While it may be true that the annual Game Developers Conference isn't typically geared toward gamers, there's been no shortage of bombshells at this year's event. In particular, I've been most impressed by the announcement of the OnLive cloud-based gaming service. It's been covered obsessively by the major gaming sites already, but this was big enough that I'd like to toss my two cents into the pool.
Beginning with the promise of being able to play any PC game on your TV through a universally compatible box, OnLive first sounded like the Phantom 2. Not that Phantom 2 - this Phantom, version 2. But OnLive leaps much further ahead by putting all of the game-running horsepower in the ephemeral cloud, providing the gamer with a disc-free, all-download service that promises to run either on their own microconsole, or practically any PC or Mac that your Mom bought within the last couple years. The server does the work, and you have the fun as a video stream of your game is shuttled down the pipe.
In short, this means nothing less than changing everything about how games are currently produced, marketed, distributed, supported, and consumed. Imagine if, as a gamer, you never had to think about things like storage space on your hard drive, or upgrading your hardware. Development times and budgets can be made smaller while the games can be made bigger and better. Bugs can be squashed quickly and discreetly without the gamer having to download a patch. Post-release downloadable content like new player characters or levels can be made standard as part of the game experience, rather than offered as a userbase-splitting paid download. Piracy will be hamstrung. Digital Rights Management will be irrelevant. And retail outlets could be removed from the picture.
It's no secret that there's a lot of simmering animosity between publishers and platform holders, and the brick-and-mortar stores that are loath to give up their cut of the action. Should OnLive be widely adopted, it would leave these stores with no games to sell. What's the need, when the service could potentially run on any device that's sufficiently quick at decompressing the video stream, and has some way of attaching a controller? Even the microconsole version wouldn't have to be sold at retail if it's leased from a local office; did you actually buy your DVR? Used game sales would dry up, and the game makers would enjoy the profit.
But that physical product has, until now, always meant real consumer ownership. Having the disc or the cartridge in your hand and the hardware that runs it means that you can play that game indefinitely. It's yours. But in the Cloud, nothing is ever yours. It's all server-side, and if you're not connected, you're cut off. To me, this is the greatest risk of the all-download future: that without a physical record of the work, there is a risk that it could be lost permanently. For one, it's risky for the consumer: if the service ends after some time, what happens to all of the content that you've paid for? Will it be migrated to a newer service? Or will you get nothing more than a politely-worded email thanking you for your years of patronage? Even pressing a disc with all of your games might not be enough: if you've spent so much time on a disc-free platform, there's no guarantee that you'll even own anything capable of playing that backup.
Second, it's risky for the legacy of the video game medium. If some truly innovative games were released to OnLive (which they surely will) I would want those games to be preserved. Video games still haven't shown a real commitment to making themselves available to future generations. Preserving an old game is more complicated than preserving music, movies, books, or art. Until now, classic games have gotten re-released for current platforms, while more lesser-known titles have been guarded over by a dedicated collector niche. But without physical copies, download-only games stand the greatest risk of being lost to future generations. It's one thing if I can't play Braid, but it's quite another if nobody can.
In all, I think OnLive is ambitious and holds great promise. It's the video game fulfillment of current trends in computing, and it will happen, sooner or later, whether it's this specific service that does it, or if it's another very similar one. There are plenty of technical hurdles in the way, but I'm looking forward to seeing it when it works.
What I'm Playing
- Main Campaign: Killzone 2
- Side Quest: Rock Band 2
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