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.