I'd rather play a game, most of the time. And similarly, when I've had enough of the sand, sun, and water for the day, why not wind down with an hour or so playing something fun? If I'm on vacation, I might even be with other people I don't see all that often otherwise, and get to play some multiplayer games. (Board games on family vacations work for this too.)
But I don't disagree with anything in the thread about this product really searching for a user. Nearly 100% of my gaming is on PC. If I had a gaming laptop, why wouldn't I just bring that along wherever I go? Not a big deal. And consoles + one controller aren't really that much more space either. There's also the Switch, and even the GPD Win if you want PC games in a very mobile form factor.
I've lately started bringing my Steam Link (which I got for $2.50) and a controller with me when I travel, since Valve opened it up to support remote play. Sometimes I use it, sometimes I don't. It works better than I expected though. When I can access my full PC library remotely with no monthly subscription and the base hardware was only $2.50 (remote play also works with your phone, if it's powerful enough, so it can cost literally nothing), why would I ever pay Google money. Stadia is useless to me.
I'm someone who lives abroad and doesn't like hunkering down with any equipment, not even a bookcase. I don't like staying in one apartment for a long time. The only cooking appliance I own is a single cast iron skillet. Something like Stadia interests me if it can deliver.
Also, even when you're at the beach all day every day, you still come back to a place to sleep where you might enjoy some gaming or Netflix. And if you are living there for weeks, you'll find that you don't need to visit the beach every single day to enjoy your time there. It's nice to merely do something you love in a place you love. :)
I'm generally happy with the few games I have on my Macbook Pro. But even on a $2000 two-year-old machine, I have to play almost everything at minimal gfx settings and I have limited SSD space. Even a game like Civilization 5 becomes a stuttering mess. I don't see the need to dismiss Stadia without trying it.
But that's the rub innit? The only people who are going to be really interested in this product are the hypermobile, and I don't know about your experience with mobile internet, but my LTE can barely keep a YouTube video in decent quality going. With remote gaming, you're now adding controller input to that datastream, outbound, and then rendering those actions and transmitting back to the device to enable anything remotely approaching a good gaming experience seems like science fiction.
The people who will be most interested in this are those without a "home" setup, and the less "home" you have, the more appealing, but also seems like it would in turn be the most frustrating experience to try and use. Which is sort of what this piece is getting at:
- Gamers don't want it, because we already have our libraries and such tuned to existing platforms and devices
- Casual gamers may want it, but they're already spoiled for choice in a massive mobile market, where games just happen on their already very powerful phones
This puts Stadia in an awkward position of in theory being the worst of both worlds: the limitations of console, with the network requirements only high tier residential internet can deliver, over devices with limited network capability.
You'd be surprised how better internet can be outside of USA. My LTE can probably keep up four 4K streams going.
only problem is it only works in north america and I'm in southeast asia right now.
Just because you can't see how a trap will be sprung, doesn't mean the trap doesn't exist. This will bite people in the ass a year or two down the road. Then everyone will cry, "How could this happen? We need legislation to protect us!" No, you just need to be quit being a baby and start being an adult and understand that minor comfort and convenience can come at a heavy cost.
Ps now (I have a ps4), 10 bucks a month to play how many different games when the hell ever I want. It totally works out for me because I normally don't care about most games after 10 hours of gameplay. I don't want to buy a game for $60 bucks and not actually have it. Generally, I don't buy a game until it's down to like $30, because I don't have to play anything immediately. At 32, I'm over the whole "ER MY GOD, I have to play this game right meow!"
Right there. For lots and lots of people, gaming is in the same class of activity as reading a book or watching a movie.
It genuinely feels really weird for me to write that, it feels so obvious.
Go out and get some sun.
Always having to rely on video games and the internet is a problem. You seriously can't mature through being alone in your own thoughts? People gladly, even smugly, say I'm a bad guy because on the weekends I treat myself to a cigar. Yea, I know it's bad and I don't push that habit off as some glorious thing to be protected. I have my vices. But I don't let my vice control me or become my identity. Everyone is on the kick the last 10 years like "video games define me". Y'all need to stop and go outside to hug a tree.
"No, child, I was honing my mind as one does a blade."
Someone might smugly say that indeed.
No one said anything about needing to play video games all the time.
If I had just quoted "or enjoy a movie" and left of the "read a book" part of what I quoted, would your "nutritious" argument still hold weight?
This isn't a defense of Stadia, mind you. Just that vacation can mean different things to different people. Video games already let me escape reality on demand, I don't need vacation for that. Vacation can just be me wanting a change of weather.
But... seriously though... I like video games too. But not that much. The whole escape reality, I get it. I enjoy it too. But, if you are escaping reality more often than you are in it... that's a problem.
I do spend quite a bit of time escaping from reality and I do agree it's a problem.
The greater SF Bay area suffers from a large amount of empty virtue signaling and shaming others into their morality while remaining apathetic to others plights. Work, while having the potential to be exhilarating, often descends into the myopic and uninspired. Passion projects I want to work on could potentially be wrenched from me by the company I work for via employment agreement which stifles creative desires outside of work. Friends and loved ones aren't available to me on-demand (and I respect that they have their own respective lives to live).
Meanwhile, there are virtual worlds that I can still explore. Mechanics I can break. People I can meet. Adventures I can have. And if I feel like slicing someone down as an seductive shade-lady on a magical battlefield I can do so with the comfort of knowing I'm not actually hurting anyone else in the process, ego notwithstanding. When life starts offering me these opportunities for near-free (or around $1500 for around 4000 hours of entertainment, I suppose) I'll take them gleefully. Until then, reality can stand to evolve a bit.
Anyways, there's more to life than San Fran and video games. To me, you're complaining about the smell when you live in a dumpster. San fran is the dumpster of humanity. I feel bad that you feel disconnected from humanity, because I know what that's like. Whether or not you want to believe me, I'm speaking from personal experience derived from the last 10 years, Cali sucks if you want to be a social, well rounded human being. I highly recommend changing your environment.
Oh, and the food is better in Florida too. Get a Cuban sub from the Tampa Bay area. Happy hour is always from 10am to 9am daily. Alligator tastes better than you think. Only eat Latin food in the small mom and pop places in the bad parts of town. Literally, the best ever and well worth the risk of getting shot in a gang related drive by. Seafood... you don't like seafood? You'll like Florida seafood.
Then there's the beach. I mean... do I need to get into why?
Am I going to get downvoted, sure. Florida man don't care.
mormons
You say you get it, but...
I like home. When I'm on vacation, I mostly staycation, because that's the time I'm not out seeing people and doing activities to perform "happy" and "fun".
> I'm not home so I can make much better money in a short timespan
I'm not sure business travel is the same for everyone, either...
I often take my personal laptop (as well as my corp laptop) on business travel, and if I were a gamer, I could totally see bringing a game system. It's not like my salary is higher when I'm traveling, so after the purpose-of-trip all-day meetings and catching up in the hotel on the normal work that still has to be done after that, I typically just want to veg for a couple hours before sleep.
If you need a comparison, the mobility of the Nintendo Switch is analogous, except needing an internet connection and rendering triple A games.
How do you think playing video games is different from those activities?
Other than your ability to relate to them.
How do you think playing video games is different from those activities?
We must address that first, as it's the core to this whole ..discussion.
> You are there to not-home
Some people take multi-month long vacations. To expect them to give up video games is a bit much.
Could I do that with my laptop? Maybe, but I'd rather carry just my work laptop (heavy XPS 15, has everything on it, but can't/shouldn't install games) or a personal ultraportable that might not be powerful enough
Fun fact: the Subway I had while vacationing in Reykjavik (where I brought my Xbox One) for 3 months was the best Subway I've ever had in my life. Sometimes having something familiar in a new location is just what you need to spice up your vacation. :)
Stop. Go outside. Hug a tree or something. You need to realize, I'm a capitalist republican. I'm telling people to hug a tree and I mean it. You people need to hug a tree. Go out, with a book and sit underneath a tree for half an hour and collect some of them vitamin Ds. Leave your phone inside because no, the world will not end if you are without a phone for more than ten minutes. Chill, the fuck, out.
I travel for work or for vacation. If for work, I'm there hitting "Spit money out for me" at an ATM. Not gaming. I'm not home so I can make much better money in a short timespan to enjoy home time more. End of days is visiting restaurants/bars and either socializing or schmoozing clients. If none of that, I read a book, do work on the laptop or enjoy a movie.
Vacation... I mean... seriously, I can game at home. I go somewhere to do NOT home stuff. Why would I travel somewhere and spend money to... play video games like I would at home? Even not vacation, I go to the beach on the weekend to... hear me out... walk on the sand, sun bathe and go in water.
These excuses for a subpar games as a service are pretty ridiculous. It's an obvious "We found a solution to a problem that doesn't exist". That and the controller looks so bottom barrel generic. It's like the knock-off to a knock-off of an Xbox controller until they realized it was for a ps3 instead and did a late night change to it.
Edit: I get it, everyone vacations differently. But playing video games while out on vacation is like bringing a Subway sandwich to a 3-star steakhouse restaurant. You are there to not-home. But I also don't get the japanese restaurants where they expect you to cook your own food. Mofo, if I'm going to cook, I'll cook at home. I go somewhere to pay a premium for food, it's so I don't have to cook it. I'm 32, stop making me feel like the old man yelling to stay off my lawn!