6 ms·

>Streaming is fantastic. Streaming is awful. It perpetuates the idea that you pay for a thing but don't own it. It creates more incentives for ongoing moneti

by nvy 3y ago

>Streaming is fantastic. Streaming is awful. It perpetuates the idea that you pay for a thing but don't own it. It creates more incentives for ongoing monetization (to support the streaming infra) like in-game ads and loot boxes with paid keys. It introduces horrendous input lag that fluctuates based on network conditions and it means there's yet another probably buggy layer of abstraction between the game and the player. (edit: and you can't play on LAN!) Unless you're playing Yahtzee, streaming delivers a suboptimal gaming experience.

tommek4077 3y ago
Yes, and too many people still think bandwidth equals good latency. It does not!
- chrisweekly 3y ago
  Agreed - including many who should really know better. https://hpbn.com https://hpbn.com is an excellent resource to refresh or learn practical networking fundamentals.
  - curtisblaine 3y ago
    It is... a domain for sale?
    - hayst4ck 3y ago
      They probably meant this: https://hpbn.co/ https://hpbn.co/ but added the "m" by accident.
      - chrisweekly 3y ago
        yes, thank you, whoops! (too late to edit)
  - chrisweekly 3y ago
    SORRY! Typo in link to High Performance Browser Networking site -- aka HPBN -- correct link is https://hpbn.co https://hpbn.co
olalonde 3y ago
> It perpetuates the idea that you pay for a thing but don't own it. Renting is an old concept and it's not going away any time soon. Maybe the technology is not there yet but I don't see what's inherently wrong with the concept itself. Owning is wasteful unless you have close to 100% utilisation. Why pay for the full price of an X-Box that sits idle most of the time? If every idle X-Box could be utilized by anyone in need, we would either see a significant rise in the number of people able to enjoy gaming, or a decrease in the number of consoles required to be produced.
- nvy 3y ago
  >Owning is wasteful unless you have close to 100% utilisation. If you're going to veer into Economics 101 then you'd better reconcile with the fact that this "renting" only causes more surplus to be captured by the publisher, and not by the consumer. A. You pay for an x-box and you own it. You can mod it, develop games on it, play games on it, sell it, whatever. Economists tell you this is "inefficient" because the xbox is not 100% utilized, and so in theory you have incurred an opportunity cost. B. You pay $amount for the privilege of "renting" a game that is streamed to your television over the internet. You own nothing. Your access to the game and/or the game console and/or the service as a whole can be terminated at any time, for any reason, at the whims of a gigantic faceless transnational corporation. You have no means to contact an actual human at customer support because there aren't any humans working in customer support. The corporation gives less thought to you than you do to a mosquito that splats on your bumper as you drive home in your Elonmobile (which, incidentally, suffers many of the same problems) I'll take option A, thanks.
  - olalonde 3y ago
    > "renting" only causes more surplus to be captured by the publisher, and not by the consumer This assertion is demonstrably false. If this were the case, it would beg the question as to why many consumers and businesses willingly opt for rental models. Cloud hosting and music streaming are prime examples of the popularity of such models. You have a personal preference for ownership, but if we look at consumer trends in the past decade, I doubt your preference will be shared by a majority of consumers. My bet is the majority of consumers are likely to prefer the flexible, less costly options, rather than ownership (assuming the technology is competitive).
shadowgovt 3y ago
Having played both Cyberpunk 2077 and Destiny 2 exclusively as Stadia games, I respectfully disagree with your third point. And your second point is actually a flaw in the current videogame industry economics; the lack of any kind of subscription relation and perpetual-payment model for most games breeds most of the ills we see in the industry (buggy AAA launch titles, crunch time, studios releasing brilliant products, then going under because they just timed their release badly and were the second-best thing against something else that took all the attention that cycle). But Stadia is definitely not a counter-argument to your first point. ;)
KronisLV 3y ago
> Streaming is awful. > It perpetuates the idea that you pay for a thing but don't own it. That is probably true in the case of the streaming that you're discussing, but I want to bring up something that I think is pretty cool, Steam Remote Play: https://store.steampowered.com/streaming/ https://store.steampowered.com/streaming/ I actually had a case where I wanted to play a game on my netbook, but it just wouldn't run on the device (Transport Fever 2, which was demanding both with its OpenGL and Vulkan renderers). So instead, I setup the game on my PC and just streamed it to my netbook, over wireless in the house. I'm mentioning this because it was actually playable and honestly it was cool to see the tech getting better for this (not a bunch of input bugs, or performance as bad as what VNC/RDP would historically give you) and being able to do something like that without a hassle. Of course, that's a bit different from not owning the game and just renting someone else's hardware/service to play it on.
hayst4ck 3y ago
I've had good experiences streaming, but I also don't like competitive FPSs. So we'll have to agree to disagree. Maybe you live farther from data-centers than I do. Rather than buying a new computer to play cyberpunk, I streamed it and it and was quite happy. It cost me $10 for one month and my relationship with the company ended afterwards. I've used streaming a bit more and I've tried several different services and generally been happy with all of them. nVidia now is great, I just finished BG3 on it and it ran well. > It perpetuates the idea that you pay for a thing but don't own it. I think that's myopic. A new computer every 8 years for $2000 or $10 a month for 8 years? From a purely monetary and economic point of view, there are clear advantages to subscriptions. From economies of scale perspectives there are clearly advantages to subscriptions/centralization. There are disadvantages, too. So it's most correct to talk about trade-offs. Where I think you are right is that it gives vendors power to alter the rules and leave you praying they alter them no further. We are seeing the down side of now, with the enshittification/shrinkflation/brand looting of nearly everything in the American economy. So I agree that in a might makes right world, a world in which there are no consequences for our aristocracy, centralization/streaming/etc puts you in a weaker negotiating position and could very likely be good in the short term, but bad in the long term. > It creates more incentives for ongoing monetization (to support the streaming infra) I think that depends on if these streaming companies are subsidizing the streaming or not in the same way Uber subsidized rides: at a loss. Allocation for peak capacity is the direct cost to the company, and any unused capacity could potentially be re-tasked for other purposes. Any user that doesn't contribute to peak capacity+growth projection is free from the perspective of hardware acquisition. Hardware is an economies of scale world, there may even be positive tax implications. I'm not sold that there is any special incentive to monetize streaming unless the companies are streaming at a loss. Letting kids gamble is the culture of mobile gaming, and I think it's culture that perpetuates it more than structure. I think the PC market salivates at the idea of loot boxes (just look at EA), but the culture is quite against them. PC gamers have provided consequences to predatory publishers while Apple and mobile gamers have not. > It introduces horrendous input lag and it means there's yet another probably buggy layer of abstraction between the game and the player. I haven't personally experienced this. I have had almost entirely good streaming experiences on broadband. I think from a purely theoretical point of view, input+vision doubles the potential latency and therefore it should be worse. I think from a practical point of view it's probably easier for one company to "solve" input/graphics lag for all games while games run in ideal conditions, than it is for every game's netcode to be fantastic. While we're comparing and contrasting: Have you read the EULA's of the anti-cheat software on some of these games? Literal root kits, some from Chinese companies, some that allow direct raw memory dumping from the computer if not direct RCE/remote access for investigation. From an environmental point of view computing from a datacenter as well as time sharing devices is probably a win. So while you come in strong against it. I think you should be somewhat respectful of other people's positive experiences. "Streaming is awful" is poor criticism. "Streaming quality is greatly dependent on where you live and your internet quality" is probably an accurate criticism. Streaming from SJC in San Francisco is probably going to be a pretty good experience.
consoomer 3y ago
I agree it's awful, but anyone using an iPhone that is locked down doesn't care about ownership. The games can go right in their iTunes library with the other media and entertainment they don't own.
distract8901 3y ago
Back in the olden days, I used to walk down to blockbuster and pay a few dollars to rent an N64 cartridge for the weekend
- smolder 3y ago
  Back in the day, you could rent your own games to other people by handing them your cartridge and accepting some money for the loan. The goods were transferrable. Renting is good when it coexists with real ownership.

by nvy 3y ago

tommek4077 3y ago

Yes, and too many people still think bandwidth equals good latency. It does not!

chrisweekly 3y ago
Agreed - including many who should really know better. https://hpbn.com https://hpbn.com is an excellent resource to refresh or learn practical networking fundamentals.
- curtisblaine 3y ago
  It is... a domain for sale?
  - hayst4ck 3y ago
    They probably meant this: https://hpbn.co/ https://hpbn.co/ but added the "m" by accident.
    - chrisweekly 3y ago
      yes, thank you, whoops! (too late to edit)
- chrisweekly 3y ago
  SORRY! Typo in link to High Performance Browser Networking site -- aka HPBN -- correct link is https://hpbn.co https://hpbn.co

olalonde 3y ago

> It perpetuates the idea that you pay for a thing but don't own it. Renting is an old concept and it's not going away any time soon. Maybe the technology is not there yet but I don't see what's inherently wrong with the concept itself. Owning is wasteful unless you have close to 100% utilisation. Why pay for the full price of an X-Box that sits idle most of the time? If every idle X-Box could be utilized by anyone in need, we would either see a significant rise in the number of people able to enjoy gaming, or a decrease in the number of consoles required to be produced.

nvy 3y ago
>Owning is wasteful unless you have close to 100% utilisation. If you're going to veer into Economics 101 then you'd better reconcile with the fact that this "renting" only causes more surplus to be captured by the publisher, and not by the consumer. A. You pay for an x-box and you own it. You can mod it, develop games on it, play games on it, sell it, whatever. Economists tell you this is "inefficient" because the xbox is not 100% utilized, and so in theory you have incurred an opportunity cost. B. You pay $amount for the privilege of "renting" a game that is streamed to your television over the internet. You own nothing. Your access to the game and/or the game console and/or the service as a whole can be terminated at any time, for any reason, at the whims of a gigantic faceless transnational corporation. You have no means to contact an actual human at customer support because there aren't any humans working in customer support. The corporation gives less thought to you than you do to a mosquito that splats on your bumper as you drive home in your Elonmobile (which, incidentally, suffers many of the same problems) I'll take option A, thanks.
- olalonde 3y ago
  > "renting" only causes more surplus to be captured by the publisher, and not by the consumer This assertion is demonstrably false. If this were the case, it would beg the question as to why many consumers and businesses willingly opt for rental models. Cloud hosting and music streaming are prime examples of the popularity of such models. You have a personal preference for ownership, but if we look at consumer trends in the past decade, I doubt your preference will be shared by a majority of consumers. My bet is the majority of consumers are likely to prefer the flexible, less costly options, rather than ownership (assuming the technology is competitive).

shadowgovt 3y ago

Having played both Cyberpunk 2077 and Destiny 2 exclusively as Stadia games, I respectfully disagree with your third point. And your second point is actually a flaw in the current videogame industry economics; the lack of any kind of subscription relation and perpetual-payment model for most games breeds most of the ills we see in the industry (buggy AAA launch titles, crunch time, studios releasing brilliant products, then going under because they just timed their release badly and were the second-best thing against something else that took all the attention that cycle). But Stadia is definitely not a counter-argument to your first point. ;)

KronisLV 3y ago

> Streaming is awful. > It perpetuates the idea that you pay for a thing but don't own it. That is probably true in the case of the streaming that you're discussing, but I want to bring up something that I think is pretty cool, Steam Remote Play: https://store.steampowered.com/streaming/ https://store.steampowered.com/streaming/ I actually had a case where I wanted to play a game on my netbook, but it just wouldn't run on the device (Transport Fever 2, which was demanding both with its OpenGL and Vulkan renderers). So instead, I setup the game on my PC and just streamed it to my netbook, over wireless in the house. I'm mentioning this because it was actually playable and honestly it was cool to see the tech getting better for this (not a bunch of input bugs, or performance as bad as what VNC/RDP would historically give you) and being able to do something like that without a hassle. Of course, that's a bit different from not owning the game and just renting someone else's hardware/service to play it on.

hayst4ck 3y ago

I've had good experiences streaming, but I also don't like competitive FPSs. So we'll have to agree to disagree. Maybe you live farther from data-centers than I do. Rather than buying a new computer to play cyberpunk, I streamed it and it and was quite happy. It cost me $10 for one month and my relationship with the company ended afterwards. I've used streaming a bit more and I've tried several different services and generally been happy with all of them. nVidia now is great, I just finished BG3 on it and it ran well. > It perpetuates the idea that you pay for a thing but don't own it. I think that's myopic. A new computer every 8 years for $2000 or $10 a month for 8 years? From a purely monetary and economic point of view, there are clear advantages to subscriptions. From economies of scale perspectives there are clearly advantages to subscriptions/centralization. There are disadvantages, too. So it's most correct to talk about trade-offs. Where I think you are right is that it gives vendors power to alter the rules and leave you praying they alter them no further. We are seeing the down side of now, with the enshittification/shrinkflation/brand looting of nearly everything in the American economy. So I agree that in a might makes right world, a world in which there are no consequences for our aristocracy, centralization/streaming/etc puts you in a weaker negotiating position and could very likely be good in the short term, but bad in the long term. > It creates more incentives for ongoing monetization (to support the streaming infra) I think that depends on if these streaming companies are subsidizing the streaming or not in the same way Uber subsidized rides: at a loss. Allocation for peak capacity is the direct cost to the company, and any unused capacity could potentially be re-tasked for other purposes. Any user that doesn't contribute to peak capacity+growth projection is free from the perspective of hardware acquisition. Hardware is an economies of scale world, there may even be positive tax implications. I'm not sold that there is any special incentive to monetize streaming unless the companies are streaming at a loss. Letting kids gamble is the culture of mobile gaming, and I think it's culture that perpetuates it more than structure. I think the PC market salivates at the idea of loot boxes (just look at EA), but the culture is quite against them. PC gamers have provided consequences to predatory publishers while Apple and mobile gamers have not. > It introduces horrendous input lag and it means there's yet another probably buggy layer of abstraction between the game and the player. I haven't personally experienced this. I have had almost entirely good streaming experiences on broadband. I think from a purely theoretical point of view, input+vision doubles the potential latency and therefore it should be worse. I think from a practical point of view it's probably easier for one company to "solve" input/graphics lag for all games while games run in ideal conditions, than it is for every game's netcode to be fantastic. While we're comparing and contrasting: Have you read the EULA's of the anti-cheat software on some of these games? Literal root kits, some from Chinese companies, some that allow direct raw memory dumping from the computer if not direct RCE/remote access for investigation. From an environmental point of view computing from a datacenter as well as time sharing devices is probably a win. So while you come in strong against it. I think you should be somewhat respectful of other people's positive experiences. "Streaming is awful" is poor criticism. "Streaming quality is greatly dependent on where you live and your internet quality" is probably an accurate criticism. Streaming from SJC in San Francisco is probably going to be a pretty good experience.

consoomer 3y ago

I agree it's awful, but anyone using an iPhone that is locked down doesn't care about ownership. The games can go right in their iTunes library with the other media and entertainment they don't own.

distract8901 3y ago

Back in the olden days, I used to walk down to blockbuster and pay a few dollars to rent an N64 cartridge for the weekend

smolder 3y ago
Back in the day, you could rent your own games to other people by handing them your cartridge and accepting some money for the loan. The goods were transferrable. Renting is good when it coexists with real ownership.