Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Sony, makers of the PS3 console, decided that part of its core strategy would
include a social-based experience much like Second Life. The key difference being
that it would be game-centric. PlayStation Home was released as beta at the end of
2008 and has grown to include areas for players to socialize related to games
releases such as Resident Evil and Uncharted 2. Home is free to access and all that
is required is a PS3 and a PlayStation Network Account. Within the virtual world
you can also play chess, arcade machines, pool, and more. The world also includes
micro transactions and the user can buy items for their virtual home and avatar.
Although Home has been derided by some users and has had mixed reviews,
Sony has claimed that sales in just one month were one million dollars.
Cloudy Skies
This chapter has already covered how browsers are changing the way people
access MMOs (and games in general). A new service that is beginning to appear is
the cloud network. Rather than rely on the people
s hardware to play games (for
example when a new game is released it has to support many different hardware
specifications), what if you could release a new game that runs on old computers?
The concept is the same as what in some businesses is called
'
“
thin client
�
.The
way thin client (and the cloud) works is that you don
thavetoworryabout
changing the hardware every few years to support improvements in applications
or even operating systems. All that is sent to and from the users is screen display
data, and input information from the mouse and keyboard. A small client
application is installed on the computer (PC/Mac) and small amounts of data are
sent back and forth. At the moment there are a number of systems being
launched. For smaller games these are perfect, although there is a Lag issue with
first person shooters (and this would also be a problem in MMOs).
'
Note
Lag is the time delay in doing an action, such as moving a character and the time it takes to see
that action take place. Lag is a major problem in MMOs, and can really affect a player
'
s opinion of
a game.
The Latest and Greatest MMO List
There is a growing list of popular MMOs available now. This section takes a
whirlwind tour of some MMOs that are currently available or will be released
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