Click here to stream high-end games on Facebook, which just came available courtesy of Gaikai, the cloud deployment service. Above is a screencap of me playing Saints Row the Third, the sandbox gangster game that Iris loves. At the moment, you can play just a half dozen or so game demos, but tantalizingly, Gaikai's Facebook page promises that "Full game streams and your favorite MMOs" are coming soon. Gaikai, by the way, is the cloud service that Linden Lab test-deployed Second Life on in 2010, so it's quite possible that SL could be among those titles.
Give it a try, it's pretty impressive. Based on my hands-on, however, I'm seeing some shortcomings to the service on Facebook:
The graphics seem a bit blurry, as if the game is playing on the lowest possible resolution, and the control responsiveness feels somewhat muddy -- both things many people notice, when trying a cloud-driven game service. (Stupid speed of light limitations.) I wasn't able to run Gaikai via my wireless connection, and it wouldn't even launch until I plugged into a dedicated line. (So you might not be able to get your Gaikai on from a tablet or an Internet cafe.) Even more irksome, once you launch a game, it takes over your mouse, so you can't easily navigate away from the game screen -- that's a huge shortcoming, in my opinion, because most Facebook usage happens during office hours, especially lunch time. (Probably not ideal to be stuck in a game of Orcs Must Die! when you hear the boss walking up, and you can't quickly switch to another tab.)
In its press announcements, Gaikai said their service will let you play "real games" on Facebook, implying that games made specifically for Facebook aren't as legit. But this misses the fact that Facebook games are designed to optimally work on the platform, with short gameplay sessions and 2D graphics that allow for quick breaks while multitasking. While Gaikai's sure to get some extra traffic from the Facebook deployment, I think they'll also discover their AAA games won't be able to compete with casual Facebook hits like Draw Something or Tetris Battle -- also real games, in fact, but really made to work with Facebook, not against it.
And when your ISP cuts you off because you're using "too much Bandwidth"? And folks thought streaming movies ate the bits? Wait until THIS becomes more commonplace :)
Posted by: shockwave yareach | Monday, April 16, 2012 at 01:42 PM
Most Facebook games are extremely shallow. Bringing in full MMOs with real depth would be a huge step forward, if you can get the performance within acceptable parameters.
Posted by: Arcadia Codesmith | Monday, April 16, 2012 at 01:50 PM
@Shockwave: Second Life is a much bigger hit on web traffic than facebook or gaikai
@Au: Agreed 100% most "real games" as Gaikai puts them are very immersive and by nature not made to be played while your attention needs to be somewhere else (your boss, the traffic, the train pickpockets, etc..).
I played Gaikai's "Magic" demo and it was 100% equal to the experience of playing it on Steam at my home pc. Except that I wasn't at home and could not concentrate neither on the game or at my lecture. Ended up being more frustrating then relaxing.
The technology is great for other uses though. something like that for Opensim would really make the learning curve less daunting.
Posted by: Renmiri Writer | Monday, April 16, 2012 at 07:21 PM