I Was Wrong About Game Streaming

For the longest time, I’ve been highly skeptical towards the idea of streaming a video game.

If you’re not familiar with the concept, the idea is that some super-powerful piece of hardware in a remote server farm is running the game, streaming the video to you, and sending back what the player inputs.

On the surface, you can see the appeal, for both the consumer, and the service. For the consumer, you have on-demand access to beautiful-looking games that don’t require you buy or build a potentially very-expensive device.

On the service side, you have a more stable set of device(s) for companies to test their games against, and, more cynically, in some cases at least, those companies can take even more ownership away from the person who purchased the product.

It’s this piece of the equation - the gradual degradation of personal ownership rights, alongside the technical issues I’ve often experienced - that kept me from ever considering these options seriously. The services I’d tried have generally been lackluster, even when it’s streaming from consoles or computers that are inside my own house.

So, when I found out that Baldur’s Gate 3 had been delayed on both macOS and PlayStation 5, and someone recommended GeForce Now as a solution, I was quite hesitant. But, on the flip side, I really wanted to play Baldur’s Gate 3. So I decided to try subscribing at the highest level - $20 a month - and see where it got me.

It’s worth pausing a moment to reflect on what I’m about to write next, because I still genuinely can’t believe how good the service works. It’s also worth describing, in brief, what the service actually is.

Unlike Stadia, Google’s doomed-from-conception attempt at game streaming, you are not buying your games from the company running the streaming service. You’re not even subscribing to a library of games, like Xbox Game Pass. You’re just getting remote access to the games you already own, or any games you buy in the future, generally through Steam. There’s supposedly some support for Epic Games Store, but I honestly haven’t tried it.

This was the first green flag for me. It may sound weird to pay $20/month just for the privilege of accessing games you already own, but consider: I’d have to subscribe for a hundred months - $2000 - to begin to reach the cost of an equivalent PC. That’s more than 8 years, which honestly, is about as long as any PC I’ve ever owned has lasted, anyway. Considering the price is cheaper if you pay for 6 months all at once, and considering that the machines you’re playing the games can be upgraded without having you to spend more money, and considering you’re no longer having to tweak any local system settings to get certain games to run - for me, at least, it’s been more than worth it.

There are drawbacks - most notably, a lot of games aren’t on there, from big developers, like Rockstar (Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Red Redemption), Square-Enix (Final Fantasy), From Software (Elden Ring, Dark Souls), presumably because these companies believe they should get a cut of your subscription to Nvidia, despite the fact that, you know, you’ve already paid them for the game you’re playing.

I’m realizing now I’ve not even mentioned the performance side of the equation, since that’s easily the most important part of any service like this. The convenience of having a huge library of existing games available to play on my MacBook is only relevant if the games themselves feel great to play.

And somehow? They do. They really do. During my multi-hour Baldur’s Gate 3 marathons, I can easily forget it’s not running locally, except for the fact that it looks gorgeous with all the settings maxed out, and the occasional connection hiccup that generally lasts only a minute or two.

While Baldur’s Gate 3 is the ideal sort of game for this service - the nature of the game is such that there’s almost nothing that involves any sort of precise input from the player - I also tried Cyberpunk 2077 and Monster Hunter Rise, both of which depend more highly on registering every input quickly and precisely, and both were also surprisingly playable.

It’s worth noting that all of this is also happening through T-Mobile’s 5G Home Internet, which makes the whole thing even more impressive to me. I can’t guarantee it will work as well for folks reading this, but if you have cable internet and a good router - especially if you can connect directly with ethernet - I’d be surprised if your experience wasn’t similar.

At the end of the day, the headline feature for me is convenience. In this way, GeForce Now is the perfect companion to my Steam Deck - most of the same games, paid for once, available in both a convenient handheld PC, or my laptop, depending on how, where, and when I want to Play the Video Game.

The next step is to find a reliable, convenient way to play these same games on my TV that doesn’t just involve plugging my laptop into it - I’m aiming for convenience, after all. I’m sure it’s out there, I just haven’t had the motivation to put together the pieces.

In fact, I’m going to stop writing this right now and look up the best options. Or, more likely, just play more Baldur’s Gate 3, which is a truly remarkable game that deserves its own post, at some point.

How much time and energy do you spend judging others?

Today, a friend of mine shared an entertaining photo of someone at the gym taking a selfie of herself making a “what the fuck?” face, and, more importantly, of someone behind her (face hidden) wearing - for lack of a better description - an amazing piece of full-body spandex:

Meow

I cannot include the specific photo here as it would only serve to diminish the point I will be trying to make, so I hope this description suffices.

This silly photo triggered something in me that I want to analyze, and explain why I had such a visceral reaction to such a harmless activity, and that requires a little background.

I’m a fat guy. Being a fat guy in society means being constantly subjected to the judgment of others, whether it’s subtle or overt. Diet culture screams at us, every day, that we are failures, and that we can overcome our personal failings if we simply adapt the fad diet or exercise routine of the week, while airplanes and movie theaters shove us into seats that virtually guarantee our temporary neighbors will come away angry at the very existence of fat people.

This post isn’t really about that, but more to set the stage for the reality in which I exist in. In the process of accepting myself as a fat person, I’ve come to pay more attention to the amount of time and energy humans spend judging other humans for choices that impact no one but themselves, and I’m still coming to terms with what exactly that means, but so far I’ve decided on:

1. Wow, what a waste of time and energy

2. There’s so much negativity in the world, and I want to do my best not to add to it

On the second point - this post is not to shame anyone who spends their time and energy judging friends or strangers. Lord knows I still do it, as I’m both still growing as a person, and I’m also a professional hypocrite. But I do think people should more often stop and ask themselves: why am I spending my time and energy talking about this? what am I putting out into the world?

To bring it back to the topic of the photo: does this really hurt anyone? Probably not. It’s even likely it was staged, and as a friend pointed out, someone wearing that outfit is probably not opposed to attention. For the sake of the rest of this argument, we’ll assume it was a photo taken of a stranger to mock them - because even if this specific photo wasn’t that, there are likely thousands, if not millions, of examples of photos where that was very much the intent.

Reflecting on my reaction to the photo reminded me of something Maintenance Phase host Aubrey Gordon was discussing once, which is, to paraphrase - “every fat person lives in fear that they will show up in some generic B-roll footage of fat people being played in the background of a news report about the ‘obesity epidemic’.” It doesn’t matter if your face is hidden if you recognize your own body, being presented as a subject for mockery.

Sure, the person in this photo, or similar photos, isn’t identified. No one is getting publicly doxed with their name attached. But what about the off-chance that the person sees it, and is hurt by the mockery - mockery so widespread it went from a gym in god-knows-where to a random Discord with a few friends in it. Is the possibility of hurting someone worth putting this out into the world? What’s the math equation that makes the risk acceptable?

I’m not going to say I constantly live in fear of people taking photos of me, a fat person, and sharing them around the internet, only for me to stumble across it some day and realize I’ve been mocked by thousands or even millions of random strangers. But the mockery of fat people is so prevalent, and worse, so accepted, that it’s also far from impossible. This is the reality in which I observe and reflect on behavior like this.

I do not think the person who took this photo is a bad person, and I certainly don’t think anyone sharing it is bad, either. There’s nothing about this specific photo that’s worth the time and energy I put into writing this, but I did feel like my own over-the-top reaction to it was worth analyzing and writing about, especially since this is something I’ve had in the back of my mind for months, is something I’m very much still working on, and is certainly also a topic I’ll return to.

If you take anything away from this, I’d ask you to pause, take a moment, and reflect before you say or share something negative about someone else - stranger or otherwise - and during that pause, ask yourself if the other person’s actions really impact you or others in any way, if it’s really worth the energy you’re about to spend, and how they would feel if they heard it.

Why "Tears of the Kingdom" Works For Me

I suspect it’s an impossible task to add anything to the discourse around The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but someone prompted with the thought:

It's odd that [no one has] made a serious attempt to explain what precisely we're missing out on, despite all the time spent talking about it

And my brain, being my brain, took up the challenge:

• First and foremost, these games are "adventure simulators" for me, the same way something like Dragon's Dogma or Elden Ring or even Monster Hunter are. Prepare for an adventure, go on an adventure, return from adventure and prepare for another, is a core loop that works really, really well for me - Tears of the Kingdom gives me a lot of the vibes I like from those sort of games without being completely inscrutable. There is friction, but the friction doesn't rely on me figuring out how to even to play.

• The physics sandbox is something I haven't really seen anywhere else. Other games have delightful physics interactions, but not expanded to the size of these open worlds. These interactions lead to fun, interesting experimentation that's delightful when it works and often hilarious when it doesn't.

• I appreciate the balance Tears of the Kingdom strikes between Ubisoft-style open worlds, where every possible POI is marked on a map for me, and Elden Ring-style open worlds, where there's not even a quest log. Not having POI marked for me helps the feeling of Going on an Adventure, where I'm the one discovering things, not being told where I will discover things.

• The Nintendo Polish and Nintendo Charm are on full-display here. It's wild to me to see a game with this much freedom that doesn't feel like it's held together with duct tape and good wishes. As for the Nintendo Charm - that either works for you, or it doesn't. It works for me!