Gaming in the Cloud

Time for a piece on technology. I'm not talking about driving around airborne cars, or our sneakers lacing themselves, but we're working on it. What I am talking about it something that those that are gamer's would understand. Especially those who are heavily vested in their cellphones. Game developers you are on notice as of now.

A little history first.

So once upon a time ago, you weren't saving anything. The arcade era was in full swing, and you played to beat the game in a single sitting. Even the original tough guys Atari and Intellivision were no different. But then came the next evolution when Sega and Nintendo came through the door. You could continue from save points in some games. Others just needed a password. And boom, you no longer had to start at the beginning. Which in some cases was a REALLY good thing, because many of us lost countless hours to the likes of the various Mario Bros, Zelda, Metroid, and then some. And in case you're wondering, yes, I still know the Konami code.Things stayed this way for a while, as the games themselves would evolve in graphics instead of storage.

Then came the dark times. New systems that had incredible graphics and new ways to save came out But they were so over priced, you were cutting grass for more than a summer to save up. Systems like the 3DO, CD-i, and Sega Saturn took advantage of having real actors, on real sets pushing the story of the game. Mad Dog McCree, Wing Commander 3, The Daedelus Encounter, and Night Trap to name a few. The systems were way ahead of their time. You could save your place in the systems memory itself, and play music CD's. Man, I killed a lot of Kilrathi back in those days. My first taste of the awesomeness that is playing video games in full surround sound.

But like all hardships, things turned around. Sega launched it's final system, Playstation and Xbox were born, and we were now saving our games to memory cards. And memory cards brings me to where I wanted to be today.

Today, we have a hand full of quality portable gaming options. And with them advanced gaming. For many of us, the bulk of those games are on our cellphones and tablets. And this is where developers have taken a step back. Sure, many games will save progress at certain points. Most have you set up a login to track your stats and keep your friends. But what happens when you upgrade your phone? What happens when you go from your phone to your tablet? What happens if, (gasp) something happened to you phone like damage, or even losing it? Well, quit simply you're out of luck. Only parts of games are backed up on to memory cards, but you usually end up having to wipe and start from scratch again. And save points in games just aren't there on the cards. Being that we are in a world of cloud computing (oh no, he's going to make sense again) why don't developers not only bring back the ability to save to a memory card, but into the could itself?

It's not just annoying sometimes, but down right aggravating when you've finally gotten to a great point and then are looking at losing your game. Because lets face it, nobody really wants to go back and forth between a current phone and an old one. And let's look at that cloud save, customers would be able to switch out devices without worry! Just upgraded your phone? No problem. Just activated a replacement phone? No problem. Gave your old Xperia Play to your kid who loves that old Spiderman game? No problem.

Not long ago +Alexander Maxham made a great point about mobile device storage in general. Some people want to stay with cheap devices with an SD card, but others would prefer to have a solid device with cloud storage. (Alex, thanks for that by the way.) Mobile gaming would be able to expand that further, bridge the gap, and lead the industry in a new direction by opening that cloud storage. I know for sure Microsoft has at least looked at this with the Xbox 360 some, so I'm sure the likes of Sony and Nintendo have at least eyeballed it as well. So not only would our mobile gaming be better, but our consoles would be looking at going in the same direction as well. Better gaming all around! Those people who stay away from mobile gaming, for fear of not having an agreeable way to save their session would probably be a lot more likely to reconsider and ..... wait for it.... spend some money on a game for their phone. But no, the game industry couldn't possibly want that. What's a few million bucks from happy customers, new and old alike?

But to quote Dennis Miller, "That's just my opinion, I could be wrong."