Dyack: 2009 Might Be The End of Gaming's "Golden Era"

[Rigs83]

Still, if Dyack is as big a supporter of cloud gaming as he claims, it's an odd choice of words: "End of the golden era" sort of implies that these will be detrimental to the games industry, doesn't it?

From my understanding the end of a Golden Era, at least for a form of an entertainment media is a good thing. In the Golden Age of film all films were censored and the movie theaters were controlled by the film studios so you may have had to watch only that studios films while the Golden Age of comics were also censored and limited very much by nationality, the fact that we can read foreign comics translated easily can be seen as a good thing, Naruto not withstanding.

Right now the vast majority of games are made by big companies and can often be console specific. As for censorship that can be debated though my heart goes out to the Australian gamers and yes their are many independent studios there many failed ones as well. Things are changing for the good though. Even the Escapist is hosting a make a game contest and the advent of services like OnLive may make it easier for gamers who don't have the resources to constantly upgrade their game rigs to play high end games (lag can be compensated for with time) at a fraction of the cost (not a very small fraction but a fraction none the less).

 

[BonerMacTittyPants]

For me, The Golden Era of gaming will start once the graphics become photorealistic and the only thing that will matter is the gameplay.

This however, is just a technology step. It's not going to happen this year, that's just idiotic to say. Imagine if 100 000 people would want to play Crysis via OnLive. The amount of CPU power and bandwidth needed to support it is just overwhelming. It would require huge processing farms even with today's standards.

It's not impossible though, it will happen anyway. Imagine if Microsoft kept all the Xbox360 consoles it made and connected them in a network. And imagine if all you'd have to do to play it was buy somekind of cheap decoder box and a controller, plug it to your TV and then connect to a console kept somewhere in MS's warehouse. I'm thinking that this is how gaming will look like 2-3 generations from now.

 

[Arrakiv]

I thought the end of the golden era was around '98 or '99... For PC gaming anyway. Then, there was the golden era of RPGs, which was further back. Then there were the other golden eras that...

Eh, things change. Frequently.

 

[Asehujiko]

OnLive is still nothing more then a pipe dream, as their last E3 demonstration has showed us.

 

[Yokai]

I don't really see this cloud computing really taking off. I doubt gamers would want to give up hard copies of their games for this model. Even Steam-purchased games allow you to keep all the required data on your computer. The idea of your games being streamed off of some faraway server just really bugs me. It would be like, I don't know, if someone created a service where you could buy books but never receive a copy; instead you'd read them on your TV screen. Services like Onlive take away the security in knowing you have your own copy of a game that no one can screw with and no connection errors will prevent your from playing. They also take away the satisfaction of building up a large collection of titles, which it seems to me is an overlooked but integral part of gamer culture. I don't know, the whole idea seems like too much of a stretch.

 

[Enai Siaion]

Services like this don't care about bandwidth issues or latency where you live because they're not doing this for you.

They're doing it for Shanghai, Seoul, Beijing, ... The Asian megacities with fiber to every home in the near future, short distances, huge audiences, a large cybercafe base and a culture where spending a thousand on virtual items to kill someone is considered proof of your wealth and success, not a waste of money. (See also: Mu Online)

When OnLive was talking about microtransaction games as a major pillar of the system, this is what they meant.

So what if you live in Europe where anything above YouTube-grade broadband is prohibitively expensive and fiber to the home is delayed by bureaucracy, or the USA where the ISPs can't back up their claims of unlimited monthly bandwidth... You're not the audience. You're passé economically and socially - the Chinese model is where it's at in the 21st century.

Maybe your kids will emigrate to Shanghai in 2030 where they can get killed on Mu Online 3 in glorious 2160p and you'll remember when you made fun of the African countries where one cell phone is shared by an entire village.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Dennis? Make a good game before opening your mouth. Too Human was a horrible bomb.

LOOK AT ME! I'M SAYING DRAMATIC THINGS TO SEEM RELEVANT! LOOOOK AAT MMEEE!

 

[Emphraim]

OnLive won't work at all now due to the fact that:
1. Most areas still have very slow internet.(i only have 20 mbs download and 1 mbs upload)
2. Onlive has almost no good games licensed so no one will want it.
3. The cost of having a lot of people trying to play Crysis(this is ignoring the fact no one has the bandwidth for it) would be insane and would require huge server farms.

 

[Pimppeter2]

As times changes, people will change with is

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Just saying, if this were Valve talking i'd care. But Dyack? How do you screw up cyber punk norse mythology?

 

[SimuLord]

Dyack has so little credibility, he's just become the second inhabitant of the Molyneux Zone, a place reserved for idiot game developers who don't know when to shut their gods-damned mouths.

As far as gaming's "golden era", 2004 called, it wants you to come and visit it. Then it argued with someone in the background who sounded like either 1998 or 1987, I couldn't tell which.

 

[Giest4life]

Exactly my problem, but I will be lying to myself if I was to claim that this applies to all gamers, it doesn't. Case and point: all the fan base of Zynga developers; I hate those guys, I really do, I think Farmville is probably the death of real gaming and yet they prosper with 85 million gamers and counting. I am sure some people will buy into that OnLive crap, but personally, I don't see myself doing that, ever.