I wanted to get a general discussion going on the opinions of game streaming services. This is a potentially huge market and the big companies out there are really trying to break into this market. I personally use google stadia and love it, there is a slight amount of latency in movements but it feels no different than a larger dead zone to me.

I love the idea of game streaming as it brings more games to more platforms like Linux, macOS and mobile devices. I know the big argument against them is that you don’t own the games, but from my perspective, you don’t own the games on steam either, you own the right to play someone else’s game just like with Google stadia or Luna or xcloud. If you want to own an actual copy then you have to buy the game from a vendor like gog or itch.io.

So let me know your opinions on this market, do you think it’s good, bad, or somewhere in between and why? If you play on any of these services what are your thoughts and experiences? Has it worked well for you and do you see yourself using services like this in the future? I genuinely am curious as it’s a completely different mindset than what we’re used too and it can really disrupt a market that hasn’t seen proper innovation in years.

Do you like them? Hate them? Don’t care about them? Take pride in them?

What do you consider good/bad achievements?

Do they affect how you play games?

Do you feel you have to get most/all of them?

What games have used them to novel effect?

Anything else you want to say about the topic is fair game as well. This is an open door for any discussion related to achievements.

About ten years ago, Sony promised they'd change how we play games. With the launch of the Playstation Vita, they showed us a world in which one could start playing a game at home on your big powerful console, and then you could take it with you in the form of cross-play, where your saves synced via the cloud and you could play the Vita version right where you dropped off. And of course, for games that didn't have a Vita version, there was always the option of streaming your games.

Of course, we know how well that worked out. There were maybe 5 games where you could buy both versions of the game at once, and the majority of the games that supported cross-play required you to buy the same game twice. Streaming is still what everyone's pushing today, but in many places (coughAmericacough) there isn't a good enough connection to stream games with a good experience - especially if it's got twitchy gameplay.

Time has passed and many companies have began to offer a service model for games - subscribe to a program, and you get free access to games. And many of these services have some sort of cross-play component to them, where you get access to multiple platforms, or even with streaming versions, but they all have their downsides.

But it turns out that one company offers a gaming service that actually does offer each of their games in native versions across computers, consoles, and phones, has cross-play support, and doesn't have any of the downsides of streaming, and it's from a company that most people don't associate with gaming - especially when it comes to computer games. I'm speaking, of course, about Apple Arcade.

Sure, it all only works on Apple hardware, and the console part is a bit of a stretch (who actually owns an Apple TV?), but it works remarkably well. And unlike a number of other systems I have tried, it works seamlessly - you can save your game on your mac, launch your game on your iPhone, and instantly be playing your game. And the higher-end games with nice 3D graphics actually do look remarkably better on the big screen.

Of course, the selection of games is much different than any other games service, but I find myself surprised at how many games I legitimately want to play. Sure, there are a lot of 'iPhone' style casual games - right now they just released a bunch of previously released iPhone games cleaned up and stripped of monetization schemes - but I view that as a positive thing - sometimes you just want something simple to pass time with that doesn't need to take space in your brain. But at the same time there are also bigger and more aspiring titles available. There's a new action game from PLATINUMGAMES with an Okami-like artstyle, a brand new RPG from Mistwalker built on top of dioramas, and complex adventure games like Beyond a Steel Sky.

Apple arcade, is, however, missing one notable meta-genre from it's library - Triple-A games. And honestly, I kind of love it for that. The majority of the games companies represented are independent, and that means that many of them are going to be able to offer me new types of gameplay or narratives that you won't get from the big guys. What other service is going to offer experiences like Assemble With Care? And from an ethical point of view, I'd rather reward independent creators who are pushing out these high-quality pieces of work than giant companies who are famous for exploiting their workers.

While Apple Arcade obviously won't be a good choice for everyone since it's limited to Apple hardware, and if you're already in Apple's ecosystem, you probably already know about it (they're surprisingly aggressive at marketing their free trial - which is actually what got me to write this in the first place). I had originally written them off as all casual games, but with the last big release of games it's got some pretty fantastic releases. It's worth trying if you've only got an iPhone, but it's more than worth it if you've got a recent Mac or Apple TV.

It's Covid days and I am sure all of us who play Pen and Paper RPG's (watup, nerds) have found the experience incredibly lacking.
The way we communicate via Discord etc, has to be incredibly different from IRL conversations. Its frustrating when the core element of RPG's is the conversations, the chat, the small talk, the adlib and the silly jokes.
The way we talk IRL is so different because we can discern the different sources, we can listen more or less to different people, we can interrupt and add things. Conversations via Discord is more like listening to a speech, and then replying. IRL gaming and the conversations that crop up are more like actual human chatting - taking a joke, building on it, having it taken from you etc etc. (the way me and my friend talk is so natural, we know each other well enough to be able to discern the relevant from the irrelevant - the bits we can tag on to, and the bits we need to leave alone)

What I was thinking was to see HOW we talk in gaming, and how that could be mimicked SOMEWHAT in Discord etc.

My idea was to create a set of icons/low quality videos arranged around a table placement, that you can then focus on. Like a mouse controlled object that indicates what part of the table you focus on and how much. Just like a human would by turning her head this way or that to focus on one person talking in a group, or leaning in towards that source to indicate how much she listens to that unique source. By having a physical placement you can focus on an edge of "the table" and then lean in towards one source - and lean out to listen to all.

All other listeners can see your focus, the way you turn towards a source and be able to change their communication to fit.

So imaging having your "icon"/video at the bottom, the table sorted in a half circle shape above and your "focus" in the middle. If you pull it to its "lagrange point" (a snapping midpoint so its easy to find) you are listening to all. By dragging it towards one end you are focusing more on that person and the people around it, as a circle. You can see others focus, by coloured lines focusing more or less on an end or another.

My idea is to abuse the already available 3D audio effects existing and use that to put your focus towards one end or another, muting and muffling audio as your focus move across the table to be able to somewhat mimic the way we as human listen.

The social order of an RPG session, with the DM being the natural focus at times means that that focus can happen naturally either through focus, or simply silence. With it you can find the focus of others as an indicator of whether you are committing a faux pas or not, just like in real life when people pointedly may look directly towards another source.

Here's the task: pretend you're a professor! You have to do the following:

• Choose a focus for your class on gaming (with a snazzy title if you like)
• Choose the games that you, as a professor, will have your class dive into in order to convey key concepts
• Explain why each game you chose ties into your overarching exploration

Your class can have any focus, broad or specific: level design in first-person shooters; the history of pixel art; the psychology of non-linear narratives; the use of sound effects in mid-2000 platformers; the limitations of turn-based systems in tabletop strategy games, etc. Anything goes, and any forms of gaming are valid!

After choosing your specific focus, choose games that you would put on your syllabus as a sort of "required playing" for students, and talk about why you've chosen each item and what it brings to the table. If you decide to choose, say, NetHack and The Binding of Isaac for your class on "Roguelikes, Roguelites, and the Fallacy of the Berlin Interpretation", discuss how those particular games illustrate some of the key concepts you want to convey to your learners.

While I'm intending this to be serious and straightforward, I also like the idea of people having fun with it, so feel free to come up with some less serious or more entertaining classes. I'd love to see the outline for course that explored, say, the history of exploding barrels or an investigation of taste levels in the fashion of JRPG outfits.

Here's the background...
So, I tend not to play video games at all any more (not for at least 15 or 20 years). My teen daughter wants to get a Playstation gaming console...but it seems less about playing and more about socializing with her friends. Her friends - while i promised my partner not to call them 'idiots' - are not really the best decision-makers and they're quite affluent (and we definitely are not affluent), so their poor choices usually never impact them. (I think it is less about being teens, and more about them being rich, entitled poor decision makers, because my daughter and a few other poorer friends are actually good kids who know that we can not get all the things.) Here's an example: all of my daughter's rich friends will ask their parents to buy them widget X, and so of course my daughter wants one so she can connect with these rich teens. For these rich kids, after they inevitably abandon widget X, there is no issue; they merely drop them off in one of the rooms in their mini-mansions. But for me, i can not always afford to buy widget X and then have my daughter abandon stuff in our little, meager but love-filled house. (Please if possible let's avoid the topic of how I'm raising my daughter, because all of the parents of us poorer kids in town have the exact same issues with our kids.) Now, we come to the part about my daughter wanting a playstation...I don't mind saving up for a PlayStation - especially if she'll use it...However, since she really only wants it to socialize with her rich friends via a couple of games, i was thinking on getting a PC/gaming rig (not as expensive as PS or some sort of AlienWare) instead of the dedicated gaming console, but still plenty usable for some games...So that, after some time if she abandons it (because for example her friends have migrated to other avenues of socializing), i can always re-purpose the machine. In my mind it seems a more worthwhile investment. (I'm a software guy mostly, but over the decades, almost every machine i have/own has been franken-built by me...so i know just enough hardware.) Now, if I go the route of a PC/gaming rig, can i just sign her up for online gaming accounts like PlayStation Network, and that will suffice for her to use her PC but still connect, say via PSNetwork, with her friends playing PS games?? (To help, i should clarify the games these teens play are fortnight, minecraft, and grand theft auto...I think GTA does not support in game chat/comms with friends, though i could be wrong.)

So, is it possible for me to sign up my daughter on an online gaming account - like PS Network - that would allow her to communicate with hr friends? And, if so, which gaming network should I set up an account, PS Network, Steam, etc.??? Thanks in advance for any suggestions!!!

EDIT: This is now solved thanks to @Amarok! Solution is here. Changing the refresh rate from 60 Hz to 120 Hz fixed it.

My husband and I recently upgraded our TV to a Samsung Q70, and I have started experiencing an odd issue, visible in this video here.

The Issue

There's a horizontal section across the entire bottom of the screen that seems to be refreshing later than the rest of the TV. The game is running on a PC hooked up to the TV via HDMI, and the TV is running on game mode. This issue did not happen on our last TV (a 10-year-old Visio that I don't remember the model number of).

The Oddness

• It doesn't happen on the desktop or in video inputs.

We've been watching YouTube and Hulu through a Shield TV that we also have hooked up, and this issue isn't present in any of those, nor is it visible when I'm using desktop applications on the TV through the PC.

• It only happens in certain games.

The video is from Trackmania 2: Lagoon, where it is always present. Meanwhile, it is not present at all in Trackmania (2020). Likewise, I've been playing 428 Shibuya Scramble where it shows up in the exact same way in the exact same area, but it does not exist in Distance or Rogue Legacy, for example.

• It does not respond to v-sync.

I've tried toggling v-sync on and off, both through the game itself and forcing it through my video card. Neither alleviated the issue. The display looked the same whether or not v-sync was turned on or off.

I'm looking for any guidance anyone can give me, especially if this is a hardware issue with the TV itself, since I'm still in the return window.

Folks, I´m going crazy over here. My social interactions are extremely limited. Online gaming has been a timesaver, but my friends are not always available (I can´t even really work because both my computers broke down).

I play on the PS4 nights and daw, on the GMT-3 time zone, but that´s flexible. Some of the online games I have / can play:

• Path of Exile
• Rocket League
• Destiny 2
• Torchlight 2
• A Way Out
• Fifa 19
• GTA V
• Overcooked
• Doom
• Borderlands 2
• Titanfall 2
• Brawlhalla

My username on PSN is goombatrooper22.

Post your platforms and available games!