5 ms·
> Fortnite wasn’t designed to be a Second Life-style experience, or even a digital “third place“; it became one organically. I don't even know what to do with
by zemo 8y ago
> Fortnite wasn’t designed to be a Second Life-style experience, or even a digital “third place“; it became one organically.
I don't even know what to do with this comment. All multiplayers games are designed to be a third place, that's why they have groups that stay together between rounds, integrated voice chat, and friend systems. Multiplayer games have been designed to act as third places for ... a long, long time now.
> Epic has also built up another great and particularly hard to establish advantage: some 200MM+ registered user accounts.
I don't think that Fornite players as a group think that setting up a new user account is a big deal. Having an account is not a particularly big point of friction any more.
> Third is the threat posed by the shift to cloud-based gaming
do players actually want this? I've only heard that players want this from "thought leader", technology speculator types. Never in my thousands of hours of online gaming have I ever heard another player talk about this.
> they will be able to support Unity and other engines as well (interoperability will obviously be critical to any Metaverse and has long been a passion point of Sweeney’s).
this seems pretty divorced from technical and political reality.
- wernercd 8y ago> do players actually want this? What makes companies the most money? One shot games? Or never ending games with repeat buys? I see more of the later and not really the former... That tells me that whether or not what gamers 'want'... what they spend on is cloud based.
- maxsilver 8y ago> Or never ending games with repeat buys? (snip) That tells me that whether or not what gamers 'want'... what they spend on is cloud based. That's not what cloud based means here. "Cloud based", in this context, refers to video streaming of a game rendered within a data centre, remote-desktop-ed to your computer like a YouTube video. (The article calls it a 'cloud-based streaming solution'). Lots of companies offer this (GeForce Now, PlayStation Now, etc). But almost no players actually play that way today. Lots of players are spending money in online "never-ending" / "repeat-buy" games. (Fortnite, Apex, Blackout, Destiny, Warframe, Path of Exile, WoW, etc). But approximately 0% of players are spending any money on "cloud-based" ones (using the articles definition of cloud-based).
- wernercd 8y ago> That's not what cloud based means here. Ahh, I misunderstood then... I hear cloud and I think server based. I would think cloud-hosted "gaming" - as in RDP type gaming?... the latency alone would kill it for me. I stand corrected :)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- hannasanarion 8y agoCloud gaming was tried before, with a company called OnLive. Interest peaked shortly after they announced in 2012, and then they crashed and went bankrupt because nobody cared enough to pay for it.
- thrownblown 8y agoI miss it. It amazed my friends seeing me play LA Noir on my phone.
- advertorial 8y agoIt’s an advertorial. An advertisement posing as an editorial opinion. The editor was paid to form an opinion about the subject, and ramble on for a few hundred words.
- lumost 8y agoI don't have access to any non-mac laptop - nor any computer with the hardware required to play a AAA title. When an interesting title like shadow of the tomb raider came out I was always put off by the sticker shock of buying a ~$1000 machine + desk + monitors that will take up a large portion of my apartment, and be obsolete in 2 years. For what amounts to ~80 hours of entertainment if I only play 2 AAA titles per year. Trying out ParSec gaming was game changing for me and I've played 3 AAA titles with max settings in the last 3 months on the same PaperSpace cloud I use to do my personal ML projects. for a total cost of $30 in cloud credits, from my MacBook air sitting silently on my lap.
- michaelmrose 8y agoOne can buy an $700 machine every 5 years and play 3 games per year acquired at steam sales for $10 - $20 each. They can be aaa titles from 2-3 years back or less demanding items. That is an average of $185 a year for 80 hours of fun or little more than $2 per hour. One can also get or build a a micro atx machine that does not use much room and hook it up to a kvm switch and a keyboard. At the touch of a button it goes from an extra monitor for your laptop to connected to your micro desktop. If you like old games even better a $500 machine could provide hundreds of hours for years. Say 100 per year and a few hundred hours per year = 50c an hour. There are a ridiculous amount of classic games.
- Impossible 8y agoAnother reasonable middle ground is buying a $300 console...