Last year you’d read a lot about Second Life online - from various trusted media sources such as this site, the BBC, TheRegister etc.     Now I don’t know if its just me, but the Media appears to have stopped reporting about the famed Virtual World environment from Linden Labs..

It was a result of this media attention that I downloaded and started playing with the client as the avatar Dan Ramona.     My initial impressions at the time were not good, the client was slow, bandwidth intensive, and walking and flying around the environments was sometimes like pulling teeth.      Not only that, it was an assault to the senses - some environments would have music in them, and simply getting in the area would result in an assult of the eardrums.

However there were good things.   Players could build, script, and design their own items in game.  They could also own their own land, and build their own houses.     It was like the sims but for your own avatar.   There were a few games created by the players which were fun, in a very basic fashion - they weren’t brilliant though or interesting enough for long-term play.

The sandbox like creationism did lead to a somewhat strange situation - there was quite a sexual focus to many of the items being created (probably down to most of them being created by 15-21 year old male teenagers if I’m playing the stereotypes card).   Second life to me basically did not appear very child friendly.      Creating items also required you to pay for credits and funds to allow you to upload textures etc.    This was the income stream for the game - as someone viewing content didn’t really need to pay a monthly fee.

Overall after a few days of playtime I was done with SecondLife.    I don’t think I’ll revisit the environment as quite simply I can’t see the point of it all..   And I can’t honestly believe our government thinks spending money in the envioronment can really be a valid use of public funds.     They of course are claiming it saves money by preventing staff travel to see technology (I do wonder why our  goverment hasn’t discovered video conferencing!)  - my view is simple - maybe our ministers and civil servants enjoy the alternative lifestyles Second Life offers….   I’m sure its safer from the prying eyes of the press with their long lenses at least!

How was your Second life experience?   Have you binned it like me?

I thought I should mention this - as  one thing I love is “Free Stuff”.

Basically Eurogamer/Codemasters are giving away 2000 free copies of their MMO “Lord of the Rings online” - or LOTRO as its more commonly known on this Friday, including all expansions up to date, and 30 days of free play time.    Thats quite a saving from the shop price -  which via play.com at least is currently retailing at £14.99.

Look at this link for details of the offer, which starts Friday - if you have been interested in playing LOTRO in the past, its a chance to do so free.

This post is related to the OnLive technology that is due to be demonstrated at the Game Developers Conference (GDC)  this week.    Articles on the technology for background are here and here.

A basic description of the system is thin-gaming - similar to Thin-computing as devised by Citrix for business applications, but for gaming.     Basic low-powered machine is needed to display the graphics, which are all generated by powerful gaming servers in the center.     So basically controllers and screens (plus a big broadband connection) at the client end.

Will it work?    In my opinion as a technician - No, I do not believe it can be made to work - and I can explain several reasons why below:

1. Latency - gamers really hate latency - some Counter-Strike gamers and game servers reject users with ping times of over 50ms.     In my opinion there is no way they will be able to get the latency to an acceptable level to make this product a viable concern - 80ms in gaming is an age, and that is what is being touted as normal latency for this.    The reason - compression/decompression adds considerable latency - also the raw internet speed.   Example, my home 5.5Mbit connection has around 25ms-40ms latency to most sites in London without the compression touted.
2. Resolution - PC Gamers and now PS3 gamers are getting used to 1920×1080 and similar resoultions on their kit when playing games.     On a PC even 1024×768 is deemed a “low resolution” now by many gamers.   At the moment this tech is producing 720p.   That is 1280×720.    By even modern standard in PC gaming, thats a low resolution.
3. Bandwidth & Fair use policies- The above 720p resolution is toted as using 5Mbit/sec (listed in the article as high-def).     By my calculations 5Mbit a second is around 37.5Mbyte/minute, or around 2Gb an hour     Gamers being “hardcore” tend to play for a few hours at a time - how many people will hit their ISP’s fair use Policy, which in many cases is around 40Gb.     Ie, about 20 hours of gameplay.    How many gamers play over 20 hours a month? - I would say quite a few.     Virgin/NTL in the UK throttle users using this quantity of bandwidth down from 50Mbit/sec to a far lower figure if this kind of transfer is common - would this even stop the Gaming working?
4. Economics - How many high-end graphics cards & CPU’s will be needed at the server end to support users?   If the OnLive company is having to buy thousands of servers to handle user-load, I question how this can be viable.    Especially when compared to game-download/subscription services such as metaboli.
5. Reliability - If a node crashes and takes out several clients at once, thats >1 pissed off gamers.      Games nowadays in their 1st interation past release are often unstable from my experience at least, needing a patch to improve stability.  In some cases they lock up your computer fully.    If this happened to a server node and impacted someone 2 hours into a mission that had not saved on another client this would greatly annoy the latter user for having to replay 2 hours of content.    If this happened frequently - it wouldn’t be great.
6. The multi-gamer home - Bandwidth to most UK homes at least wouldn’t support 2 concurrent clients - and this is likely the case globally in the non-fibre world at least.   Also some games are great in multi-monitor mode (Supreme Commander is excellent in this mode) - there doesn’t appear to be capability for this now..

I would be very interested from the press visiting the GDC as to their impressions of this technology in the demonstration - and whether they could note whether the server is > 80ms away!    I could be wrong - but still am of the opinion this cannot be made to work without fibre broadband and 100Mbit connections to the home (allowing say 2 x1080p screens to play games simultaneously).

Basically in my mind potentially a great idea for future, but would need severe broadband investments to work, and a very reliable back-end for users to think about subscribing.    I also have doubts when compared to Gametap/Metaboli type services as to which is going to take the upper hand (or pureplay distribution such as Steam).    If such a service was available for the PS3 or similar console,  ie a console with a monthly fee and subscription for all the games you would want would be ideal for me at least.    I would consider signing up in a heartbeat.

What are your views on OnLive - or do you agree with me that Gametap/Metaboli services long-term will be the winners.

Recently (well 9 months ago) I started playing Eve Online for 3-4 months.

I admit it, I’ve spent money on gadgets again