I''m Off To Gdc:09!

[Phawx]

For anyone who didn't see the demo of OnLive. It's weaknesses are that you can't play multiplayer games across different servers.

So LA to NY introduces way to much lag to be playable. Also while their encoding scheme only introduces a 1ms transfer, every frame is a key frame so bandwidth is constant. Not so much a problem for DSL or Fiber users but anyone that uses cable and connects to nodes to share bandwidth will have problems during peak times. Also, 20 person Lan Parties would saturate the connection at SD resolutions.

It's benefits are really cool though. Seamlessly join a friends game. Watch a game as your friend plays it. Record instantly. Play between OnLive console, PC or Mac multiplayer wise.



OnLive will have to price this very right for it to succeed. It won't replace gaming. Not yet at least.

 

[(naw)mcx]

For anyone who didn't see the demo of OnLive. It's weaknesses are that you can't play multiplayer games across different servers.

So LA to NY introduces way to much lag to be playable. Also while their encoding scheme only introduces a 1ms transfer, every frame is a key frame so bandwidth is constant. Not so much a problem for DSL or Fiber users but anyone that uses cable and connects to nodes to share bandwidth will have problems during peak times. Also, 20 person Lan Parties would saturate the connection at SD resolutions.

It's benefits are really cool though. Seamlessly join a friends game. Watch a game as your friend plays it. Record instantly. Play between OnLive console, PC or Mac multiplayer wise.

OnLive will have to price this very right for it to succeed. It won't replace gaming. Not yet at least.


We miss out on the Mods and free games. Britain has awful broadband, at least around here, so it won't work, I was pulling my hair out trying to buffer a video of that god damn thing.

This can't succeed. Not to mention the price for the guys must be insane. How the hell are they running these games, one server for each gamer?

 

[Phawx]

Well they use their own algorithms to transcode the video. So don't think of it like current streaming video. They did demo the service with two seperate people playing and the server was located 50 miles away.

This will not replace PC or console gaming in the slightest. Not yet anyway. There are still many many hurdles that have to happen. It needs to be priced very right for people to even bother using it. Also the highest resolution they support right now is 720p. That's basically the second lowest setting on Crysis.

This service is targeted at hardcore gamers. More towards people that would like to play every now and again but don't want to pay for expensive hardware.

I really see them charging per hour.

 

[Game_over]

They had a booth and I watched someone playing it today. The interface is the most badass thing I've seen in a while . It looked like it was hooked to a macbook.

I just left the Game Developers Choice Awards which was hosted by Tim from Double Fine. Hideo Kojima one the Lifetime Achievement Award and he spoke his speech in pretty clear English.

Off to more Parties, more soon. andora1: :lol:

 

[nightwheel]

When is bob going to show off his game?

 

[Game_over]

I just left the Hideo Kojima keynote had lunch and going to some talks. If I run into Kyle again I'll ask him about World of goo. later

 

[PoisonedV]

Installing the new Wii update.

I have the homebrew channel, don't you wish you could be hardcore like me?


hows that related to gdc
also goddamn that 'i wish i had time to read gaming blogs' sentiment i stated earlier is even deeper now

 

[Game_over]

Final update

GDC this year was pretty good, Although this may not be everybodies favorite one...

Some Highlights

-Everything Indie-
The IGF became even bigger this year, and it shows in the ridiculous amounts of polished games on display and all ready to play at the expo floor.

-The Parties-
This year, you actually had to network to get into any of the parties as there was no "Suite Night" this year, however Sony and Microsoft was surprisingly easier to get into, you just needed to know someone from Sony (everyone is actually extremely nice); ask one of the girls from the Microsoft booth for an invite, and you are in. Sony's was pretty good, saw some Insomniac guys chatting it up outside and ran into my buddy from Playstation Home (He joined the team after working on XNA for Microsoft, so it's not his fault Home is still trying to find it's way). However my favorite party was the two that Flashbang studies thrown, one at the Cellar, and the other at the W. I met the guys from Guerrilla Games (Killzone 2) at the Dutch party at the Gold Club we chat about stuff h34r: . I Totally didn't know that one of my CA friends is a Sr Programmer at Blizzard, me and some others got to geek out about all things WoW for like three and a half hours. You would be surprised at how much of some of the elements you think is scripted or set overtime are just completely random and server independent.

-Hideo Kojima-
His keynote was awesome, he gave a pretty personal talk at the Apple store which was down the street from where I was staying. He extremely self aware and very friendly. He knew people weren't too thrilled with the cutscene:gameplay ratio presented in MGS4 and made jokes about them in his keynote.

-The state of the people-
This year pretty much served as the aftermath of all the massive layoffs that happen in the game industry. If you picked almost anybody who was in attendance, the conversation would go something like this:

You: Wow you worked on that game I loved that
Guy: Yeah that was my last project...I got layed off from <x_company> and am spending this GDC looking for work.
You: Aw Man that sucks, I love what you brought to the game, everyone is feeling the recession impact.
Guy: Yep it sucks I've been there for <X> number of years, I got like 6 months of severance so it's not too bad at all.

Even though that was the general conversation, everybody I talked was actually upbeat about it and just saw it as a much needed reboot from the normal way of doing things.


Any unanswered question that thought was going to be announced at GDC will happen at E3, the show is back in full effect and even though there was a list of companies that said the weren't going to show up probably will.


Lots of stuff went down, and I had a great time.

 

[PoisonedV]

Question, what do you do in the industry?

 

[Game_over]

I would tell ya....but then I'd have to kill ya h34r: . lets just say I got in when I couldn't even go to E3.

 

[PoisonedV]

I would tell ya....but then I'd have to kill ya h34r: . lets just say I got in when I couldn't even go to E3.

Yeah, but e3's more for press and less for developers right?