…So I’ve spent a long time trying to make sense of this entire thing, I just wanted to Free-Ramble for a bit and see if I can get you guys’ input
So, first of all there’s Stadia, which apparently uses some kind of custom AMD chip - does this chip do realtime raytracing? If not, I doubt customers will go for this service, as opposed to others of which I’m sure there are many, I know of one - vortex.gg . Right, now, of course the question is: if you are a game maker, WHICH OF THESE SERVICES DO YOU MAKE A GAME FOR, AND HOW?? Stadia in particular should have been targeted at developing countries first, where client-side power is low, or so logic would have dictated - apparently Mr. Pichai has other ideas- WTF??! It doesn’t hit India till TWENTY-ONE!! Can anyone explain the rationale behind this??
So as I understand it, you’re not supposed to like, program any more - if you wanna make a game for Stadia at least, you use an engine - which engine does one use??? If I use (that is, I have to LEARN) an engine to make a game for Stadia, will I be able to use that same engine to later maybe make a game for a different service?? Otherwise, I’m thinking, it’s not worth the investment in time n effort - No One would like to tie themselves down to one service.
And of course, after all this, there could be yet more of these things to be launched tomorrow - enough to make a man tear their hair out! What will happen to the overall game dev scenario if that happens??
It won’t be a thing unless everyone get their internet wired through fiber, so people from developing countries are far from ready to use any kind of games streaming system, which IMO heavily limite the growth potential of such system.
Speaking as a guy who first got started with computers when they were the size of a breadbox … (which by the way wasquitea technical advance at the time) … I can only say that “you are a participant in an industry that will never, ever, let you feel that you have caught up.” It’s always a moving target. You never know what tomorrow will bring. You might well discover – as entrepreneurs before you actually did – that you spent $XX million on manufacturing “plastic game cartridges” that you’re now forced to pay someone else to cart out of your warehouse as so much trash and dump into a shredder in the vain hope of recycling the gold and the plastic. So it goes.
Certainly, “game development” will always rely on “engines,” because obviously no one can afford to start from scratch, but even that is constantly changing. Indeed, the hardware foundations are always rumbling underneath your feet: “who knows what chip-designers will come up with next?”
Why, just look at the changes that have come to the Blender(!) world, just in the last couple years?
All of which brings me somewhat awkwardly to my next point: that “the ‘old’ co-exists(!) with the ‘new.’” While you develop the next generation of products that you intend to sell – hoping desperately that “you guessed(!) correctly which way the winds will blow” – you’re also still supporting the last generation(s), and whatever technologies were used “at that time.” Plus, "it’s all computer software." Maybe the most-expensive “nearly free” product in the world . . .
Yes, I am right now helping a client deal with an inventory of COBOL programs – written more than forty years ago – which are still “mission critical” to their business. (And no, they are not “re-writing them.”) Yes, this is my “day job.” But that’s another story.
Google is going to run smack into everyone’s 1TB monthly Xfinity data cap with the potential of $200/month in overage charges. Even if they can squeak in under this for most users, it’s going to be something people worry about.
I can understand all this uncertainty is really annoying if you’re a game developer. One option is to just throw Stadia under the bus and use it as leverage to get better deals from Sony/Microsoft.
I love my local telephone company … they give me optical data-speed right to my Northwest Georgia (USA) 1920’s farmhouse, and I don’t have to give a f#ck about Comcast / Xfinity!
On the rare occasion when something goes wrong with my service, I simply call the local people who in a few minutes drive up to my house and fix it, usually in much less than an hour.
I don’t have a “data cap!”
It’s called: "competition." And yes, it actually exists. (In nearby Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA, the power company just mopped-up Comcast and AT&T on behalf of the entire city.)
Oh come on, these problems will iron themselves out over time - there has already been talk, I think I remember reading somewhere, of free data at some point in the future - like, fucking, free DATA!! Assume it takes FIFTEEN years to happen - cloud gaming won’t be gone in 15 years, probably, yes…? The whole thing is just… revving up or whatever…?
Are you American? It’s somewhat surprising you guys’re worried about this kind of thing? …the situation here in India is shaping up to be quite good, I’m glad to say
“annoying” isn’t the word I’d use - more like, since we’re talking about games n all, Left For Dead (chortle chortle ). I’ve spent a LONG time teaching myself a computer language, only now to find that client side graphics are no longer going to be a thing thanks to this “Stadia” thing. Now if I have to learn one of these “engines”, well, if and by the time I finish, I better not find that that engine is now obsolete etc, or not compatible with my game audience or something - get me? The problem is that I find this situation thrilling - if I was a kid today, with not that much cash in the bank, and somebody shows me a realtime raytraced game (like, fucking photoreal!!), and tells me it’s Rs. 200 a month to play - well, my life would no longer be the same, yeah? I would definitely like to be a Part of this, it would be Mind Boggling - I just need to know what’s gonna happen when Mr. Vortex.gg launches their service at Rs. 199 a month, and then tells me the engine I just learned won’t work with their service! …followed by many other vortex.gg’s starting, each with their own config of whatever kind, with basically complete chaos following…
They’re still a thing, the client just also runs on the server and you have a lot less variety in client hardware to worry about Should feel just like developing for a console, using mostly the same tools. The controller and monitor cables are 1,000km long, but that needn’t bother you.
I learnt IN-BROWSER coding, Stadia needs an executable Thanks for trying to help anyway
I really meant to ask someone this - to dev for this thing, do you download the engine onto YOUR machine - thus necessitating the purchase of a 2080 or something, which can probably buy a small HOUSE in maybe some backwards area of this country (not impossible! ), OR do you “telnet into the supercomputer server” and do your dev-ing there? I’ve never programmed with a meter running before, it’ll be a brand new experience - well, we never knew this was coming back when we first started emailing and chatting on our 14.4 modems, did we? Note that on the “server side” multiple GPUs can probably be combined together, something I’m guessing that’s wholly out of reach for even the richest game devs if it were done on the client side? REALLY exciting times for the teenagers of the '20s - and well, me/us, the creators too, if I can Now why don’t you answer my question about WHICH SERVICE???
What I’m saying, justwannapost, is: “you’ll never know for sure.” Or, to put it another way, “no decision that you make will ever be ‘future-proof.’” You’ve got to pick the best engine, today, that you can find today for your particular project today. Moore’s Law shows no signs of slowing down, so just a few years from now you might be having to make a completely different choice for your next title, maybe targeting some new platform that today we can’t recognize. But you can’t let “analysis paralysis” keep you from starting, today. No one has a crystal ball.
I have a question I thought of: does Stadia mean that Android games will be killed?? I mean, since google owns the Play Store, and google will do Stadia, I guess when they launch it, they’d like to shift people over to streaming?? So will we get up one day and find they’ve taken down all games from the store?? Would make all the people who make them EXTREMELY mad, I’d think…? They may not in fact even have to DO that, because, I mean, if you could play photoreal stuff for reasonable amounts of money, then who would buy dinky little clientside games in the 1st place? Btw, I don’t keep up with this, but is it possible to get pirate Android games?? Like, if you just search for “temple run free download” or whatever, will you get something?? So… whatever, whether people were pirating till now or not, now it’s all over, because there will be no code on the client side at all - so…the entire era of piracy is at an end?? WOW!! (this is why I’m saying it’s important they kill the clientside stuff). This “new world” will take some getting used to!! So now people, even in India and China etc. pay for everything, like, every bloody BYTE?? I’m Really Liking the way this is shaping up
I would definitely like to be a Part of this, it would be Mind Boggling 
So now people, even in India and China etc. pay for everything, like, every bloody BYTE??