Article: When the Power Goes Out

I spent all last night up watching YouTube videos about the coming singularity, the day when man and machine become one, when we will be able to download our consciousness into a computer.  Fascinating stuff.

Also discussed was how the internet will evolve in the coming decades, how technology will follow Moore's Law through quantum computing, and how we'll soon have microchips in our brains.  Older videos mentioned fashionable augmented reality glasses, which is of course Google Glass right now.

I would still prefer it shoved right into my prescription glasses.

Then, today, the power went out.  Nothing dashes my hopes for a perfect futurist techno-utopia faster than the power going out.  As I type this, the power is back on, but my cable is still down, so I don't have internet access.  (Hence, this is posted a day late.)

I'm already at the point where I can't live without the internet.  I use it when I should be asleep!  What happens when I have microchip in my brain that connects me to everyone in the world, and the cable goes out then?  (Of course, even calling it cable at that point is just quaint.)

But let's bring this terrifying picture of an unstable matrix back to games; after all, that's what this blog is here for.  And we'll even step back from the future and come closer to the present.

Right now some of my favorite games are online.  I can't play them at this moment.  I recently saw a tweet that read (paraphrased) "Don't like streaming games?  Tough.  That's the way games are going."

My internet connection has always been unstable.  I am constantly booted off my MMOs because of connection failures.  Fortunately, for now, I can still play older games that are installed on my machine, no connection necessary.  

I think what the twit meant in the tweet above is that game developers are spending considerably more resources creating MMOs and online multiplayer games (that aren't massive), like Scrabble with Friends.  (Ahem.)  I doubt that "all" videogames will go that way, but it seems to even be a trend now in single-player games that you must have a live connection to the internet to play (often for no other reason than anti-piracy BS).

Of course there is absolutely zero reason to require a connection for a solitary game (and speaking of, I half expect Solitaire to require an internet connection soon), but it certainly seems reasonable for MMOs to require it.

But there is actually an interesting solution to this MMO connectivity issue.

Suppose I'm playing DC Universe Online.  There are distinct solo instances, and wide open worlds for both PVE and PVP combat.  Now, not much can be done in PVP if your internet connection sucks, but I submit that all other aspects of the game do not require a connection.

If my internet connection dies while playing DCUO, I am dumped out of the game with a picture of Brainiac (as if it's his fault, I imagine) saying I was disconnected.  Sometimes my disconnections only last a few minutes while I go reset my modem.

When a disconnection occurs, I do not immediately get booted.  First, the music dies.  Next, I notice the world is devoid of both other players and enemies.  Nothing is loading but the world geometry itself.  After a half minute of being lost in purgatory, I finally get kicked out.

But is it truly necessary for this to be this way?

What if instead, the world and enemies were installed on my computer (something is certainly installed on my computer already, taking gigs of space, so I wonder what that is if not the world).  That way if I am disconnected, I still get to play a single-player instanced version of the world I'm in.

My own computer would then save any data it's accumulated, such as completed missions, increased experience, and the like, and when I get my connection back, that data is sent to the servers.  It should be a seamless process I don't even notice unless I'm trying to chat with a fellow player who disappears on me.  (And since disappearing players is a common occurrence when logging off or switching servers or channels, I still might not suspect anything).

I'm sure it's a bit of a technical challenge from a networking and engineering standpoint, but I don't see why it should be the end of the world to make it work.

But anyway, until that works, if the power goes out again, there's always board games.

I just hope that when we have computer chips in our brains, a power surge doesn't make our heads explode.

Oops.