In a conversation with Axios , he expressed a desire to see industry-wide support for console emulation like Xbox's backwards compatibility program. Preservation is a critical issue for the appreciation and enjoyment of videogames. We have it pretty nice here on PC as opposed to on consoles, but you can still run into issues getting older games to work on new operating systems.
We also had some near-disasters this year with Ultima Underworld, Syndicate, and the Grand Theft Auto 3 trilogy being removed from digital stores, though the good news is they're all available again now. Spencer's statement is certainly encouraging, but it also clashes with Microsoft's recent announcement that the 76 original Xbox and titles made to work with backwards compatibility on November 16 would be the last.
Yes, all of these things--the SteamOS, Steam Machines, the controller--are an attempt to sell you something, but to think of that "thing" as just another gaming machine for the living room is incredibly shortsighted. What Valve is really selling is an alternative future for PC gaming, one that diverges from the whims of Microsoft. This path is an ideological one as much as it's motivated by turning a dollar. But Valve has some immense hurdles to overcome if it's to be successful.
Can it convince big publishers to port their games to Linux, an operating system that has a remarkably small presence in the gaming space? Perhaps once Valve gives every Steam member the opportunity to beta test SteamOS, we'll see some of the bigger players raise their eyebrows. Then again, perhaps not. Can Valve explain to gamers, in a digestible manner, why open platforms are crucial for innovation, and how SteamOS will be any different than Windows long-term?
If so, will Valve be able to convince you, the consumer, that investing your time into learning SteamOS, or money into a Steam Machine, is a worthwhile endeavor? Apathy, I think, is the greatest challenge Valve will inevitably face. If you have any interest in PC gaming, you'll have a big decision to make come The question is: who will you entrust with this slice of gaming's future?
What's Next? Get the best gaming deals, reviews, product advice, competitions, unmissable gaming news and more! See comments. In other words, even if we could give NPCs minds of their own and let them run free in games, odds are that their autonomy would result in a less fun experience for the player.
A rogue NPC could decide to shirk its duty to help the player advance toward the next level or take the player on a nonsensical quest where nothing happens. In addition to presenting game design challenges, free-range NPCs may be a non-starter when considered from a purely economic perspective as well. Putting more sophisticated NPCs in games may be possible.
Still, some designers persist in NPC enhancements, especially in figuring out ways to make NPCs more believable and human-like. For several years now, designers have been using AI to help them generate game assets, which frees them up from painstakingly drawing each individual tree in a forest or rock formation in a canyon.
Instead, designers can offload that work to computers by using a technique called procedural content generation, which has become fairly standard practice in the industry. Procedural content generation is also used to create game levels — sometimes randomly — so the player can enjoy a fresh experience each time. Some gamemakers also rely on neural networks to tailor-make game levels for players through a process NYU professor Julian Togelius calls experience-driven procedural content generation.
Maybe a level had too many jumps and not enough sewers, or coins were hard to reach and bad guys were too easy to defeat. Researchers fed player data to a computer. Academics and game designers alike are still trying to implement AI systems that will control the game in such a way that is fun for the player. Cardona-Rivera envisions a future in which AI acts as a game master that calls the shots for a human player.
Games routinely collect data on how a player experiences a game. This information is fed into an algorithm and is ultimately used by humans to tweak games based on its predictions of what players will like. That is to say, in the cloud.
In the past couple of years, Sony and Microsoft , which have long been the console gaming incumbents, have rolled out their own cloud gaming services. Gaming chipmaker Nvidia has too. Even Big Tech is getting in on the action. Google released its cloud gaming service, Stadia, in And Amazon debuted its cloud gaming offering — called Luna — in Even Netflix — which, up to this point, has only made movies and TV shows — has shown signs of getting into cloud gaming.
The company recently hired its first vice president of gaming. But the biggest hurdle cloud gaming needs to clear in order to become truly mainstream is to be able to offer a smooth, non-laggy gaming experience for users. And that sort of experience is hard to come by for anyone without a great WiFi connection.
Not only that, running a cloud gaming service is costly and computationally intensive. So getting the technology right will take time. And I mean years, like years and years. In the pursuit of ultra-realistic graphics, video games have come a long way.
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