Server based game augmentations. The transition to cloud. Really possible?

I'll cast my vote and say hey, why don't we actually give the brain power around the world a chance to see what they can do with cloud over the next few years before declaring it dead in the water. The good news is that there is finally a platform with cloud computing support standard, now let's see what happens with it.
Coz then we'd have a really dull forum where no-one tries to evaluate or predict anything and we only talk about what has been achieved instead of what my (not) be achieved. :p

It's conjecture based on observation. Don't see anything wrong with that myself as long as no-one's confusing the issue and getting their knickers in a twist because of what some company or other has said. I'd be interested to hear your personal takes on what you can see cloud compute being used for given your developer experience. Are there any tasks in games you've developed that you can see being readily offloaded to cloud processing? Or are current game designs not a great fit and we're going to need something new to take advantage of server-side computing? Or do you see it as basically a network gaming infrastructure that makes multiplayer game worlds easier to make?
 
Why would a any dev, unless bribed by MS, use it? it goes against selling their game.

I wanted to know, if there was actually a carrot for them , other than MS money.

You have to realize that sometimes, when you're building a company, it's different than building a single product. Yes, right now, you're right...they might be limiting themselves to a smaller market. However, most executives don't see it as simple. They need to look at long term viability of the company and the direction in which they want the market to move toward.

Why do you think all the games companies (not just them) are pushing to have their own servers? Ultimately, they want the market to move toward subscription based. They need to slowly migrate the infrastructure, development infrastructure, the distribution chain and the user base. All of these needs to be done (some are easier than others). Short term losses, will be offset by long term market push in the direction they want. Will the user base be easily changed? Well, I believe at this point, unless you're an old school gamer, it's relatively easy. Most of people that plays games on iPad/iPhone, Android and what not, are so used to the idea that you buy is activated on the server end. The digital transfer that offered by MS is to appease old schoolers like you and me...

Thus, I believe the perfect storm is brewing...allowing this next gen as ground zero.
 
It's conjecture based on observation. Don't see anything wrong with that myself as long as no-one's confusing the issue and getting their knickers in a twist because of what some company or other has said. I'd be interested to hear your personal takes on what you can see cloud compute being used for given your developer experience. Are there any tasks in games you've developed that you can see being readily offloaded to cloud processing? Or are current game designs not a great fit and we're going to need something new to take advantage of server-side computing? Or do you see it as basically a network gaming infrastructure that makes multiplayer game worlds easier to make?

Well that's like asking me what I think the next blockbuster movie would be, who will it star and what will it be about. If I could answer you then I'd be a billionaire :) The quick answer is I don't really know. I could throw ideas out there I guess.

Maybe use cloud to make games more variable without having to patch the game every single time you play. So use those servers to generate either manually or procedurally new looks for the graphics, new paths for ai people, new missions, or whatever just so that the game doesn't always look the same every time I play it. All games could benefit from this because right now after you have installed a game it's stuck with the same looks, the same towns, the same weather conditions, the same people walking the same paths, etc which is bland unless they patch the game everyday which would be a bad user experience and not to mention tedious/expensive. Instead use the cloud machines to do it dynamically. That's a latency tolerant idea that all games could benefit from.

Or maybe there is a way to incorporate other peoples gameplay to enhance mine. So take data from other peoples games like perhaps missions then have done, dramatic landscape changes that they made, or crazy plays they made in sports games send all that data to the cloud machines and let them sort out which would be cool to incorporate with other peoples games, package it all up and send it all out as needed. That could be cool especially for sports games because you could use the things human players do in a sports game and turn them into ai into my game. Think about the biggest complain of sports games, it's the ai which becomes drab and predictable after a while. You can use the cloud servers to keep the ai fresh because you can farm human ai into cpu ai, so the ai would never become predictable as it's now always changing on a daily basis. That's also latency tolerant and would let other peoples gameplay help randomize mine automatically.

Or perhaps use the servers to pre-compute major world changes. If you script pre-computed stuff then it can look cool but will always look the same which is boring, or if you rely only on the host console then it can be dynamic but you can only do so much computationally speaking so it will look limited. Maybe you can combine both? So if there's 100 buildings in the level you are on then the cloud servers can pre-compute new ways for each of these buildings to be destroyed, damaged or decayed, maybe refreshing that data every few days. Let it do the heavy computing then package it all up into a script and send it out to peoples games as they play. On the users end it will still be playing back a script so it will be computationally light since the cloud servers did all the heavy lifting ahead of time, but it will look unique every time they play and would look more elaborate than the console alone could computationally handle. This would also be latency tolerant.

Anyways none of those are oh wow ideas though that will revolutionize things, I have no idea what those killer ideas will be anymore than I could have predicted Tetris, Super Mario Brothers, or GTA3. That's where we have to wait and see what happens and who will have that boom pow idea that makes cloud the next big thing.


The question I asked was why would a developer limit its audience doublefold by making it mandatory in its game?

Just to add to what TrungGap said, we don't know if they would be limiting themselves doublefold either. We don't have the data to know what percentage of console users don't have any online access. We also don't know how many users they would gain by going this route as well. Take my case, a console like the ps4 is of zero interest to me because it's just a console, I don't need one anymore than I need an mp3 player. I hadn't planned on getting an xb1 either for the same reason except that unique things like standard Kinect, vm's, and standard cloud supported games could make me a return customer because they are something new. So while they lose a customer like you, they gain a customer like me. So it's not cut and dry that they are losing 50% of their users, to me that number seems extremely high. We also don't know the value applied to each customer. So for example maybe online customers spend more money hence are a more desirable target compared to customers that are not online. If that's true then from a business perspective it can be worth losing 2 not online customers to get 1 online customer.
 
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>_< cloud gaming and computing are *already* in use today/yesterday. It is mission critical.

As for using server power for additional game specific use, the MMOs and F2P games have started the revolution. The problem is people's perception with their biz model.

Both MS and Sony will have their own visions in cloud gaming. MS seems to do it bottom up (invest in infrastructure first). Sony seems to do it top down (invest in Gaikai and MMO/F2P services first). They will likely meet somewhere in the middle.

If you start from business end, you can nail down the user acceptance and sustainability issues first. If you start from technology end, you invest heavy in the tech platform first and then see what sticks. But you're less bound by reality and business challenges up front.

I suspect MS may be more interested in a few ginormous gaming communities/worlds whereas Sony may be more keen in hundreds and thousands of worlds.
 
Yes that's bits.

1.5 Mbps is 192KB/s theoretical max.

100Mbps (which is pretty top tier. I have for 100Mbps/20Mbps in Taiwan, for about ~1500NT=~50USD/month), or 10M/100M Ethernet is around 12.5MB/s.

Most people usually have 100M Ethernet at home. The bright ones know that upgrading your home LAN to Gigabit is priceless. :smile:

The MS guys said it's not for latency sensitive jobs. Something like GT5/Forza replay mode streaming may be possible ?
 
...
Or maybe there is a way to incorporate other peoples gameplay to enhance mine. So take data from other peoples games like perhaps missions then have done, dramatic landscape changes that they made, or crazy plays they made in sports games send all that data to the cloud machines and let them sort out which would be cool to incorporate with other peoples games, package it all up and send it all out as needed. That could be cool especially for sports games because you could use the things human players do in a sports game and turn them into ai into my game. Think about the biggest complain of sports games, it's the ai which becomes drab and predictable after a while. You can use the cloud servers to keep the ai fresh because you can farm human ai into cpu ai, so the ai would never become predictable as it's now always changing on a daily basis. That's also latency tolerant and would let other peoples gameplay help randomize mine automatically.

Machine learning for computer AI would be pretty neat. Upload game information to the cloud, let the cloud process it and then roll out AI tweaks automatically. Anything to fix the AI in FIFA, NHL :)

Many sports games have tried adaptive AIs, where the AI can learn locally. Put it in the cloud, with better learning algorithms.
 
Just to add to what TrungGap said, we don't know if they would be limiting themselves doublefold either. We don't have the data to know what percentage of console users don't have any online access.

On MS's end, actually we do have some idea. They told Polygon recently that in the US, more than 90% of 360 owners have broadband. In the UK, just shy of 90%. In Mexico, more than 70%.
 
On MS's end, actually we do have some idea. They told Polygon recently that in the US, more than 90% of 360 owners have broadband. In the UK, just shy of 90%. In Mexico, more than 70%.

yeah, probably anywhere you'd want to sell a console it isn't really a problem. good example, china.

and further figure the market that actually wants to buy a console. if broadband pen in mexico is 70%, it's probably 99% among people who are interested in buying a $500 xbox one.
 
*Shrug*

May be intermediate data, like 3D map data for the client to render into a race track ?
Or captured data, simulated data and weather data for this morning's live races/matches;
Or just replay video for the race that just ended

It may not be unlike user mods, MMO's dynamic game world data, or crowd sourced data.
There are many good and bad examples.
 
Well that's like asking me what I think the next blockbuster movie would be, who will it star and what will it be about. If I could answer you then I'd be a billionaire :) The quick answer is I don't really know. I could throw ideas out there I guess.

Maybe use cloud to make games more variable without having to patch the game every single time you play. So use those servers to generate either manually or procedurally new looks for the graphics, new paths for ai people, new missions, or whatever just so that the game doesn't always look the same every time I play it. All games could benefit from this because right now after you have installed a game it's stuck with the same looks, the same towns, the same weather conditions, the same people walking the same paths, etc which is bland unless they patch the game everyday which would be a bad user experience and not to mention tedious/expensive. Instead use the cloud machines to do it dynamically. That's a latency tolerant idea that all games could benefit from.

Or maybe there is a way to incorporate other peoples gameplay to enhance mine. So take data from other peoples games like perhaps missions then have done, dramatic landscape changes that they made, or crazy plays they made in sports games send all that data to the cloud machines and let them sort out which would be cool to incorporate with other peoples games, package it all up and send it all out as needed. That could be cool especially for sports games because you could use the things human players do in a sports game and turn them into ai into my game. Think about the biggest complain of sports games, it's the ai which becomes drab and predictable after a while. You can use the cloud servers to keep the ai fresh because you can farm human ai into cpu ai, so the ai would never become predictable as it's now always changing on a daily basis. That's also latency tolerant and would let other peoples gameplay help randomize mine automatically.

Or perhaps use the servers to pre-compute major world changes. If you script pre-computed stuff then it can look cool but will always look the same which is boring, or if you rely only on the host console then it can be dynamic but you can only do so much computationally speaking so it will look limited. Maybe you can combine both? So if there's 100 buildings in the level you are on then the cloud servers can pre-compute new ways for each of these buildings to be destroyed, damaged or decayed, maybe refreshing that data every few days. Let it do the heavy computing then package it all up into a script and send it out to peoples games as they play. On the users end it will still be playing back a script so it will be computationally light since the cloud servers did all the heavy lifting ahead of time, but it will look unique every time they play and would look more elaborate than the console alone could computationally handle. This would also be latency tolerant.

Anyways none of those are oh wow ideas though that will revolutionize things, I have no idea what those killer ideas will be anymore than I could have predicted Tetris, Super Mario Brothers, or GTA3. That's where we have to wait and see what happens and who will have that boom pow idea that makes cloud the next big thing.




Just to add to what TrungGap said, we don't know if they would be limiting themselves doublefold either. We don't have the data to know what percentage of console users don't have any online access. We also don't know how many users they would gain by going this route as well. Take my case, a console like the ps4 is of zero interest to me because it's just a console, I don't need one anymore than I need an mp3 player. I hadn't planned on getting an xb1 either for the same reason except that unique things like standard Kinect, vm's, and standard cloud supported games could make me a return customer because they are something new. So while they lose a customer like you, they gain a customer like me. So it's not cut and dry that they are losing 50% of their users, to me that number seems extremely high. We also don't know the value applied to each customer. So for example maybe online customers spend more money hence are a more desirable target compared to customers that are not online. If that's true then from a business perspective it can be worth losing 2 not online customers to get 1 online customer.

Those ideas are cool ! Also,placement of in-game items in accordance with what others have done in their games(this could get very interesting) and sending out the same weather conditions to all those who are playing at that same time ! Also, imagina a GTA world. If max ppl are playing races today , then the game will open up more racing missions for that day. Or better still, they can have a "robbery day", if u fire up your game that day, the game world will feature robbery missions everywhere to tackle with your friends. The robberies that have been commited can then be removed one by one from the game till all are done by players worldwide :smile: ! Game events while sitting at home !

I am not against Cloud or something, I am waitng for tech to crazy, just like all at B3D. we even had such an ideas two years back for a game we planned to make. It was to be a small 2D iPad game where everyone's play data affected the gameworld map and those changes were then sent to all ipads and accordigly missions that pop up around th egame world change. :smile:

As for the customers, I read somewhere at a time that out of the 75 million Xbox 360s sold, only 48 million made online accounts. Add to that ppl making multiple accounts, and yes, they are losing quite a lot of customers. Also, out of those who are online, a lot do not have the required 1.5 mbps dedicated connection, so cut out another chunk.

But I get what you are saying. if they can get this into every home in the US/Europe as a novelty/luxury/party device,instead of just to gamers, then the numbers can add up again. but that would be for the consoles;) , not for game sales ! How many of them would buy TitanFall? Not the moms and dads and kinect kids, but gamers. Gamers who have the requuired net speed to access the cloud.
So, even if the console sells like hot cakes as a home/family/entertainment device, the game devs are the ones who get a smaller audience due to the limitations. Look at Wii. Wii sold like hot cakes but not to enough "gamers' for the devs to sell their games ! So, with that kindof demographic, MS wins in sales, but if additional limitations exist, it affects only the sales for game devs. They get the stick ! The carrot is still missing !
 
Forza 5 is going to use cloud similarly , if not exactly as joker454 suggested.

I'm not sure how this is something breakthrough. It's basically a ghost that will update with 'tendencies'.

It's being hosted on servers. A neat thing, but nothing groundbreaking. And again, not a real time thing or anything to do with rendering.
 
Forza 5 is going to use cloud similarly , if not exactly as joker454 suggested.

It's so long ago I can't find it in the thread now (if it was even in this thread), but I gave several practical applications as well, described Gran Turismo's B-Spec features, which currently require the console to be on and logged into the game, as a good example of something that would benefit if that part of the game ran in the cloud instead. I could imagine several such online features benefitting from cloud features like Microsoft has suggested, just as I mentioned before that I think there could be a big advantage having a fixed per-Live user cloud computation and memory budget, as that makes life a lot less complicated, technically but probably even more so economically, for developers and publishers of online enabled titles.

I gladly leave all credit to joker, except that some people seem to insist that some of us here disagree with joker just for the sake of it, or because we are fanboys of a certain platform. So I want to point out that in this case, IAGREEDWITHJOKER454 (hopefully searchable in the future).

And hopefully that's enough person/aliance based discussion (probably not). I really would prefer people just sticking to arguments. ;)
 
Sorry I just named joker454 because it was the most recent post we were discussing.

No really I didn't mean to ignore or offend anyone.
I am really sorry if it seemed that way.
 
Sorry I just named joker454 because it was the most recent post we were discussing.

No really I didn't mean to ignore or offend anyone.
I am really sorry if it seemed that way.

No worries! The people who this was targeted at know who they are. ;)
 
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