Head In The Clouds

Welcome back guys!

In a past post, we took a look at VR. While to me that was the epitome of the gaming industry’s future, I stand corrected because let me introduce to you cloud gaming.

Adapted from: https://allenchi.org/cloud-gaming-the-future-of-renting-video-games/

Honestly, the term “cloud gaming” is really new to me and the first time I heard about it was during the podcast that I hosted.

So what exactly is cloud gaming? This article  does a pretty good job at explaining what it is but essentially think of it as a subscription streaming platform such as Netflix or Amazon’s Prime Video, where you pay a monthly fee to stream movies or TV shows to your television, phone, or computer, but for video games. This eliminates the need to buy physical game copies or downloading games in order to play them, how convenient is that?

If the convenience doesn’t convince you, cloud gaming also means that anyone could play games on pretty much any device that has a stable Internet connection with minimal hardware requirements. That means, you won’t be needing the latest Playstation or PC to play games like Destiny 2. You could simply play it on your phone!

While cloud gaming may seem really promising, all this accessibility and convenience comes at a price. I mean all the work required by your gaming console or PC to run a game has to go somewhere right? Well, this means that the processing power and energy use are now transferred to data centers housing tons of servers which are run by powerful GPUs and CPUs. While this may lessen the carbon footprint of an individual gamer and less energy would be required from their gaming consoles, the converse is true for data centers. Since the data centers would now be responsible for all the graphics rendering and data processing, energy consumption would surely increase, and hence their carbon footprint as a majority of these data centers are primarily reliant on fossil fuels.

The good news is, cloud gaming hasn’t become the norm yet as it’s still a relatively new concept. However, even a mere 30% increase in demand for cloud gaming is predicted to result in a 30% surge in carbon emissions, so imagine if cloud gaming is indeed the future of gaming!

Let’s say if this really was to be the future, not all hope is lost though because of… renewable energy (yay!). As with a lot of things, fossil fuels can be replaced with renewable sources for the gaming industry and this is where the Playing for the Plant Alliance comes in. Through the alliance, various gaming companies pledge to pursue greener and more sustainable practices, where Microsoft for example, pledged to power all its data centers purely by renewable energy by 2025. In that sense, given how energy-intensive cloud gaming is for data centers, perhaps it could incentivize gaming companies to become greener instead.

Till next time!

Cheers,

Tricia

5 thoughts on “Head In The Clouds

  1. Hi Tricia!

    Cloud gaming is also quite a new concept to me, but I can certainly see it gain popularity in the future. Many companies such as Alibaba & Singapore REITs have all invested in data centres & cloud computing despite recording losses, which shows their faith in the sector taking off in the future.

    However, I would like to ask are in-the-works data centres based on the current carbon economy? Or based on an anticipated shift towards renewables? Is one thing for Microsoft to pledge for all its data centres to be run on renewables by 2050, but don’t have the infrastructure to make that a reality. I’m concerned because US presidential candidate Joe Biden set a similar goal with a 2050 deadline 2050 deadline too, but has no clear plan forward with renewables only making up 4.98% of the US economy.

    Hence, do you think the 2050 target is feasible or too optimistic? Would love to hear your insight on the matter!

    Cheers,
    Yu Xun

  2. Hi Tricia,

    Great post !

    Could I ask (if you’ve already checked out the week 12 e-lecture), how you reconcile your stance with the idea (which you may or may not agree with) that we need to curb demand, i.e., attack the root causes of the crisis ? Because from this post, I infer that you think tech is our way out of this mess. I’m also curious about how you think gaming as a hobby is related to the phenomenon of Nature deficit disorder and issues of environmental apathy.

    Perhaps you’d consider addressing these in another post (just a suggestion – this is YOUR blog, not mine 🙂 ?

    jc

    1. Hi Dr Coleman,
      Thank you for pointing that out! (I have not viewed the lecture yet prior to this post but I’ll definitely take some time to reflect on it). Also thank you for asking about nature deficit disorder, I’ve been thinking about this concept at the back of my mind for a while but I couldn’t put a name to it, so I’d love to talk about it in another post!

      Regards,
      Tricia

  3. Hi Tricia,
    cloud gaming does sound like the future! Ditching the potential requirement to own powerful hardwares to run the games can potentially cut costs for gamers everywhere. However, I think such services would come at a high price. Since the companies no longer generate revenue by selling the games, I would presume that as you have to pay expensive monthly subscription fees to be able to play, worst part is that you do not “own” any of the games that you do end up playing. Do you think this will deter people from subscribing to such services and that they would just end up buying their own hardwares and games anyway?
    -Jian Xi

    1. Hi Jian Xi,

      Indeed, while researching about cloud gaming the most common thing that pops up is the concept of a monthly subscription service whereby cloud gaming is essentially streaming content, but for games. However, there are nuances that comes with the service such as Google Stadia, it seems that you would be required to purchase a Stadia Pro subscription (something like $10 a month) which would grant you access to their library of games. However, even with the subscription, you would still be required to purchase games as the subscription would only grant you 1 free game every month or so it seems. From what I know, most cloud gaming services operate in a similar way but I couldn’t compare the prices because cloud gaming isn’t available in Singapore yet (lol).
      Personally, I feel that for current gamers who already own consoles/PCs, the deterring factor isn’t the cost but more of cloud gaming not being necessary because they already have the required hardware, unless they want to play big game titles on the go through their phones. I guess cloud gaming would be more targeted towards new gamers who don’t want to/can’t invest hundreds of dollars on a gaming console/PC. So cloud gaming would be a good entry point for them and if they don’t enjoy it they could easily cancel their subscription and would not need to worry about a $500 hunk of plastic collecting dust in their home!

      Cheers,
      Tricia
      Wit

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