Lately, I have been streaming video games a lot. Since the beta launch of Nivida GeForceNow in 2015, the gaming industry has been slowly changing.
I came across GeForceNow in 2019, got a beta account, tried for a while. It was awesome. In the same year, Google announced its game streaming platform, Stadia. Given I’ve gotten familiar with the concept, I immediately signed up for the prelaunch and the Pro subscription.
Does it worth it? A few thoughts sat on my mine for a while.
On the bright side: it brings me back to this virtual world once again.
Ever since 2016, when I broke my PC during shipment, I have never owned a PC ever. I’ve been relying on Mac for years at work and off work. Perhaps with a bit of influence of aging and fewer friends into games, I no longer follow trending games or graphic technologies. Even when I wanted to play, my options were limited to: does Mac support it? Most time not, and I also don’t intend to get a high-end mac just for gaming, so my laptop is not sufficient for most games even when it’s available on Mac. In a word, gaming was a history in my life.
GeForceNow sets a good start, and that was in fact fantastic experience. To a user experience, it’s a portal that launches tons of games on a remote PC machine. It supports Blizzard and Steam, which extends the cross-platform nuance even further.
GeForceNow gives a broader promise on the surface, but it sometimes has trouble holding its end of the bargain. For example, Steam does not support all games that it may have led you to believe. GeForceNow will alert a message to the user that they heard the request, and they will work on the integration.
Stadia presents streaming games differently. It attempts to bring users a more emerged experience; just look at the minimum number of buttons or options on the Stadia interface! It almost feels like: ‘hey, come here, click a play icon and just dive into the game; don’t even think about how everything works, and we handle all for you!’
I could imagine all of the integrated games to go through a long process of signing deals with Google, integrating with Google API, and eventually launch their games in Stadia. This ingestion pipeline would require both Google and the game company to work together so that this user experience can be seamless.
The exciting part about Stadia is definitely: you will get what’s promised available. There is no desktop application to install or maintain up to date; all you need is a computer browser or a TV. Oh yes, another point, Stadia, is cross-platform not only in the means of being browser-gaming that suits both Mac and PC; it is also accessible as a play station with controllers.
The downside or cost is definitely: you need time and engineer efforts to make this happen. I could imagine the software technology behind GeForceNow being a remote desktop, which has been in the industry for years. However, Stadia did everything with the Chrome browser or Chrome Cast. It’s not like Google has to re-invent everything, but it’s definitely something no other gaming platform has ever done at this scale.
With that said, Stadia has limited games. I imagine they have a long tail of games to integrate, and researchers would run surveys to figure out what games are likely to succeed, both for the game itself and for Stadia as a platform.
In 2020, humanity is facing the pandemic, so most people are given a choice to stay indoor. That changes many industries like video conferences or social media, and the gaming industry is obviously impacted right from the start.
My personal feeling is, the discussion around Stadia has trended up so much through the past few months. The platform has also been adding new games rapidly. Given months or a year of staying at home practice, many people who were not so much about gaming could get into this habit; some of us may stick around with games for more time.
I shared my excitement about the streaming game on a few occasions. Mostly that brings me a new way to play games and even to work. Think about it: if gaming is proved to be feasible through video, how far are we from getting rid of computer devices all-together? Of course, you’d have to pay differently but just think about all the repeatedly cash we paid for the device upgrades and our waste on dusting old devices! This is really exciting.
It’s not for everyone, and I get it. After looking at NIVIDA’s latest release RTX 3080, for the great price and performance, I can see why people want to have them locally. That gives a lot more customization possibility on not only gaming but other graphics computing usage too.
For an average person who just wants to experience games, or perhaps 20 years old games once awhile without getting into buying computer hardware, streaming service is absolutely excellent for me.
