support.  One of the costly bits of buying a PC was the need for a monitor.  Thanks to recent improvements to TV and video card support it's fairly easy to connect your PC to that big screen TV you got and while the display tends to not be quite as sharp, there are a number of benefits to this arrangement when it comes to watching video streaming.  Most new games to come out also support your standard Xbox style controller which is a huge help for certain titles which brings us to... 

5# A Mouse and Keyboard.  I don't care what anyone else says.  If your going to play an RTS, FPS or pretty much anything other than a flight-sim, mouse and keyboard is an equal or superior control scheme.  The joke is there's no reason why Sony or Microsoft can make their consoles support these input devices.  They simply refuse to do so for business reasons (In other words people who don't play video games making decisions for us gamers).

6# Bibliotheca Optimum.  I decided to give this one a Latin title in the same vein as Lingua franca.  Pretentiousness aside my point is whenever discussions come up about what is the ideal gaming platform, it always boils down to game libraries.  Well, guess what?  In terms of back catalog, free stuff, and shear variety noting surpasses the PC.  This is especially true when you consider free emulators for everything from arcade titles to obscure 16-bit Japanese imports, not to mention DOS Box.  

So, there you have it.  Of course this list makes some assumptions about proper porting and DRM (or lack there of), but when you consider that the next generation of consoles (aside from the Ouya) will probably have a high entry cost a few launch titles there becomes more and more reasons to go with a PC; better graphics, greater flexibility, more methods interfacing, less publisher bullshit, and the list goes on.  Will the PC  crush the opposition?  If Google OS gets an upgrade and Valve releases a Steam Box then absolutely.  But since neither of those things are guaranteed to happen we'll just have to wait and see.     

Pessimistic About On-Live

It's an interesting idea to have cloud based services provided to your living room allowing you to play the games you want with out the necessity of having to upgrade hardware on you PC or purchasing an XBox360 and PS3. In truth I want to get behind idea of On-Live, if only because it would save us gamers and game developers a lot of headache. But lets look more closely, shale we?

First thing that popped into my mind when I read about On-Live is where are they going to get the bandwidth for all this? During a busy night with lots of people using On-Live the servers are going to have to be transferring huge amounts of data incredibly quickly in order for anyone to play. Just to put that into perspective if On-Live used waterworks instead of internet bandwidth there would have to be a Niagara Falls in everyone's living room! At least in order for it to work the way they say it's supposed to work. Maybe they should have done a pilot program in South Korea beforehand where %90 of the homes have access to cheap broadband internet.

For those of you who read my Steam isn't the Answer article much of what's in there also applies here. Questions like "What if your internet goes down?" or "What if On-Live goes out of business?" have answers which I think are less than reassuring. Then of course there's my favorite question "What if you want to lend a game you bought on On-Live to another friend with On-Live?"

Let's move on though. How about price? You'll save a lot of cash because you don't have to upgrade anymore, right? Well...even if we assume you already have a display screen your happy with there's the matter of monthly costs. Of course you got to pay your broadband internet provider so there's $50 to $100 at least. Then you got to pay the On-Live subscription fee which I can't imagine costing less than premium cable TV. Then you got to buy the games at retail price (or at least the price they deiced on). No used games here, I'm afraid. So, as you can imagine this is adding up rather quickly.

Maybe I'm wrong though. Maybe they have some kind of reasonable pricing strategy in mind even though they're using some kind of super video compression technology. Regardless, I'm pretty sure this system is going to have a lot of bugs early on and it will be interesting to see if they can build up a decent library of titles. Because as you know it really comes down to the games and the people who play them.