Drm free mentality

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Guest 3573786

Guest
Ignore their games. Buy from those who don't release just for streaming exclusively, and also release in regular digital stores,
Oh believe me, I do and I will. Unfortunately, people that make a stand against companies like that are in a very small minority.
 
I think cloud gaming is fantastic as a concept, and I doubt that it will affect more focused games. If anything, it will drastically increase the number of people world-wide that can get into gaming. May come as a shock to some, but the vast majority of the world lives on less than $5,000 USD per year. That's not enough to afford any form of gaming hardware (consoles included)...but in most communities I've seen, people have at least a basic computer, laptop, or smartphone. It could increase the market for gaming by several billion once the tech becomes standardized.

And if anything, it should increase the ability for developers to create really ambitious titles, as some of that increased revenue can be siphoned off to studios that are still designing for "traditional" gaming markets.

Like most everything in the creative field, a new innovation simply opens doors. It doesn't wall off what's always been there. (I remember reading a prognosis in the early 2000's that video games would make cinemas obsolete within 10 years. Did you all see Endgame in theatres? That was a good flick.)

you think those people have a low lantency internet connection and the $15 a month +cost of games to drop on this? it's slim client computing, it's not new, it's not a great innovation and relies way too much on basically living down the road from the data centre to be vaguely reliable.
 
I disagree. It certainly wont kill off traditional gaming (at least not in the foreseeable future), but you need only look to mobile gaming to see the possible problems it could cause. The monetization that became rampant on mobile is becoming so much of a problem in standard games that authorities are now getting interested in it. Moreover, you have game entries from beloved franchises now being made exclusively for mobile simply due to its popularity (not to mention it takes away resources and developers from mainline entries). To me, that more than qualifies as walled-off content.

Big publishers gravitate towards what is popular, so once streaming kicks in, what's stopping them from, say, creating games exclusively for streaming? Streaming gives all the control to them and takes all of it from gamers, so you can bet they will do everything they can to get everyone onto it. While it certainly will present some new opportunities, it will by and large be detrimental for gaming. Mere increase of gamer numbers is not a good thing, if the quality of the experience itself is going down.

You mean...like the huge gravitation toward mobile platforms and microtransactions that dominated the market for over 5 years...before the The Witcher 3 became the most awarded game of all time and Cyberpunk 2077 was announced? :p

As for publishers and studios "jumping ship", I think that's exactly what many big businesses will do. Others will be built from scratch and become big exclusively from streaming their games. And others will stay the same and build traditional games. And new publishers will appear that do traditional only.

And life will go on to create loads of rubbish and some real gems. Just like it always has. With everything.


you think those people have a low lantency internet connection and the $15 a month +cost of games to drop on this? it's slim client computing, it's not new, it's not a great innovation and relies way too much on basically living down the road from the data centre to be vaguely reliable.

That's why I said once it becomes standardized. Fibre optic connections and 1000 Mbps speeds are only going to be new and expensive for a few decades before they become wholly commonplace world-wide. When I was 10 years old, the internet didn't exist. By the time I was 20, it was in virtually every household in America. When I turned 30, almost every aspect of business and communications relied on it to some extent, and it had taken gaming by storm. When I hit 40, I could access the Web and stream a movie to my phone while driving through the middle of the desert.

Once the "new tech" is the norm, yes. I imagine Triple-A streaming games will accessible everywhere for very little. 10-20 years is a blink.
 

Guest 3573786

Guest
You mean...like the huge gravitation toward mobile platforms and microtransactions that dominated the market for over 5 years...before the The Witcher 3 became the most awarded game of all time and Cyberpunk 2077 was announced? :p

Not sure what point you're trying to make here. I never said mobile affected traditional gaming to the extent all good games simple vanished and everything is monetized to hell and back, but rather that mobile affected traditional gaming negatively and immensely, which is pretty obvious.
 
Not sure what point you're trying to make here. I never said mobile affected traditional gaming to the extent all good games simple vanished and everything is monetized to hell and back, but rather that mobile affected traditional gaming negatively and immensely, which is pretty obvious.
Because of mobile games streaming is a thing for google etc.They think they can reach more people with it to suck their customers dry.Games will getting more and more full with microtransactions and companies can do what they want because you don’t own anything.I will never support this because local gaming will always be superior
 
Not sure what point you're trying to make here. I never said mobile affected traditional gaming to the extent all good games simple vanished and everything is monetized to hell and back, but rather that mobile affected traditional gaming negatively and immensely, which is pretty obvious.

I was responding directly to this part:
The monetization that became rampant on mobile is becoming so much of a problem in standard games that authorities are now getting interested in it. Moreover, you have game entries from beloved franchises now being made exclusively for mobile simply due to its popularity (not to mention it takes away resources and developers from mainline entries).

My point is that this is not a situation that is being introduced "now". This type of quick-to-build, "mini" game based on microtransactions and ongoing revenue has actually dominated the gaming market ever since the original iPhone 1 and iPad 1 made them viable on mobile devices. Plus, the level of profits they generated was absolutely unprecedented.
Candy Crush was originally built on a startup capital of around $50,000. The company had a definite idea of what they were trying to do, and they did it really, really well. Completely free-to-play, requiring a very small development team, and the only income would be generated by very inexpensive microtransactions during gameplay for quality-of-life things and cosmetics.

The company sold about five years later for over $4 billion USD. That sort of profit growth and turnaround had never happened before. Everyone and their second-cousins tried to jump on-board.

This type of mass-marketing based on "casual" gaming design has been the leading facet of the industry for almost 10 years now. No other angle has proven to be as universally cost-effective as a good F2P model released on mobile devices.

And despite all of that -- not much changed on the good, old-fashioned, triple-A front. Fact is, just because a certain approach proves to be "the best", doesn't mean that other approaches cannot still be wildly successful. "Dominating" the market does not mean that everything else just ceases to exist. If anything, it helps to separate the wheat from the chaff. Once there's no longer a crazy amount of money to waste, poor designs from big companies are less likely to get a go-ahead. Healthy competition, and everyone is being much more responsible with their resources.

I would argue that the success of the mobile market really threw the doors wide open for the indie scene. Yes, there's tons of clutter in that regard, but we also have tiny developers and studios that have been given both the confidence and the platform needed to release extremely good titles. (Using the system that existed in the '90s, most of those same titles would never have been given a chance. [So...big thanks to stuff like iTunes for lighting that fuse!]

In conclusion, we arrive at similar considerations for things like Stadia. I would argue that Stadia and other server-based games pose 0% "threat" to the present market because it will wind up being a totally different market. What it will mostly do is open up gaming for a whole new group of people that are contributing exactly nothing to the gaming industry presently. Sure, I'll probably wind up with a few Stadia (or Stadia-like) titles eventually, but I sure won't stop buying games I can run on the thousands of dollars of gaming hardware I invested in. I wanna use my toys! It will simply add something new and grow an even larger market.
 

Guest 3573786

Guest
My point is that this is not a situation that is being introduced "now".
I never said it was new. But with its rise of popularity came the negative effects on regular gaming. And again, I never said all good "standard" games vanished because of it, nor will that be the case with Stadia.

And despite all of that -- not much changed on the good, old-fashioned, triple-A front. .

Seriously? Have you taken a recent look at most AAA publishers/studios and the tactics they employ? Your arguments seems to be "I'm still able to buy good standard games, therefore nothing changed," which doesn't follow at all.


I would argue that the success of the mobile market really threw the doors wide open for the indie scene. Yes, there's tons of clutter in that regard, but we also have tiny developers and studios that have been given both the confidence and the platform needed to release extremely good titles. (Using the system that existed in the '90s, most of those same titles would never have been given a chance. [So...big thanks to stuff like iTunes for lighting that fuse!]

Not sure what you mean, if its about mobile popularity bringing more indie mobile games, I'll take your word for it. If it's a clam that mobile brought more indie titles overall I'd love an elaboration on that.

In conclusion, we arrive at similar considerations for things like Stadia. I would argue that Stadia and other server-based games pose 0% "threat" to the present market because it will wind up being a totally different market. What it will mostly do is open up gaming for a whole new group of people that are contributing exactly nothing to the gaming industry presently. Sure, I'll probably wind up with a few Stadia (or Stadia-like) titles eventually, but I sure won't stop buying games I can run on the thousands of dollars of gaming hardware I invested in. I wanna use my toys! It will simply add something new and grow an even larger market.

Stadia exclusives are merely one negative effect, but still enough to prove my point. Once more: just because you'll still have good standard games to choose from doesnt mean overall gaming wont be negatively affected.
 
I never said it was new. But with its rise of popularity came the negative effects on regular gaming. And again, I never said all good "standard" games vanished because of it, nor will that be the case with Stadia.

What I'm arguing is that absolutely nothing being introduced with this new attention on "cloud gaming" will have any major effect on any form of established game design. PC, consoles, mobile devices, etc. will continue plugging along just like they always have. New competition doesn't automatically dictate a danger, and the more I learn about how Stadia works, the less and less I worry about it changing anything. It's simply adding to the pot.


Seriously? Have you taken a recent look at most AAA publishers/studios and the tactics they employ? Your arguments seems to be "I'm still able to buy good standard games, therefore nothing changed," which doesn't follow at all.

Seriously. Let me go back to the 1980s. Video arcades full of coin-op machines were the known industry, and it was largely a struggle with very little return. Take a look at the heinous business practices Atari used at that time. PC games were mostly rubbish with the occasional gem. They didn't run well. No one was interested. There was no established market. They weren't taken seriously (...even by the many devs). Gamers were "nerds", "geeks", and "losers", and they worried that the hobby they loved so much would never be respected and wind up just fading away. Challenges, challenges, challenges.

Let's go to the '90s. There were a few devs that had come up with really inventive stuff, but there was still no established market. Tech was limited and outrageously expensive. Consoles (especially Nintendo) and simplistic games that worked like coin-ops were gaining all of the attention due to much wider, mass apeal and far less expensive tech. Gamers on PC were worried that real gems like X-COM and Ultima would never be given the attention they had very much earned. Challenges, challenges, challenges.

Early 2000s. KAAABOOOM! The market had not only become established, but the gaming industry had surpassed Hollywood in terms of gross net worth. Huge developers had sprung out of tiny offices (Activision, Interplay, Ubisoft, EA, Bioware, Relic, etc.) So much money in the system, that the vast majority of games were me-too rip-offs or half-baked rubbish that were little more than cash grabs. MMOs were "ruining" single player games. The PC and console markets were so neck-and-neck...that they actually started pooling resources instead of competing. There was all sorts of controversy about how games were becoming too streamlined and easy and the industry was ripe for an outright collapse. And that happened! Challenges, challenges, challenges.

And that brings us to now. By the mid 2000s and into the '10s, mobile gaming was this huge threat that was going to completely devastate hardcore gaming and we were looking at the end of any sort of depth and quality in the face of the overwhelming market for casual, mobile games. Now...cloud gaming is going to do it, right?

Nope.

At any point in that history, I can list off the absolutely awesome games that I remember from that time. Some points have been better than others. Same with restaurants...or fishing spots...or sports teams. Same with everything. There will always be a market for things that people want. It doesn't require a particular industry to be #1 and dominant to create ongoing quality.


Not sure what you mean, if its about mobile popularity bringing more indie mobile games, I'll take your word for it. If it's a clam that mobile brought more indie titles overall I'd love an elaboration on that.

iTunes and other mobile stores set a very productive precedent. "You don't need to pitch a game to a professional studio and win a contract in order to be successful. You can just sit down in your spare time and wind up making games for a living. If people like it, you can market it here." Viola -- Android Store, Kickstarter, Steam Greenlight, Desura...

It was the appeal of very simple, mobile games that first started encouraging people to take the plunge. Tech was very manageable for small teams, and you didn't need to make any huge investments. Literally, all you needed was time, focus, and a good idea to break in.


Stadia exclusives are merely one negative effect, but still enough to prove my point. Once more: just because you'll still have good standard games to choose from doesnt mean overall gaming wont be negatively affected.

If by "negative effect" you mean "sharing the wealth", then I disagree. Progress of any sort demands change. Nothing stays in the spotlight forever. As tech advances and changes, as new ideas are brought to fruition, so will everything about everything constantly be changing. Once, hot dogs were so unique and exclusive that they were all the rave. Now they're a dime a dozen, mass-produced, and available world-wide. The hot-dog cart on the corner is still in business. And it's still awesome.
 
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