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Anything from Google means advert spam flood .
Even if they manage to do away with latancy issues and streaming artifacts I'm just not sure that I like the idea of game streaming just from a games preservation standpoint, let alone giving Google power and money than it already has.
I tried OnLive just because streaming games was a curiosity but I didn't really but in to it. Its a good thing too since OnLive kind of died.
I like how they are promoting Stadia with Doom. I'm 100% sure it is fun to play Doom with huge input lag, after all it is not a fast paced fps.
Post edited March 23, 2019 by bela555
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Punington: Just to give my two cents here, I've been using a cloud desktop/gaming service (Shadow) for a few months now as I don't have access to a powerful computer at home. Before subscribing to that service I considered buying a PC (and monitor) around the 1200$ mark. My math pointed out that for that money I could afford the cloud service for around 3 years with the flexibility of cancelling/subscribing again anytime, and with the added benefit that if I move I wouldn't have to carry bulky things around (yeah, I'm one of those people).
Could've bought a laptop instead, less bulky. Don't get me wrong, more generally, I understand the "convenience" argument, I just reject it. The problem is there will never be this ideal market where person A streams and person B buys DRM-free games in peace. The choices made by one party affect the future choices available to the other. And right now it is not looking great for all of us "Person B"s.
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i_hope_you_rot: Anything from Google means advert spam flood .
Don't forget craptcha codes. Click on all images of a bodega. Or be permanently signed in. I suppose it is a gentle nudge to keep people always plugged in.
Post edited March 23, 2019 by rjbuffchix
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rjbuffchix: Could've bought a laptop instead, less bulky. Don't get me wrong, more generally, I understand the "convenience" argument, I just reject it. The problem is there will never be this ideal market where person A streams and person B buys DRM-free games in peace. The choices made by one party affect the future choices available to the other. And right now it is not looking great for all of us "Person B"s.
I may have explained myself poorly before. The service I use doesn't include any games, it's just a Windows 10 computer in a server room, and it allows me to perform compute intensive tasks as if I had a high-end desktop at home, although I access it via streaming anywhere there's an internet connection. So it's possible to use it for work, to play GOG games, to email, and basically anything you can do with a home computer. My games still are DRM-free owned games, I'm just streaming and renting the compute power necessary to run them.

I agree that our own choices have consequences for other people and I honestly appreciate everyone who tries to anticipate them. But throughout the years many have claimed that the PC was dead and that proved to be wrong. In my view, it's better to keep buying DRM-free games and supporting the devs, publishers and stores we like, rather than lobbying against or boycotting a service someone might enjoy or find useful. I also believe there's a lot of hypocrisy around and many who complain about Stadia's promises often are Steam customers or buy cheaper Steam keys through resellers rather than making their purchases here at GOG or at Itch.

To conclude, I wish with all my strength that everyone took this sentence you wrote to heart "The choices made by one party affect the future choices available to the other. And right now it is not looking great for all of us "Person B"s." and used a tiny bit of that outrage for more urgent matters we can all agree on play a more important role in our futures.
Post edited March 23, 2019 by Punington
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Punington: [...]
First of all, thanks for great, thoughtful reply and clarity.

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Punington: But throughout the years many have claimed that the PC was dead and that proved to be wrong.
It was proved to be wrong at a great, great cost. Steam "saved" the PC market. I say "saved" in quotes because the PC market would've been fine as a dedicated, non-mainstream market, and Steam imo caused irreversible damage. While PC gaming is still going strong, DRM-free gaming has been pushed all the way to the margins. I constantly am saying it is best for GOG to just serve this underground, marginal need...but it is sad to me that the option to truly control one's own ownership of a game was taken away by Steam (and other "services"). And, in a future where GOG folded or was no longer offering DRM-free, client-less games...DRM-free gaming would absolutely be on a death knell.

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Punington: In my view, it's better to keep buying DRM-free games and supporting the devs, publishers and stores we like, rather than lobbying against or boycotting a service someone might enjoy or find useful. I also believe there's a lot of hypocrisy around and many who complain about Stadia's promises often are Steam customers or buy cheaper Steam keys through resellers rather than making their purchases here at GOG or at Itch.
I think it's more about raising awareness. In a "hey, did you ever question why you have to keep logging in online to play your singleplayer game?" or a "hey, did you know there are ways to play multiplayer in the same home or even same screen?". Your last sentence is right-on, ditto for people complaining about Epic's client only to demand the game be on the Steam client.

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Punington: To conclude, I wish with all my strength that everyone took this sentence you wrote to heart "The choices made by one party affect the future choices available to the other. And right now it is not looking great for all of us "Person B"s." and used a tiny bit of that outrage for more urgent matters we can all agree on play a more important role in our futures.
I should add that the war against ownership takes many forms; streaming games is not the only one, it just happens to be one I care strongly about. While in general I don't believe that (supposedly) bigger problems necessarily need to be addressed before (supposedly) smaller ones, in this instance I view them as one and the same. Rental culture is being pushed upon everyone, not just in games but in various forms throughout film, music, even driving cars. This is really bad for those of us who don't want it, though I sympathize with those who want the option. I just don't want to see it take over and become the de facto choice of nearly everyone. Like Steam did, like Spotify is doing, et al.
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Punington: Even if there's no detailed information on Stadia yet, what do you guys make of its announcement and promised features?
The most important, at least non-technical, information will be the pricing. Has there been any info on that yet?

Sure, if they can offer an eat-as-much-as-you-want gaming service for like 10€/month, it will really fly (for those who have good enough, unmetered, internet and don't mind not owning a license to their games).

If, however, they expect one to pay 60€ per game (as if buying it from Steam or GOG), and the only moderately-priced monthly subscription would be for some poor-ass indie games you can buy for a dollar or two on Steam and GOG, then I don't expect it to be that popular.

If they are smart, they try to couple the service with some other streaming services like Netflix etc., so that the prices would compensate each other a bit.

Anyway, I am not sure if you realized, but this is not the first streaming gaming service around. Have you heard about e.g. Onlive? It failed, and I think the main reason was pricing, it wasn't lucrative enough with their pricing model, which was pretty much as explained above (similar per game prices as on Steam and such for AAA games, and their monthly service offered only some older indie games).

Sony also got quite a lot of flack when people realized what kind of prices they were supposed to be paying in Sony's streaming gaming service.

Someone has to pay for all the computing power on those server farms which run the games, and that someone is the customer. This is not like Netflix or Spotify where there is much less computing power needed on the server farms, instead it is mostly just about transferring the content to the customers. That is why Netflix and Spotify can offer so much stuff for a moderate monthly fee. Offering RAM and CPU/GPU capacity on the data centers is always offered for a much higher fee than mere hard drive space and transfer speed.

The main marketing angle for this "streaming gaming services" appears to be that you don't need to have a powerful PC to play the games, but can play AAA games on a meager PC (low-end laptop), tablet or such. That might otherwise work except that... consoles don't cost that much. So just saving something like 200-300€ (the price of a PS4 or XBox One), is it really worth it for most?
Post edited March 23, 2019 by timppu
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Punington: Google seems to covet a piece of the gaming cake and their take on the future of gaming is quite an interesting one. Even if there's no detailed information on Stadia yet, what do you guys make of its announcement and promised features?

I've discussed in many topics regarding GOG's competitiveness and future that they should be more worried about streaming than steaming (sorry, I couldn't look the other way on this one). Could Google's gaming service (if proven successful) be the biggest threat to the storefront model we know and specifically to GOG?
anything google related is bound to have you sing in with your google account or create one before you can even use this serv ice so google can steal even more data from people, this is shady as hell DRM, i have never touched anything google and i never will.
i have a feelking that all data will be monitored over the gaming device, and if there youtube security and report abuse system is anything to go by, if you meet an asshole online lets just say it will be like xbox live and complaints will just go into a black void never to be read.
even if google makes this work and other companys do it, its not gonna make the way we game today obsolete, cos people like to trade games for new ones, people like to lend there games to friends, having a full streaming service means that google will sell games there at rediculous prices just like you see on xbox live marketplace now.and the name google stadia sounds like there trying to make a UEFA football team not a game streaming service, its a dumb name and a dumb service, now heres our chance to boycott this service so we dnt get extreme DRM on our games.
some of us dont like steam its time to make a stand against this streaming service and nip it in the bud before it grows into a beast w e cannot slay or stop
For 5 bucks per month to play ALL games with dedicated server possibility I'm sold.
Anyway Stadia will be introduced to Russia maybe in 5 years from now and I don't think they will be so generous as to offer me all games for only 5 dollas a month. So no, thank you, Google. See you later and will see.
anything google should be avoided, as we all know there just gonna siphon all the data by having you be logged in 24.7 to play. thats the only reaon google are getting into the gaming streaming service not to provide decent quality service, but to enroach on your lives futher than they already have.

if this goes ahead and gets popular gaming as we know it now with copys of games freely tradeable, and sellable online on sites usch as ebay etc will cease to exist.

so google can fuck off like they know anything aobut gamers, guess its why they made this service to collect data on gamers and sell it
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i think this needs to be discussed futher, i dnt think google will make this work it could be another google glass
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rjbuffchix: [...]
Hey, no worries, thanks a lot for the reply and for enriching debate with your thoughts.

I certainly agree with all your points, I found especially interesting the last one regarding the prioritisation of problems. My statement on the matter was a fallacious argument (of the fallacy of relative privation sort [I had to look this up, lol]). But even when acknowledging that appealing to worse problems doesn't detract from the importance of lesser ones, I think it's important to realise how we categorize our reactions (especially relative to ambivalent problems) so we can think better what to do with our limited time and energy.

Sure, I also wouldn't want a future were there's no ownership but thinking there's only two options here is also a fallacy (a false dilema fallacy [this one I remembered]). Just as you, I wouldn't like to see rental culture pushed upon everyone, but I believe there's a middle ground where different forms of consumer culture distribution could coexist for our benefit. If I can think of one role we, as citizens, have the most sense of agency over our futures, that is our role as consumers. Democracy gives us a choice every four years or so and that choice is sometimes meaningless, but consuming means choosing all the time. If Steam is where it's at is mostly because of us, it's our fault, and failing to recognise that it's not only hypocritical but also detrimental to a possible better scenario (I've bought a few games through Humble and gotten Steam keys for example). As you said, I'd rather see all of us raising awareness of this issue and of other forms of DRM-free entertainment than getting unnecessarily angry over anticipated scenarios and whose views should be pushed onto others.

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timppu: [...]
I guess we'll have to wait and see how is it priced and how it works, so far there's only prove that Stadia works in a much smaller scale than they intend to.
Regarding pricing, I'm pretty sure Google have done their homework and know everything there is to know about the gaming markets they want to focus on (I don't imagine a PS4 costs 200€ in Brazil for example). We can't tell for certain but knowing Google is the world's leader when it comes to advertising I wouldn't discard the option that they and developers alike will try to find ways in which to monetise playtime, not to mention that Google will most probably be gathering data like crazy as well (when do we play, for how long, with who, at what, etc) to offset the price and cross it with other Google service's data to get an increasingly clearer picture of our lives.

Hopefully we will still have options like GOG or Itch, right? As you said cloud computing is expensive and as long as it's profitable for developers to release their games here we will have a choice.
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Punington: [another great response]
Wow, I have kind of trained myself over the years to stop mentioning the phrase "logical fallacy" in people's comments because usually it just annoys them and shuts down their desire to discuss more, haha. Kudos to you. You are correct also that I cannot see the future...my guess is that it will be a "choice" between ownership in the extreme far margins, difficult to even get or considered "overpriced" to many people, and non-ownership available everywhere and marketed non-stop, including word of mouth. I don't think they can both co-exist in the market as viable options, but more sadly I don't think we will be given the chance to know. The powers-that-be (corporations, governments, others in power) have a vested stake in the "non-ownership" side of things.

There is not a great way for me to make the following argument, as any time I do it comes off as snide or elitist. But I'll try. Many people are very intertwined with the idea of "following what everyone else is doing". I observe that marketing and trends cause an avalanche of support from people, to the point they support products, goals (like higher education degrees), even life-changing decisions (like marriage and children), without really thinking about the alternatives or what they themselves really want. As a brief aside on this, it is really funny to me how so much is taught to people to avoid "peer pressure" when it turns out society is drunk on it 24/7, 365. And please do not think I am immune...I freely admit various trend-chasing, including some in the present day...but I try to be aware of it.

I know that humans are social creatures. But, I also think the thing that most separates humans from animals is the capacity to reason. It is deeply saddening to me when people give in to the "lizard brain" as it were, instead of embracing their capacity to reason. Take that for what you will, but I mean no disrespect to people by it. Like I said I have lapses, we all do, it's not a competition to see who is the most like Spock or anything. On that note, I will admit most attempts to say "what if streaming does win out and take over?" are also fallacious and not really different logically speaking than something like Pascal's Wager. But to look at it all from a "process" standpoint (since we can't know the "result" of the future yet), I think it's worthwhile to advocate certain practices over others, after thoughtful consideration of course.
well google already have a competetion for this service cos apple announced apple arcade yesterday
i listened to a PODcast on this the other day and they said its gonna be 3 times more powerful than a PS4 and give 60 fps at decent resolutions, it was kinda funny games podcast