Game Changing
Prologue
A quick note, I wrote this post over the 2019 Christmas holiday, and rereading it in our current world makes me even more convinced of how important the control of networks will be going forward. With COVID-19 forcing people to stay home, the network has become the vital channel through which all communications and, to some degree, life flows. So now, more than ever, the idea of who owns these networks and how they are used is crucial to understand and to critique.
In the next few years, video games will see massive changes. These changes will impact the games themselves, as well as determining who will hold financial power in the industry (no longer just the game publishers and platform owners). These shifts will also portend changes far beyond the gaming world; they could shift the way you think about computers and technology. Up until now, computers have been like toasters; the device itself determines what you can make with it. But what happens when you no longer need to own an expensive and limited piece of hardware? What happens when the device could cost $25 dollars but give you access to a supercomputer in the cloud? What could you do with that access, and what are the unintended consequences for you as an individual, for the companies that own this technology, and for culture at large?
For years games were delivered on optical discs or via download; now Google, Microsoft, and Sony have game-streaming subscription services that allow consumers to access anything they want for a monthly fee. In addition, Apple and Google are launching mobile gaming download subscription services which provide another all-you-can-eat option.
Nintendo is moving in a different direction: planning to charge a subscription for just one game—Mario Kart—on mobile. While they’re proposing this new model they also have massive triple-A games like Overwatch coming to their Switch platform. In the end, this may lead to Nintendo becoming the company with the best hardware for the game-streaming world, a cheap portable device that can stream internet content.
Yet, other factors are important here. While the advent of 5G makes streaming viable, it also has the potential to create a two-tier market of people with access to bandwidth and people without that access, now that net neutrality is a thing of the past thanks to the current FCC.
This is a new turn of events. For a long time carriers have been the people who provided so-so customer service and phone hardware; they will now suddenly be the people who control the apps on your phone. In the near future, those same carriers (Verizon and AT&T) will also control the TV and advertising networks. This will be the first time companies control the network, content, advertising and (in some cases) the hardware and software. No more downloading, everything is streamed to every device, you no longer own anything but subscribe to both the software and hardware. This sounds like a technology-first, people-second future.
There is an alternative future that could see opportunities for people and companies to connect in new ways. For example, imagine that you run a weekend music festival. Right now no one will download your festival app because it's too hard to find, it's another app on their phone, making a good app is expensive, and what do you do with it once the weekend is over? In a streaming world, the app could be integrated into an advert for the festival; instead of downloading an app, the content is streamed to your phone with an option to buy tickets to the festival. Press the button and your tickets are purchased. No app download, no logging in, no credit card entry. As a festival organizer, you would only pay to have a service app for the week leading up to the event; the app would do just what was needed, and once the event was past it would no longer clutter the App Store.
In choosing what our future looks like with streaming services, technology can shape us or we can shape it.
