Gently Down the Stream: Advances in the Digital Distribution of Video Games

The landscape of video game distribution is changing. Despite its relative youth, the video game industry has known quite a few different distribution methods already – tapes, floppy discs, CDs, DVDs and now direct downloading and streaming services.

In recent years direct download gaming has been on the rise. Nowadays, whole games can be downloaded legally without ever seeing a DVD and a thriving market in DLC – downloadable content – exists based on the concept that gamers are willing to pay extra money to add additional content to the games they already own. Small indie gaming outfits as well as major design studios and publishers are benefiting from this shift in distribution. Take for example Good Old Games, a platform that is solely dedicated to the distribution of older games that are currently out of print or otherwise hard to come by. Also, think of the ongoing success of Minecraft, that ridiculously popular indie game that continues to make ludicrous amounts of money for its one man development team (For an interesting analysis of why Minecraft is doing so well click here).

One of the big direct download players is Valve's Steam platform. Steam is a stand-alone platform that offers a direct download store, automatic updating and patching and full access to your library of purchased games with the option to make offline backups. Overall, Steam provides a clean, integrated gaming solution, but as with all platforms of this nature it also breeds dependency. For example, what happens to purchased games when Valve goes bankrupt and Steam is taken offline permanently? (Valve has promised that playable stand alone downloads will be made available in case this ever happens). Also, Steam still maintains staggered international release dates and various product and pricing regions, all of which are minor irritations and can be hard to justify given that all their products are fully digital. Proprietary platforms like Steam allow easy integration of DRM – digital rights management – solutions. The term DRM is often discussed negatively due to specific implementations that impose varying and sometimes baffling limits on the usability of the purchased game. For example, think of the Spore activation backlash or the reactions to Ubisoft's 'always online' authentication scheme. The main problem with these DRM implementations is that the restrictions imposed by the software are in no way counterbalanced with additional added value. This is a pitfall Steam has so far managed to avoid. (Overall, Valve has generated so much good will that they could probably get away with charging 9,99€ for an in-game hat that's purely cosmetic. Oh, wait...)

With direct download services now firmly entrenched in the video gaming landscape, the next generation of such platforms is starting to arrive. Services such as OnLive and Gaikai are designed to be browser integrated, streaming platforms. Both services aim to make gaming more accessible and remove hardware limitations. By actually running the game on the server end, all the hardware a player needs at home is a machine that can handle a compressed video stream similar to that of, say, YouTube. While this may sound like the holy grail of gaming - never worry about hardware upgrades ever again! - it further emphasizes the questions already raised by direct download services. What happens when the service goes down, or worse bankrupt? And what about the payment plan? OnLive was planning on using a monthly subscription model but has announced that these plans have been dropped in favour of pay-per-game model. The question remains however: what are you actually buying? Are you buying the game itself or are you merely purchasing temporary access to the game?

Personally, I’m very curious as to how these services actually work. OnLive is currently not available in Europe and Gaikai is yet to launch, so I haven’t been able to try either. In my opinion, these services will only survive if they can provide an extended gaming catalogue, clear added value and ease-of-use and a reasonable pricing scheme. Ignoring the network latency, video compression and availability issues for a moment, I’m particularly interested in the chosen approaches to in-game (in-stream?) advertising and the integration of these platforms into existing websites. Gaikai’s concept of having a clickable game ad that allows you to immediately try out a game demo followed by the option to actually purchase the game, all without leaving your browser, seems highly conducive to impulse buying and is worth further exploration.

The US-only launch of Onlive has been - as far as I can tell - a relatively quiet one. If succesful as a platform, its existence will undoubtedly further stimulate the spread of casual gaming into the mainstream (think of the mind boggling success of FarmVille). Though Onlive's recent change in pricing scheme may be an indication of their success thus far, I'd love to see some real usage figures. With the launch date of Gaikai fast approaching, it'll be interesting to see what the future holds for both platforms. Will the stream swell into a tsunami of eager gamers, a churning maelstrom of DRM unrest or will it just wither away until it's nothing more than a small trickle? Due to the variety of issues involved here - open versus proprietary platfoms, digital ownership, piracy, DRM, commercialization, Web integration - the future of streaming gaming platforms could remain an interesting topic for years to come. OnLive, Gaikai, I’ve got my eye on you.

That Twitter Thing That You Do

So, Twitter. It seems to be all the rage these days. Blog posts about it seem to be popping up everywhere. Then again, a tool that simultaneously fuels revolutions and allows me to share with the world the mundanity of the wonderful sandwich I’ve just eaten is bound to be divisive. Could there be more to it, perhaps?

Twitter’s been around since 2006 but it’s only really taken off during the last two years or so. This rise in popularity has sparked all kinds of new ideas about what this service actually is and how it can be used. Is it a tool that allows people to organize collective action? Is it a real-time, distributed, grass roots news ticker? How about Twitter as zeitgeist tracker and global mood ring? Or perhaps it’s a marketeers ultimate direct marketing tool? It seems to be all of these and more. Researchers such as danah boyd and Akshay Java et al. have already written extensively about how people manifest themselves on Twitter and why they seem to like it so much (boyd, 2010) (Java, 2007). It seems the final word on Twitter has yet to be spoken.

Take for example Nicholas Carr’s recent book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. In it, Carr talks about how many of the modern Web’s features - such as short form text services like Twitter - are turning all of us into constantly distracted drones with minimal attention spans and diminished reading comprehension. As negative as that sounds, it is probably safe to say that platforms such as Twitter are changing the way people communicate and divide their attention. Perhaps it’s just a sign of the times that people seem to be flocking towards bite sized information chunks that can be consumed with minimal effort? This line of reasoning seems to match Manovich’s views on the database as a new symbolic form (Manovich, 1998). According to Manovich, the linear mindset that rose as a result of the spread of printing and cinema technology is giving way to a non-linear mindset focussed on separate elements. Of course, each individual tweet is still a linear block of text, but if you look at an entire feed they’re clearly all little separate elements that don’t necessarily have to be read in any particular order.

If Twitter really is just another outing of a broader shift in the human mindset, than more examples of a similar nature should be out there, right? And what about cultural expression using Twitter itself? Though short form content isn’t entirely new – think of the haiku – there’s a fair bit of it to be found on the Web. Take for example One Sentence. This site is dedicated to posting short one sentence stories submitted by readers/writers. The size limit not only provides bite sized content, but it also stimulates creativity. There’s also the hilarious Texts From Last Night. A website completely dedicated to posting cellphone text messages full of drunken midnight ramblings and commentary on equally drunk sexual escapades. More examples of similar short form content can be found at FMyLife and Dear Old Love. Another site that I find fairly entertaining is Translation Party. This website uses the inaccuracy of Google Translate’s algorithms for English to Japanse translations and vice-versa. The goals is to enter an English sentence and hit the button. The site will then proceed to query Google Translate and keep translating your sentence from English to Japanse and back, heavily mutilating the sentence in the process. The back and forth translating often results in an equilibrium that looks very little like the original sentence.

No shortage of short form content on the Web it seems, but what about creative usage of Twitter itself? I’ve managed to find only a couple of examples. There’s this story as reported by Techcrunch about somebody reenacting the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off using Twitter and Forsquare. While thinking about what to write for this post I was toying with the idea on how to implement an old fashioned text adventure game on Twitter. It seems someone is already doing this, however. User Txtadventure is running a game where followers post actions and the account holder replies with a description of how the game responds. (The users involved are probably just making everything up as they go along, but it might be interesting to have a bot come up with the respones. Also, I’m hoping people use old school commands such as: ‘open door’, ‘look at statue’, 'use rubber chicken on ceiling fan’)

All in all, it seems people are making strides towards using Twitter as a platform for cultural expression. Though I’ve only been able to find a few things, I’m sure there’s avid Twitterers (Twits?) out there who know a lot more. If any of you know any good examples, please share them in the comments.

To conclude, I’d like to pose a question. What are your thoughts on Twitter and its effects on the human mind? Is it making us less focussed and more easily distracted? Does it make us better multi-taskers in every day life? Is it making us dumber or just different?


References
Carr, Nicholas. ‘The Shallows - What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains’. W.W. Norton & Company. 2007

Marwick, Alice and boyd, d. "I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagined Audience." (Forthcoming) New Media and Society. [Draft PDF]

Java et al. ‘Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities’. Procedings of the Joint 9th WEBKDD and 1st SNA-KDD Workshop 2007. University of Maryland, Baltimore County. 2007.

Manovich, Lev. ‘Database as a Symbolic Form’. 1998

The Future is... When Exactly?

Computing interfaces have come a long way over the years. I think we can all agree that the mouse and keyboard of our current day pc’s is highly preferable to the tape spools and cable jacks of the WOII era beasts like the Colossus. With the fairly recent integration of practical touchscreen interfaces into devices such as the iPhone, a long dreamed of vision of advanced haptic interfaces seemed one step closer to reality.



With this in mind, I’d like to direct your attention to the following video created by The Astonishing Tribe. I came across this clip recently and it got me thinking. Is all this really going to happen? There is little doubt in my mind that the envisioned interfaces will be technologically possible in the future - if not in 2014, then some time in the next few decades. If anything, mankind has proven to be ridiculously resourceful when presented with a practical challenge.


Technological feasibility and practical applicability are not the same thing however. Watching videos like this one or hearing talk along similar lines often seem like displays of unfettered optimism as to what the future will bring. Though I’m all for optimism, it begs the question whether or not all this is really going to happen. Is it really practical to have a display built into your bathroom mirror where it’ll be prone to fogging up completely? What about mirror displays in general? The idea seems to detract from what mirrors are actually for, seeing your reflection. Also, functions like transferring files by literally shunting an icon onto someone else’s device seem gimmicky and clunky, especially for a handheld mobile device that is supposed to be usable independent of location. And finally, the see through display desktop screens just seem impractical, fairly distracting and a NSFW nightmare waiting to happen.

Now, I don’t want to get too negative. Despite some impracticality, all this technological optimism can serve as inspiration for actual innovations. In a lot of ways videos like the one embedded here remind me of that particular brand of optimism that was so prevalent in the USA in the 1950s and 60s. Of course, some did advocate caution and a certain level of social responsibility towards the consequences of technological developments. Take for example Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics. Wiener was acutely aware of the potential social consequences of cybernetic technology and the pragmatic nature of the US military with regard to its appropriation of technology in order to create ever deadlier weapons. With the after-glow of the nuclear detonations over Japan still radiating on the western horizon, the overall zeitgeist was possessed by a grand sense of technological optimism. Mankind could master any challenge that came on its path. It is this attitude that eventually led to mankind’s first steps on the moon (of course, the ‘friendly competition’ with Sovjet Russia also played a major role in this and there are still conspiracy nuts out there that deny the whole thing happend). This same technological optimism is also present in cartoons like The Jetsons and the video embedded below, showing the future of the USA’s highway system.



Though the overall visions of these two examples have proven to be overly optimistic, elements of them have proven viable. More importantly, they are both clearly products of their time. The Jetsons are just a depiction of the classic, nuclear family transplanted into a world full of pervasive technology – kind of the chronological opposite to The Flintstones. The Magic Highway USA video is inspired by that same technological optimism crossbred with the importance of the automobile to the suburban family and ideas of individual freedom. Another example I’m dying to bring up is the one thing I hope little boys everywhere still dream about while they’re fumbling with their Lego’s or playing around in a sandbox (showing my age here, aren’t I?). I’m talking about the jetpack. In some ways, the jetpack is the most amazing concept ever. It allows personal flight in a small package, it grants more individual freedom than a Harley ever could, it goes really fast and it looks awesome. Why doesn’t everyone have at least one of these? Well, because jetpacks are also dangerous, impractical and a technology that doesn’t really solve any particular problem. An idea that sounds good in theory can prove to be difficult to build, unable to meet expectations or just plain dangerous. More importantly, the jetpack was also clearly a product of its time. The first jetpack concepts arose in 1920s science fiction and actual attempts to build them were made in Germany during WOII. At the time, Germany led the way in the development of rocket technology and as always, the war effort required advances in applied creativity and ingenuity. Later, the idea gained in popularity during the 1960s, undoubtedly as a result of the space-race between the USA and the Sovjet Union. Regardless, strapping a rocket engine to the back of a human being has proven to be a bad idea in general. A boy can still dream, though.

Of course, not all predictions end up stranded along the wayside of time’s tireless advance. Some have proven to be downright prophetic. Take for example D.W. Griffith’s statements made in 1923:

“Motion picture libraries will be as common as private libraries - more so. (...) For the world will have become picture trained so that words are not as important as they are now.” (link)

Griffith is often considered to be the finest director of the early American movie industry. His focus on moving images was clearly inspired by his own profession but also by the general buzz that still surrounded cinematic technology at the time. Despite Griffith’s partiality to the topic, he wasn’t wrong.

Or how about Neil Ardley’s 1981 writings on the home of tomorrow:

“The computer will be able to take the images you record and assemble and treat them in all kinds of ways to produce a whole range of special effects of your very own. And you will also be able to use the computer to produce unusual moving designs and patterns, rather like making video cartoons or electronic paintings that move. Then you can put your video shows together with your own electronic music, and create the most stunning experiences -- perhaps even a totally new art form of the future!” (link)

Ardley was a couple years ahead of Apple’s introduction of the revolutionary Macintosh personal computer in 1984. I’m not saying that Ardley directly inspired Apple. What I’m saying is that idea of the computer as a user friendly media machine clearly resonated with the computer science community of the time and that it was merely a matter of time before someone attempted to combine a similar vision with the available technologies.

Right, where am I going with all this? Well, for one thing, it seems that technological optimism is a thing of all ages. Whether we’re talking about cinema technology in the 1920s, rocket technology in the 1960s or touch screen interface technology in the 2010s, the phenomenon is basically the same. Also, as Cory Doctorow implies in his essay Radical Presentism, a prediction says more about the time in which it was made than it actually does about the future. Seen in this light, the interface predictions made by The Astonishing Tribe gain an entirely new dimension. Suddenly they’re an attempt to come to terms with a society that’s becoming increasingly saturated with pervasive information technology. Browsing a handheld device seconds after waking up and brushing your teeth in front of a mirror-screen support this idea. The needs to share information and to carry your information around with you are seemingly represented by the transparent screens and the handheld devices that can share information at the flip of a wrist. I guess my earlier attempt at critiquing the visions presented in the video as improbable and unrealistic is beside the point. The video is not so much about what the future might look like, as it is about what technological issues occupy today’s society.

Special thanks to The Astonishing Tribe, Disney and Paleo-Future for the videos and quotes.


References
Doctorow, Cory. 'Radical Presentism'. Tin House Blog. 6 October 2009. Retrieved on: 5 October 2010. http://tinhousebooks.com/blog/?p=410

Wiener, Norbert. 'Men, Machines, and the World About'. In: Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Nick Montfort, ed. New Media Reader. Cambridge & London: MIT Press, 2003: p. 65-72