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The Modem Lives On
Ant writes: "There's an interesting editorial currently running on 3dactionplanet which I agree with.
Game developers and companies need to think about us people who can't get broadband connections!
Yes, I am a part of the analog modemers. I can't play Q3A, HL, games,
etc. very nicely due to my 28800 connections (even with 56K). No cable
and DSL services here. Other options are just too expensive or won't
work (i.e. satellite for online gaming?)"
Forget the computers. It's the net that makes the difference in the digital divide.
Giving computers to kids doesn't help them get information. And as Ant points out, the digital divide is regionally based. You need broadband to get games, as well as being able to get information to the degree that it makes a differenece.
Broadband-obsession on the Net, plus lack of broadband in places, equals disenfranchisement for many people.
Also, it's just as bad when there is only one broadband company. If that company doesnt like your piracy or your napster use and cutd you off, there you are, disenfranchised,unable to reach much of the data and art and culture online.
Governments should assume a more controlling role in the development of highspeed internet technologies; the laying of cable is a vital part of the economic interest of each country. This is an area that calls for more regulation, not less. With proper intervention by legitimately elected policymakers, highspeed internet investments won't go to Silicon Alley anymore, but to Utah, Alaska, Montana- places where industry and agriculture are struggling and where, more than ever, young people need the Internet as a way out.
Goat sex free since 2001
As a programmer directly involved with a very popular online game, the Age of Empires series, I can tell you online gameplay with a modem connection is taken very, very seriously.
If fact... Two of our very brilliant communcations programmers, Mark Terrano and Paul Bettner are giving a presentation on this very subject at the international Game Developer's Conference next month in San Jose, CA. (Go to www.gdconf.com and check out their presentation "1600 Archers on a 28.8 modem" (Actually, I just checked the site and they don't appear to have the full schedule posted yet, and the author search just goes off into la-la land)
Anyway, the things we at Ensemble do to insure good modem play include:
* Having our 8-player dedicated testing area not only include a LAN connection, but modems on each computer. Modem based playtests are conducted using up to 8 different dial-up ISP's.
* Periodically auditing network communcations bandwidth usage over the course of an entire game to determine peak bandwidth requirments. Network packets are optimized for minimal size even before they are compressed. Our performance target is for comm usage not to ever exceed about 24K BPS of bandwidth in both directions.
* In our new 16-station playtest facility that is currently under construction, we will have a fancy phone line simulator device that allows for controlled degration of line conditions.
* Tuning the communications code to account for the types of pings geographically diverse modem users are likely to encounter. (our games can dynamically adjust the communications turn length to adapt to shifting pings).
* Showing each user, while they are playing the game, an indication of the communcation link performance to every other player. This allows people to quickly determine who is the person whose connection has just gone to crap.
* And we added in Age of Kings, the ability to save and restore a multiplayer game when someone gets disconnected or crashes.
I could go on, but I just wanted to get across that we do spend real effort on all applicable fronts to make as good an experience as possible for modem-users.
Now this is no indication of what other developers do, and other types of game may be more sensitive to ping than bandwidth.. etc.. etc.. As allways, Your mileage may vary.
-Mp
The key with online gaming is not bandwidth but latency. The packets you are sending are not particularly big, but they need to go fast. Take this example- Say you are playing a game with good net code (eg Tribes) on a 56k modem in the US on a server in Europe. If you then switch to a T1 line, your latency would not improve significantly-the signal still has to travel physically around the world. (Light circles the earth in 200ms, so in transmission the lowest ping to europe would be 100ms. Then we have to include latency around the computer, and the "last mile."
Satellite, while having good bandwidth, will probably have such bad latency that you can forget upbout any online games (including cards at msn gaming). The signal first has to travel up to the sat from your house. Given atmospheric signals, some of it will be lost and will be have to sent again. It then has to travel down to a microwave dish in europe, again with more signal losses. From there it has to route itself around various diseperate telecoms networks. The round trip in simple distance is probably greater than your 28.2k modem,and hence latency is greater.
If you need any more discouragement to get satellite internet- the bird is probably owned by microsoft.
Probably the best way to improve your latency would be to buy a 56k modem and find a very local isp who hosts a server of your favourite game. My Isp is in my suburb and has this arrangement.
Not everyone on the planet live in a dorm where one can get free 100MB ethernet. Infact, over 50% of americans still connect with "yesterdays" technology. It just makes good business sense to make a game playable over 56K. You know, that idea called profit, which is something every company should be interested in.
Being one who does research in a Uni, I am bessed with access to a fast connection and can play UT in the off hours in my lab. At home, I have 56K...why because getting broadband here is priced only for businesses and even if it weren't I can only get DSL, which the owners of my apt building wouldn't be too keen for them to hook up. Most of the US, and even less the World, can't get high speed internet, and if they can they are lucky to get it for a reasonable price.
Consider yourself lucky.
Burn Hollywood Burn
The "practical reason" is the cost of deployment. Do you have ANY idea what deployment costs are in rural areas for things like cable and DSL? The simple fact is, there aren't enough paying customers in all areas to justify the enormous expense of deploying broadband. If they priced it based on the number of subscribers they'd have, then citizens in rural areas could be paying as much as a T1 for simple DSL. Thankfully, in some states, such as here in Arizona, the government is getting involved and funding network rollouts in the rural areas. Otherwise, there are many areas here that wouldn't even have decent phone networks, much less any sort of broadband access. The company I work for just did a project recently where we brought a T1 in to one of the reservations for the school district. You would not believe the hurdles and great expense it took to get a T1 dropped in. Dealing with the ancient local telephone company out there, then dealing with US Worst/Qworst in Phoenix.... a total nightmare.
Until its more profitable, or subsidized by the government, we're just not going to see widespread broadband deployment.
To Recap: The bottom line is that if you have a moderately large gaming club of 25 to 50 members, you can start your own ISP at a cost that compares to some hardware upgrades.
The town of Laramie, Wyoming, has done just this by setting up Lariat.net. Residents started the networking business in 1995 in an effort to bring everyone in the area online after various squabbles with the area's telephone company (now Qwest). The initial cost was around $3,000, with many residents donating their own PCs, according to Glass. Relevant equipment was stuck on private land, and copper wire was bought from Qwest for areas that couldn't get wireless.
The cost of the service is pretty good compared to what it would be otherwise. Individuals get a normal dial-up service for $5 a month, or $20-$30 a month for high speed (10MB/second). It is doing quite well thank you.
They want to clone this effort around the country, so you can contact them via this page. So get you buds together and put together a business plan. You might wind up with something you can have fun with!
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The European Union now has a bigger economy than the USA by a third
;)
That's funny - according to my handy-dandy CIA World Factbook, in 1999 the aggregate GDP for the 15 member nations of the EU was about $8 trillion. And (drum roll, please), for the US, about $9.3 trillion. Now, we could examine the per capita GDP of both, but, if we note that the US has ~50 million fewer people than the EU, we can clearly see that such an examination would only make you look even worse. But then again, why let some inconvenient facts get in the way of an otherwise ill-considered pontification?
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
That is the percentage of home internet users that have broadband access right now - 12% (see recent internet.com survey for more details. Two-thirds of the rest "say" they have a 56k connection - they may have a 56k modem but I doubt if many actually get a true 50k+ connection with their ISP - in fact, I venture that many of those who could get 56K have now opted for DSL - since being within a certain radius of the switching station an office hub (or whatever the correct term for it is ...), more than likely had the option of affordable DSL.
Until the market is represented by at least 75% broadband saturation, I don't think ignoring the modem players is a wise choice for any game producing company. Granted, the figure last December was like 7%, so it almost doubled in a year - maybe next year it will be 25% - at any rate, it will be at least a couple of years ...
I think the broadband factor is more an issue with the 3D FPS games - if you have a good ISP and get latency of 200-300ms on a dial-up - you can engage in enjoyable multiplayer gaming ... Other factors for RTS games like Age of Empires/Age of Kings are memory and processor speed as all of those AI pathfinding algorithms eat up both - especially when the grand total unit deployment goes into the 1000's. One player with a P-200 and 64 meg can make the game lag as all others will have to wait while his/her box tries to "keep up" with the action and faster computers.
I don't understand why broadband isn't more available in metropolitan areas at least - here in the Phoenix area, I live in the city but do not have any option (except Sprint broadband which really doesn't count - don't know what piece of the 12% of that survey are represented here either ... the initial latency makes multiplayer gaming for RTS or FPS or anything except turn based games tedious ...) for DSL or cable modems. Cable modems are coming soon, but then they said that last year ... Meanwhile, the giant media conglomerates that are Qwest and Cox are laying people off while there are residents clamoring for high speed internet ... go figure ...
AZspot
Network games and web sites both need to be designed by people who pay attention to low-rate connections. Besides the fact that the Internet path itself gets rather slow quite often, modem-speed access indeed will remain the norm for some years, as many people have no choice. And there's nothing that the ISPs can do about it, because it's the telecomm carriers and cable companies who have the wires.
Why some folks just can't get broadband:
* To get a cable modem, the cable company has to have the upgraded Hybrid Fiber-Coax (HFC) plant, as well as a cable modem terminating system (CMTS) and the rest of the needed gear. This is becoming more common but lots of cable systems aren't there yet; for instance, the old TCI systems were real fixer-uppers.
* To get DSL, the subscriber must be within 15,000 wire feet or so of the ILEC central office. This rules out a lot of homes, even in cities, because COs are spaced wider than that in all but the densest places.
* DSL won't work if the subscriber is served by a Digital loop carrier (DLC) system, which is the norm for new installations more than 12,000 feet or so from a CO (and sometimes much closer). Somebody could theoretically put a DSLAM at the DLC location, but the economics and practicality are often poor; it's very very rare at present.
* DSL won't work if the wire is not in good shape. That's often the case. (Especially in former-NYNEX territory!)
* There still has to be a DSLAM; this is hard to justify in smaller COs. DSL's basically an urban service.
* Wireless bandwidth is expensive. Even if you could go faster than 9600 bps on cellular, you wouldn't like the price. Unlicensed wireless is "free" bandwidth, but the range is short, so again most people don't live in range of a provider (wireless ISP). And that requires an antenna location, decent near-line-of-sight path, etc.
So I have advised my consulting clients to design their web sites using a 9600 bps link! If it's usable at 9600, then it'll be grand for most folks. I really hate sites that are slow to load even on a cable modem or T1 link. And those are too too common -- the developers aren't designing for the real world, but for an indoor demo.
Do you have ANY idea what deployment costs are in rural areas for things like cable and DSL
It's not just rural areas. New York City, economic capital of the world, most populated city in the US, etc., still hasn't gotten full broadband penetration. There are places in the outer boroughs which still don't have DSL; keep in mind these areas have several million people living in a geographically miniscule space; a few square miles.
--
I don't even live in anything close to a bigger Canadian city; Winnipeg is the Kansas of Canada! What's more amazing is that communities as small as a thousand people or so, and several hundred miles away from any major center, are currently being added to our broadband networks!
Maybe all the Yanks that hopped on the dot-com millionaire bandwagon should have spent a tad more money on infrastructure, and a bit less on beamers....
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
500MHz Pentium III, or similar
520MB Free Hard Disk Space
OpenGL 3D Accelerator
Broadband Internet Access
NOTE: If cable or DSL is not available in your area, Mindfuck Software recommends our partners at Century 21 Realestate and monster.com to aid in your relocation. This may seem harsh, but it really is better for society for you to move away from your almost-paid-for 2-story house on 3 acres of land, and into a 2-bedroom apartment with crackhead neighbors who throw eachother into the wall at odd hours to the incessant beat of stompin'-loud Kid Rock. You won't regret it, and your LPB gaming peers will thank you.
We hope you enjoy the game, and wish you well for your adventures in the ghetto.
Kid-proof tablet..