Multiplayer games all suffer from the limits of centralized server infrastructure, centralization limits the size and makes it dependant on the capital game developers have. This benefits large game companies that need to cater to the lowest common denominator of players and so the quality of content drops.
Do you think maidsaife decentralized infrastructure would enable game developers to make decentralized game servers, making them more robust and increasing their capabilities? If there is no central server, its capabilities can’t limit the number of accepted players, if a player is considered as a node that is a server and a player at the same time, that would potentialy make game servers size dependant on the players willing to play, instead on the capital that the company has for hiring servers. If this is possible it surely means a great leap in the game history development.
At a former WoW (World of Warcraft) addict, I completely know where you’re coming from. Lag is a game killer. We are discussing some ground breaking ideas, using “pop-up servers.” We combine that with node consensus.
Since the Network is just one giant server. I expect the game itself will need to change the way it is structured. Online games are server/client. We need to make it server/server with “pop-up server” being the mediator/referee. This is a BIG challenge! If we are successful, we will usher in a new era of online gaming.
I think this is basically the same as localized blockchains, maybe they could even perform that function?
If the blockchain prohibits certain mutations in the network (like doublespend) any particular game could just add their own local rules, but the problem they always had is already solved with the blockchains (doublespend is the same problem as duping in games)…
Perhaps it could be modified to work on maidsafe, or maybe it has some components that could be useful.
Facebook is also planning something. Both facebook and High Fidelity have people on their teams from the core creators of Second Life, and they have both stated they want to make a virtual world, or a virtual world platform, that can scale to billions of users. If facebook will do some collaboration with High Fidelity, try to buy them, or just roll their own solution, remains to be seen. It seems both facebook and High Fidelity are imagining similar business models, where they are identity providers that enable you to use the same identity across multiple virtual worlds, and “DNS” providers selling addresses to virtual worlds and perhaps virtual items and avatars.
@intrz This looks very promising, Scalability of virtual enviroments seems like something thats necessary right now, I hope maidsafe can make it happen.
High Fidelity looks like a pretty good exemplary application. The tools and performance the safe network would be required to provide for this system would carry over to many other applications that have been discussed.
Also, if the network can make something like High Fidelity work, it proves it has the performance characteristics to rival anything we have now. High Fidelity might even be THE killer app for the network. I have mentioned it before, but “Halting State” by Charles Stross is a good fictional example of what this sort of gaming infrastructure could become.