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How far away do you think we are from local multiplayer working remotely?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Zante, Feb 18, 2019.

  1. Zante

    Zante

    Joined:
    Mar 29, 2008
    Posts:
    429
    That title is purposefully nonsensical, let's break it down.

    I'm talking about a couch co-op game being able to stream pre-rendered video footage from the host to a player client remotely, while taking inputs for the 'player 2' entity remotely.

    This is incredibly bandwidth heavy and not an effective use of the technology available to us but there are multiple affordances:

    Advantages
    • Network programming becomes a non-issue
    • It is impossible to cheat/hack as, by virtue of the method, everything is 'authoritative'
    • Players with very low end hardware would be able to engage with the experience
    • Lowers development costs by thousands

    Disadvantages

    • Completely unconventional/asinine to some
    • Exponentially increasing resource cost per connected player (only suited to very limited number of players)
    • Limited to one camera/screen (or not, depending on which camera you end up streaming)
    • Latency issues as the baseline bandwidth requirements are incredbly heavy
    • Might breach rules for various platforms/services
    • If not implemented properly, could constitute a GDPR risk (streaming of non Unity windows)

    The technology is there and while this would work seamlessly over a LAN, the issue is getting it to work online. I haven't heard of a test case for this yet, outside of services like OnLive when it was around or GeForce NOW and even the SharePlay feature on PS4.

    Has anyone thought of it?

    I think it's only a matter of time before it becomes viable. The question is when?
     
    Last edited: Feb 18, 2019
  2. Arowx

    Arowx

    Joined:
    Nov 12, 2009
    Posts:
    8,194
    The technology is here but I think it's hardware cost issues, it takes a high end console/mobile device or PC to run a modern game at a good frame rate. So for every player you are looking at hardware in the region or a few hundred dollars at least.

    Now unless you can get the players to subscribe to the service at a level that pays for their hardware then it won't work. The subscriptions also have to pay for the game/content and bandwidth as well. So your looking at a $200-$400 annual subscription price or around $17-34 a month.

    On the other hand the traditional model is let the players pay for the hardware and provide a lower cost server based multiplayer service (lower bandwidth without streaming video) e.g. one server can run hundreds of players games.

    In addition there is the issue of scalability with a lower bandwidth high power client networked game it's cheaper to add new servers as demand goes up, whereas with a high power/high bandwidth server based system demand could surpass the scalability of the system.

    Mind you if you consider Netflix and Youtube as being business models with high bandwidth and possibly higher processing costs than your average web server/cloud based computing then maybe there is just a processing power price point where gaming as a web service will take off?

    I think Netflix have talked about making games and already have choose your own adventure movies.



    Maybe just like text based adventure games were some of the earliest computer games these styles of choose your own adventure movies will be the first steps in cloud based gaming at least until the technology gets cheap enough to have millions of on demand gaming consoles in the cloud running at the cost of movie services like Amazon/Netflix/Youtube.
     
    Last edited: Feb 19, 2019