As a scientist, and entrepreneur, and a teacher I always enjoy watching coming trends in the Video Game industry. What’s been fun to watch over the past years is the increasing trend of “taking everything online”.
Specifically, I’ve been keeping tabs on OnLive and after reading an article in CPU Magazine this month finally “get it”. It’s always amazed me why Mr. Perlman would even try to launch such a company; the cards are stacked so evidently against his success.
For those who haven’t tuned in yet … OnLive seeks to take video games into the world of streaming. As advertised, you literally play the game elsewhere “in the cloud”. I’m skeptical; I tend to experience cloud computing (via my experience in IT and in Science) as being best suited to distributed storage and processing. But this isn’t about criticism, it’s about prediction!
In Mr. Perlman’s own words …
You have to go and see what the people need, and you tune what you’re doing to meet those needs. Then, you get to do something cool, and someone else gets something that they really want to use.
From this assertion, actually, I perceive that this isn’t really about gaming at all. Win or lose, a good entrepreneur in the IT sector starts somewhere and creates technology that’s used elsewhere … in this case perhaps not in gaming. Where I think things will really break down will be multiplayer gaming … and what good is a video game that you can’t play with your friends? Our friend Jessie Schell will tell you that multiplayer is still the future of video games.
So there stands my prediction for the future. Interesting technology, but then from personal experience so was GameRail. Technology in gaming has nearly always proven to be unprofitable; we’ll see what happens in this case!
While talking to a friend of mine today, I came to a really interesting notion about the future of PC Gaming. Specifically, I continue to see a decline in support from developers on the PC side … but why?
Many years ago, I visited the Indianapolis 500 racetrack and took a tour that really congealed my impressions about how PC gaming is important to the video game industry as a whole … While many think of the fun and sport of racing, what struck me as interesting was this:
Innovation and technological advancement has been a hallmark of the Speedway since it was built. In fact, when originally constructed in 1909, it was designed to be a test track and proving grounds for what at the time was a rapidly expanding auto industry in Indiana.
At the first Indy 500 in 1911, race winner Ray Harroun’s car used a device for the first time that has since become standard equipment on all cars – the rear-view mirror.
In the following years, dozens of innovations, many related to safety, were introduced at the Indy 500. They include the mandatory use of helmets by drivers and later by crew members (due to an incident at the Indy 500), magnetic inspection of key safety-related parts like steering wheel shafts, a dedicated emergency medical center, fire-retardant racing suits and roll – Survival, Innovation, and the Indy 500 (Yahoo Sports)
Here in the “Great Recession” many of us have once again ended up spending many hours tweaking our resumes. You remember Mr. Résumé right … the friend that you made in your last semester of college which you hoped you could lock away in the dark recesses of your hard drive? Well, he’s back!
After reading an article in this month’s Wired Magazine, I’ve begun to realise that a great many of us are going to need to get used to much more frequent job changes (if we haven’t already). While are a number of supposed resources available to “help you find a job”, I say from experience that most if not all of them are deficient … particularly when it comes to the résumé.
This article addresses experiences I’ve had over the last few years and proposes a useful way of thinking about the résumé.