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Video Gaming Will Take Over

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Re: Video Gaming Will Take Over

#71

Post by Aaronstotle »

Darkphibre wrote: post #33
navs wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought much the same but recent experiences with my cousin's children give me doubt. They're both in the early teens now and they consume games like Minecraft on their iPad as if they were playing on a standard PC. I know the games have been tweaked for the format but not by much, at least in the instance of Minecraft. The virtual controls infuriate me but they're tapping and swiping away building some complex cre…

Reminds me of an op-ed from 1900 about how books were destroying the youth, for they never looked up at the world around them. :)

I think that the major difference is a lot of games/apps are tailor made to produce dopamine/cause addiction. While a good book _can_ be addicting, it's not inherently stimulating.

Re: Video Gaming Will Take Over

#72

Post by slfnflctd »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #4
proc0 wrote: post #2

Games are just the forefront to interactive media. Apps are getting "gamified" and pretty much anything that can be interactive will be because it's the next level as far as creative and communication medium. At first it was just paintings etc, then photography, then film, and now games which is really interactive digital content.

Curmudgeon, here. Why do books, paintings, photos, and film exist at all anymore? Maybe because we don't all want everything "interactive" all the time.

All of those things have been given interactive platforms in pre-internet settings: book clubs, museums, galleries and film festivals.

It's of course important to have the option to enjoy them by yourself at times-- but you can do this with games, too.

Nearly all visual & audio art can be presented in a game-like environment (such as a customized VR setting), so in a way a game engine is a superset of every piece of art in those categories. And they will all continue to exist, because part of art is confining your expression to a defined medium to intensify your focus on it.

Re: Video Gaming Will Take Over

#73

Post by apazzolini »

dudus wrote: post #45
Hamuko wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those are technical problems that will get solved. How do you fix the distance between me and Google?

More PoPs and fiber. Both which are already much more ubiquitous than a few years ago and fast expanding. Plus you don't need to reach everyone for a successful product. Just a critical mass

I (and many, many others) notice lag in games with v-sync turned on vs off, and we're talking about single digit milliseconds there.

It's possible that Stadia might be "good enough" for casual gaming (and granted, that's a very large market segment), but I don't think it will ever be good enough for anyone who is sensitive to latency.

Re: Video Gaming Will Take Over

#74

Post by UncleMeat »

falcolas wrote: post #56
setr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More datacenters

That's not a technical solution, that's a "throw money at the problem" solution which is not financially viable for a good portion of the world.

But it is exactly how CDNs and very large web applications have been doing things for ages.

Re: Video Gaming Will Take Over

#75

Post by Havoc »

FooHentai wrote: post #3

>Cloud gaming means you will be able to take your game “everywhere” and avoid dreaded 20-minute updates before you can start playing. Doubt. In the same way that movies on PSP had this idea in mind but fell flat on it's face, games are strongly tied to the format and environment in which you consume them. FPS gaming with a keyboard and mouse isn't coming with you on your phone for the morning commute, and no amount o…

>FPS gaming with a keyboard and mouse isn't coming with you on your phone for the morning commute

Fortnite on mobile says otherwise

Re: Video Gaming Will Take Over

#76

Post by cookie_monsta »

There's a point that the article only brushes on that seems important.

My generation (born in early 70's) was the first to really come up with access to video games pretty much as a given. We had space invaders etc in the arcades (or wherever else they could fit a cabinet), hand-held Nintendo and basic home consoles in primary school and then of course came the boom with PC, PS, X-Box and all that followed.

But a lot of people only a few years older than me are just as dismissive about games now as they were then - this is kids' stuff, a waste of time and money. I'm not an obsessive gamer, but I do play every now and then and I absolutely see games as just another option on the entertainment landscape.

And being that older people weren't into them, I guess I'd always had the thought in the back of my mind that games were something you grew out of, like binge drinking or not caring about your retirement (your examples may vary). But the other day I was playing with friends and I looked around at these ~50 year olds and realised we're never going to "grow out" of this - particularly if the hardware and software just keep improving the way they have.

So for me one of the big reasons that gaming will keep growing is because those older, non-gaming generations will die out, replaced by new generations who start gaming ever earlier while eventually you may find yourself playing call of duty with a platoon of 80+ year-olds.

Re: Video Gaming Will Take Over

#77

Post by 013a »

EamonnMR wrote: post #69

Can we talk about those dreaded twenty minute updates? As someone who no longer has unlimited gaming time to burn, enormous updates that do nothing but make minor balance tweaks are the bane of my gaming experience.

Cloud gaming may help this, but realistically: the fact that you notice updates (on fast internet) is really a tech problem that even local-rendering traditional consoles can solve.

Background updating should be a thing. It is available on every major console. It never works. That can be fixed.

Additionally, there have been rumblings about where innovation is going to surface in the next generation of consoles. One of the more consistent themes is the handling of downloads; it'll be easier for developers to "shard out" their game into the components that, say, a particular mode or level or segment need, in order to get players into the game as quickly as possible. It may be a 50gb game, but you'll only have to download 3gb of it to get started.

We're seeing some of this on the XB1/PS4 today, but usually its very binary: Ready to Play, then Full Download. Next gen consoles will get much more specific and optimized. I believe (don't quote me on this) Sony has outright said that their goal is: you buy a game and you play it instantly, with no cloud rendering/streaming; just really smart handling of downloads and packaging.

The most ironic thing about gaming over the past generation is that games always used to be like this: you buy a disk/cartridge, and you're playing. Nowadays, you buy a disk, the disk has to install to the drive, then there's a day 1 update; its a total mess. We'll see how the next generation looks, but I doubt very much the situation will look much better for people with bad internet. If you've got great internet though, maybe we'll be close to the way it looked in the past.

Re: Video Gaming Will Take Over

#78

Post by mrspeaker »

danbolt wrote: post #70
jamesgeck0 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not. Fortnite and Minecraft have cross-play with consoles and PC.

They do have cross-play, but as far as I know it's opt-in when playing with friends. Matchmaking will usually group you with others playing in a similar way.

Fortnite is now "Skilled-based match making, with forced cross-play". Doesn't matter what platform you are on, you are matched by your relative skill level. High-level 6-finger-claw iPad players (and some of them are really incredible!) will be in lobbies with medium-level console and PC players.

Re: Video Gaming Will Take Over

#79

Post by sethammons »

Seenso wrote: post #52
HenryKissinger wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is less about how much people play in an absolute sense, but more about how much people play compared to how much time they spend watching television (and streaming services like Netflix) . You say that your gaming time has declined. Has your time watching tv declined comparably? Which of the two - gaming or tv - would you say is more important in your life?

> You say that your gaming time has declined. Has your time watching tv declined comparably? Which of the two - gaming or tv - would you say is more important in your life? My gaming has declined to zero, and my time watching TV has increased greatly. TV is much easier to make into a shared experience than video games. You can also find informative non-fiction TV, while nearly all games are fiction with relatively si…

I agree mostly with Seenso. I can watch national geographic with the family easily, or watch some trash tv. My tv time is also lower, but it is easier to prioritize that over getting a multiplayer game going that we can all co-op on.

Re: Video Gaming Will Take Over

#80

Post by navs »

Aaronstotle wrote: post #71
Darkphibre wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of an op-ed from 1900 about how books were destroying the youth, for they never looked up at the world around them. :)

I think that the major difference is a lot of games/apps are tailor made to produce dopamine/cause addiction. While a good book _can_ be addicting, it's not inherently stimulating.

At the time the medium didn't allow for unlockable episodes/chapters ;)
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