Age of the Game Cloud

It was the summer of 2005, I was in the quest for knowledge in the mostly empty libraries of IIM-Indore. That’s one of the main reasons to be there, if you don’t want to be disturbed, then the library is for you … nobody goes there :-)

I found Soft War by Larry Ellison. It was an interesting read, but throughout the book, there are potshots at Microsoft and the personal PC concept. Oracle says that the era of the personal PC is over and its time everything moved onto the web with machines as dumb terminals. Although I agreed with most of the things he was saying, I could not fathom how could the PC fade into oblivion? One of the main reasons why I thought this not possible was because of games. As a gamer, I thought that PCs are here to stay, games require too much hardware support to have a successful online game.

Five years later, I stand corrected and oh so much humbled! With games like WoW, 9 Dragons, Silkroad, Eve Online, League of Legends, DotA, most of the game titles which we know are planning (if not already) a MMO version of their game. What really makes sense to the game companies is the ease of distribution and control they get over the piracy that soon ensues after a successful release. Add to that a pay-per-use business model that is inherent to the cloud architecture, and organizations really stand a chance to make a thriving profit. I am thanking the stars because creators are looking at replayability as one of the critical success factors in making an MMO.

I still have some nagging doubts about the cloud (I guess because of a higher lower total cost of ownership), but its there to stay, for games to go online and create a variety of possibilities. I wonder when people will start having company reps within these games ala social media.

Update:

Read this post after 7 years. This is now a reality, so many games are running on the cloud and require you to be online these days.