Cloud gaming is unlike any other form of gaming before it. A long time ago, in a place called The Eighties, if I were to go into an arcade and play Donkey Kong, and you were 100 miles away at the other end of the country playing the same title, our experience would be the same. And, this was true for decades that followed. Even today, if I buy a PS5 from my local Argos store, and somebody in America buys one from Walmart, our experience wouldn’t vary. But, things are changing – enter Cloud Gaming.
The Birth of The Varied Experience
Moments after playing a game on Stadia for the first time, I quickly ran to the streets, speaking in tongues, proclaiming to the world, “Cloud gaming is the future! The future is here!” And, I witnessed a select few others, just like me, preaching the arrival of cloud gaming across the Twitterverse. Soon, our joyous cries were challenged by non-believers. “It doesn’t work.” We clashed on the battlefield as they opposed the arrival of cloud gaming. They set out to convince people that the latency is too high; there are too many dropped frames; the picture quality is terrible; and so on.
How could this be? I had witnessed the cloud’s tremendous power with my own eyes. Perhaps these people were just out to get Stadia? It was, after all, the new kid on the block. Maybe they wanted to see it fail before it even got going? The battle raged on as the seasons changed, and three years rolled by. Then the day came: Stadia had fallen.
The Battle Was Over. The War Was Not
Following the collapse of Stadia (still believing in the power of cloud gaming), I ventured out in search of new services to revive my faith. Alas, I found long queues when entering a game. Multiple sign-in screens halted me. And, perhaps worst of all, I was haunted by latency, dropped frames and screen tearing. Could it be true? Could it be that cloud gaming is not all I thought it was cracked up to be?
But, all was not lost! Thanks to trials and premium memberships, I found my faith again. Cloud Gaming is the future. The Future is here. Well, sort of…
Back To Reality…
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, gaming has generally been a pretty consistent experience until the arrival of cloud gaming. Cloud gaming, however, has too many variables that affect the experience for it to be consistent. As we move from Console Wars to Cloud Gaming Wars, we seem to forget that.
The cloud gaming experience can be affected by your router (and its placement), where you are sitting, your internet service provider and even your house’s location. We all seem to be stuck in the old gaming mindset: if it works for me, it must work for everyone else. If it’s terrible for me, it must be awful for everyone else. But, this just isn’t so anymore!
We should all try our best to remember that cloud gaming is an incredibly personal experience. Let us walk off the battlefield with compassion. If you meet someone with a good experience in the cloud, be happy for them. If you meet someone who cloud gaming has not been kind to, commiserate with them and walk away. Don’t pick a fight! Heaven forbid, with one change of provider, or a house move, you could find yourself on the other side of the cloud gaming experience.
Where ever you choose to game, I wish you the best of fun. After all, keep gaming, gamers.
Images by pikisuperstar on Freepik
I hope to God you didn’t pay this man much, what a terribly written ‘article’