Stig Kristoffersen asked:


OnLive was presented at the game developers conference GDC in San Francisco on March 24th 2009. This service enable you to stream the content of the game as you play it. Simply explained you will see live a HD-Video of the ongoing gaming performed on a server miles away from you. This means you can play big and powerful games that you usually need a monster PC with the best graphic performance available to you. Even a small laptop PC, Mac or even through a small gadget connected to your TV, you can play any game on your TV. The need for very expensive gaming PC’s is gone with the wind. You will not need to upgrade your PC just because the game demands more graphic power or CPU performance. All you need is internet connection and a normal computer. The news about this service can mean a revolution to how games are distributed and were received with enthusiasm at the conference. How is it possible to perform streaming of highly interactive games, when YouTube service is struggling with their performance of online videos? The question was raised and answers given through demonstration of this service. OnLive has been developed over 7 year’s time now, and for the first time shown to the public on March 24th on heir pres conference in San Fransisco. It gives us a chance to revolutionize the way we do gaming, how developers pulish games, and how the consumer will use the games. It will change things says Steve Perlman, the man behind OnLive service concept. Perlman developed the streaming solution for QuickTime when he worked at Apple, and has with him the former Eidos CEO Mike McGarvey on the OnLive service. You will have immediate access to all the latest high technological games available to any consol or PC, just by your fingertips. They will make the games accessible immediately and you only need to press on the game button you want to play, and there you go. There will not be need for any downloading or need to patch anything. There will be no physical media at all. You will have access to the games through your web browser or TV and you will no longer need a special machine for the purpose of playing your favorite game. Whether you use OnLive on a cheap PC without any graphic card, or on a cheap Mac, does not matter as long as you have a web browser and a plug-in on your browser on under a Megabyte, you are gaming. If you have a TV, all you need is a cheap box attached to the TV and you are gaming here as well. In theory all this sounds great and potentially easy to do, but how is it working in practical terms? The only that is needed of your computer or box at home is the power to decompress the video that arrives home at your place from the game server where the OnLive service is located. These servers are special made for the purpose of computing the highly advanced graphic games presented to you at home. The video will reach home to without any experience of latency and to be experienced as if you played it on your local machine. OnLive has developed a special streaming technology for interactive media different from the linear streaming technology which is used in ordinary video transfers. This new technology has according to Perlman minimized the latency to a level not recognizable to a human. The latency will be around one millisecond, and you really have to see it before you believe it. The demand to the broadband you have will depend upon what kind of screen you have on your equipment at home. For an ordinary screen you will need 1,5 Mbps, while for a HD TV you will need maximum 5 Mbps, dependant upon the game itself. This of course eliminates those who still are on ADSL or similar bandwidths. Perlman and McGarvey played the game called “Crysis” together on a big screen at the conference. McGarvey used a cheap Dell laptop that would never be able to play this game in the quality seen on the screen.. Perlman played via a micro consol connected to a TV, and both these units talked nicely together via the OnLive server around 80 kilometers away from where the demonstration took place. McGarvey also demonstrated a baseball game on a Mac Book, a machine which was hardly meant to play any game on it, but through the web browser plug-in on the OnLive service played the game which usually needs a PC with a graphics card for thousands of dollars. The service opens up for purchase and rental business models of absolutely all stored games, videos of game plays and other things stored on these servers. This enable you to continue a game anytime from anywhere you want to. It also eliminates the piracy problem which haunts the gaming industry today. Ten developers like EA, THQ, Ubisoft and Atari has supported this development from the start and has made 16 games available at the moment. All these games will be demonstrated at the GDC for people to see how they are experienced at the conference floor. The service is planned launched in North America at the end of 2009, and will secure the gaming industry from piracy at a larger extent than before. It also makes it possible to make games available at a less cost than before as distribution costs should go down. However, it remains to see how these servers will resist the hackers and their attempts to disrupt these services. There has not been set any launch date for the service outside North America, but its promised to be launched as soon as possible after the North American launch. The cost of this service is not mentioned, but the goal is to reduce the cost to the game consumer, as he or she will not need to buy expensive hardware which has become expensive and a constant need for upgrade at a certain cost as well. This service will transfer the money use of gamers from hardware to software.



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eSports Game Servers asked:


So, just what is a game server? Before answering that question, it’s important to understand how online gaming works. Many popular games today, first person shooters in particular, support online play. Such Internet-based play expands the game to whole new levels, and provides an experience not possible in single player environments. Players ranging in numbers from half a dozen to as many as sixty-four can all join what’s called a game server and play on the same map (game level) at the same time. Gaming servers work much like web servers, but instead of hosting websites, host game matches that others can join. Though the game itself is not loaded from the server, important game information such as player scores and rules are. Think of them in terms of a soccer stadium. The stadium provides a scoreboard and a field to play on, and the players come to the stadium to play.

While it is possible for a gamer to host a server on his computer, such servers are only suitable for a small number of players due to the slow speed of their connections. Game servers of any decent size are hosted by what are known as server providers in large data centers. With high-speed connection speeds and high-end server hardware, these providers can host servers of any size. The most popular games hosted these days include the Battlefield series, Counter Strike: Source, the Call of Duty games, the Medal of Honor series, and Unreal Tournament. Most providers offer free support, the ability to change the hosted game on the fly, free voice servers for oral communication, and web hosting. Prices for gaming servers vary greatly from provider to the provider and game to game, but the average is around $2 per player. People who run game servers sometimes pay for them out of their own pockets, but often times a group of gamers will form what is called a clan and share the cost of the server. Once a server is setup, anyone can play on a server for free, though some servers are private and require a password to join.

They make it possible for game lovers worldwide to get together and play their favorite games in an online environment, and have created a whole new market in the gaming world and have changed the way people view gaming. As technology increases, it will be interesting to see how the game server market changes.



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eSports Game Servers asked:


Many clans or gaming enthusiasts working to get a game server popular run into a problem: they don’t have enough admins. Though admins may not be necessary all the time, any game server of decent size will need one around. The admins you have on your game server will be crucial to its continuing success.

Though your friends who play on your game server may not cause trouble, other players who come along might. Trouble makers need to be dealt with smoothly and quickly if you plan on keeping your server’s popularity. It can take months to build up a game server’s status in the gaming world, but a trouble maker or cheater can clear out a server by simply annoying everyone else. No one likes playing with cheaters or annoying whiners, and players won’t hesitate to find another server to frag on for the evening if someone else is ruining their game.

You should have enough admins in your gaming clan so that at least one is at all times, or at least during the server’s busiest hours. If you can’t get enough admins, you can give players a way of contacting you if a player is causing havoc. Posting your email or AIM in a scrolling message in a scrolling message on the server is one good way. Another is getting a few trusted gamers on your server to keep watch for and inform you if any problems crop up.

Though you may have plenty of admins in your gaming clan, are they good? Most admins out there do a great job, but there are always a few bad apples who abuse their power. Worse than an abusive player is an abusive admin. Admins who kick players better than them, insult new players, or ban for minor offenses will make your game server’s players leave in a flash. Do your fellow players a favor and keep a watch on your admins. Have an email or website set up where people can ask questions about your server’s rules or report admin abuse. Occasionally pop in your server using an anonymous name and see how your admins act. The point is, don’t trust your game server admins blindly. Power can bring out the worst in people sometimes.

Without a strong admin base, your gaming server will not last. Every server on decent size needs a group of trustworthy admins who are always on call to deal with cheaters or otherwise irksome players. What is also important, however, is that these server admins be trustworthy and fair. No game server can last long without proper adminning.



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