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Saturday, August 22, 2020

Will Cloud Gaming take over the video gaming world?

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Mohammad Abdullah
Mohammad Abdullah
Global

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Article Contributor(s)

Mohammad Abdullah

Article Title

Will Cloud Gaming take over the video gaming world?

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Global Views 360

Publication Date

August 22, 2020

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A person engaged in PC Gaming

A person engaged in PC Gaming |Source: Florian Olivo via Unsplash

Video gaming has evolved massively over the years with much better graphics, great storyline, and breathtaking visuals. The fun began with the 8-bit games Super Mario Bros and Contra and later by the arrival of PlayStation. In the 2000s, classics like GTA San Andreas and Portal came which were followed by Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, and GTA V.  Now with gaming competitions, eSports, and their likes, gaming has come a long way.

A still from Need For Speed | Source: Electronic Arts

Video gaming have now evolved in multiple genres like racing (Need for Speed), Parkour style (Assassin’s Creed), FPS shooters (Call of Duty and Halo), Horror (Resident Evil series), or Sports games like FIFA. The spread of video games can be gauged by the fact that the highest Football governing body FIFA is backing the FIFA series video games. Game Streaming has gone professional now, professional footballers like Sergio Aguero or current F1 drivers like Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc becoming the online gaming hero.

With the advent of cloud gaming, the industry is now at the cusp of its most radical change. Cloud Gaming aims to provide high-end gaming experience without the super expensive PC hardware which were needed earlier. A gamer now needs just a simple low-end PC or even a smartphone to enjoy high end gaming.

Google has taken the lead in cloud gaming service by launching “Stadia'', followed by Nvidia with “GeForce Now”. Microsoft, which is one of the heavy-hitters of console gaming via their Xbox series, is shortly launching their cloud gaming service xCloud for Android in 22 countries. So anyone with an Android phone and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, can enjoy the high quality online games on their smartphone.

Google Stadia Booth at Game Developers Conference 2019 | Source: Official GDC via Flickr

Cloud gaming comes with many advantages, the biggest of these is that there is no need to download a huge amount of data for running these games. Most games nowadays come with a download size exceeding 50 GB while some like Call of Duty: Warzone and Red Dead Redemption 2 even require around 100 GB download. Then there comes all the DLCs, patches which again need huge chunks of data. Cloud gaming eliminates it.

NVIDIA Titan RTX |Source: Nvidia

The second advantage is that the above-mentioned games can even run on an Android device. Also, don’t be concerned about the quality of resolution of these cloud-run games. Google Stadia can run games at 4K resolution at 60fps, which is even the limit of the current-gen consoles. They claim to further expand it to 8K at 120fps in the future, which is a quality that the best current Graphics card, the Nvidia Titan RTX hasn’t even reached.

However, with all the advantages, cloud gaming still has some basic shortcomings. The first one among them is the requirement of very high data bandwidth. The idea of playing games at 4K@60fps may seem fascinating, but that will need a steady high-speed bandwidth. For instance, Stadia lists that one needs at least 35 Mbps connection to accomplish the said frame rate and resolution.

The second bottleneck of cloud gaming is that it requires huge amounts of data to run games at such high quality. However the main reason inhibiting its wider adoption is the high cost associated with cloud gaming. For instance, Stadia costs $9.99/month, but it only comes with some select games available for free. Many other games like Assassin’s Creed series are available at Stadia, but these are to be purchased separately and at a price almost on par with the PC and Console version of the game. These shortcomings make one wonder if they are paying a much larger amount of money compared to if they purchased a gaming PC or console.

The world entering the age of 5G internet can be a catalyst to the growth of cloud gaming across the world. It can surely challenge the upcoming next-gen consoles, the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5 soon. Microsoft’s approach with its xCloud service looks to be going in sync with its PC and Xbox ecosystem. It will indeed be helpful to the gaming industry in the longer run.

So, the big question arises, can Cloud gaming take over the video gaming world? For the present, the answer is a clear NO! In the future, perhaps.

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February 4, 2021 4:41 PM

Black Lives Matter: Why "All Lives Matter" is a False Equivalence

The phrase “All Lives Matter”, used in response to the slogan “Black Lives Matter”, has been causing a lot of controversy. The slogan is sometimes used by “colour-blind” people, who do not see colour as a basis of any of their decisions, and when they hear “Black lives Matter”, they want to add white lives to the mix, not understanding that race causes significant differences in what people face with respect to discrimination. 

In one of the incidents, a man spray-painted ‘White Lives Matter’ on the statue of Arthur Ashe, an African American Tennis legend, who was the first black Wimbledon men’s singles champion. After the man left, some people spray-painted “Black Lives Matter” over the previous paint. The man returned in a while to wipe off that message, and when asked why he had painted “white lives matter” on the statue. According to the video, the man replied "Don't all lives matter? Why is it okay to spray paint on this statue 'black lives matter,' but not 'white lives matter'? What's the difference? They all matter. Everybody matters, right?"

However, John Hayward on Breitbart throws a different light on the use of the all lives matter slogan. It talks about several instances of how people and organizations have used the phrase, like how the local authorities in Frankton, Indiana tried to have it on the side of the police cars out of general goodwill, and did not realize that the phrase was offensive to the Black Lives Matter movement.

The phrase “All Life Matters” may have been used as a slogan for joining all hands together, and expressing the fundamental right to equality. However it is found to be misguided and offensive by many people because they feel that the phrase invalidates the specific difficulties faced by the black community. For explaining this, they draw a comparison: if there is one house burning, if the other houses call out that they want the water poured on them too, that’s just counterintuitive and ignoring the burning house. Another comparison is that at a dinner table, a child has half a portion and the other has a whole. When giving another half a portion to the child with less food, if the other child demands half a portion too, it is evident that the child with the full portion is ignoring the fact that the other one has only the half. 

The intention about the usage of the phrase “All Lives Matter” doesn’t matter; it still negatively affects the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Speaking of “All Lives Matter” in response to someone asserting that “Black Lives Matter” is walking over the struggles that black people specifically face and it is a false equivalence.

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