Satellite Internet and Online Gaming: Does It Work?

Online gaming is one of the fastest growing trends in the world right now. With games such as Runescape boasting subscriber numbers of around a million and World of Warcraft exceeding 7 million active members, the total number of MMOG subscriptions is verging on the absurd, quickly approaching the 14 million mark worldwide[6/06, mmogchart.com]. This tremendous growth in the popularity of the online gaming industry has, in part, been fueled by the accessibility of high-speed broadband internet. A high-speed connection allows for a much more enjoyable game-play experience. Everyone knows that online games work exceptionally well on DSL and Cable internet connections, but what about the newer high-speed service satellite internet? As satellite internet is becoming more readily available and cost effective more and more rural dial-up customers are making the switch to cash in on the faster speeds and always on access. But, when it comes to online gaming many are concerned that their game-play experience will be less satisfactory, if they can even connect to play at all.

The reason for this concern is the issue of latency. Latency is an expression of how much time it takes for a packet of data to get from one designated point to another. This is direly important when it come to on-line gaming in that latency translates into the time that it takes from the moment that a button is pushed to when the action is performed in the game. Often this can mean the difference between life and death. With DSL and Cable the response time is almost immediate, being between 50milliseconds-150milliseconds. The latency for satellite internet is between 600milliseconds-800milliseconds. This may sound like the end of online gaming for someone who has just made the switch to satellite internet but it is not. Although this degree of latency does all but rule out first-person shooters there are a good number of MMOGs that operate well over a satellite internet connection. And, although the effects of latency can never be completely eliminated, there are ways in which to improve upon them. The simplest way to do this is by speeding up the way that one's computer handles and responds to information being transferred through the connection and by increasing the total amount of available bandwidth. Some operating systems have built in reserves on bandwidth that are non-essential to the functionality of most web applications, see link for a tweak http://www.wildblue.cc/wbforums/showthread.php?t=3323 .

By eliminating non-essential services i.e. bandwidth hogs that the average user never utilizes and dedicating more physical resources to the most used application can help tremendously. Minimizing the effects of latency down to the bare minimum allowed by the laws of physics enables one to play more online gaming that was before not workable and also speeds up the responses of other games that already do work. So, although there are limitations to on-line gaming over satellite internet there are also ways to improve upon game-play responsiveness and many games that will play well without operating system tweaks. Below is a list of online games for both console and PC that, according to subscribers that have tested and played them, do and do not work over satellite internet. This is not a definitive list of games guaranteed to work, so be cautious as results may vary.

What Works

Xbox/Xbox360/PS2/Handheld Games:

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter

Battlefield 2: Modern Combat(for me anyway doesn't for some others)

Perfect Dark Zero

All Tony Hawk games

Mario Kart DS

Call of Duty 2

Medal of Honor: Rising Sun

Socom 3(mixed results)

Socom 2(so-so)

Nascar 06 total team control(works kinda)

Rainbow Six Series(Host boots for high ping usually, But CO-OP and 2 V 2 work well)

Splinter Cell: Double Agent

PC Games:

Runescape

Asheron's Call

Everquest

Everquest 2

World of Warcraft

Star Wars Galaxies

Dark Age of Camelot

Roma Victor

Eve Online

Star Wars: Empire at War

Dungeon and Dragons online

Warcraft3

GuildWars

City of Heroes(very difficult to connect to the patch server..other than that it works fine)

Final Fantasy XI

Contract Jack

Auto Assault

Aces High Online flight sim

Trackmania

WarRock Beta

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast

StarPeace

America's Army

Red Orchestra

Diablo 2

Titan Quest

F.E.A.R.

Postal 2

What doesn't work or is not enjoyable

Xbox/Xbox360/PS2/Handheld Games:

Far Cry Instincts Predator

Halo 2

NBA Live 2006

Quake 4

Prey Demo

Ratchet and Clank: Deadlocked

PC Games:

Star Craft

BattleField 2 Demo

Call of Duty 1&2

Battelfield2

Band of Brothers

C&C Generals

UT2004(playable..not enjoyable)

Ragnarok

Prey Demo

Civ 4

Battlefield 2142

Online Games

The term "online games" principally refers to those games that connect players through a line, this connection may be through a local lan or through the internet. Many game genres have developed for multiplayers. You have first person shooter games, first realized with Doom, real time strategy games, the most popular one being DOTA, the cross-platform games for which the code runs on dll packages that are common for several or all operating systems, browser games which run on internet browsers and MMORPG which is a sophisticated browser game that needs high-speed dsl to run. Online gaming has become one popular medium for meeting age and interest peers.

The Diablo Series of Online Games

The Diablo series of online games (I, II and the up and coming III) is medieval hispanic in theme. It is a battle and action MMORPG which was first released on November 30, 1996 by Blizzard Entertainment. Versions I and II are in 2D. Version II is divided into 5 episodes with increasing difficulty. The player's mission is to defeat the three diabolic brothers; Mephisto, Diablo and Baal who are encountered in episodes 3, 4 and 5 respectively. The player can create his character from 7 role types; the amazon, the assassin, the necromancer, the barbarian, the paladin, the sorceress and the druid.

Character Building in Online Games

Following the success of Diablo I and II, many other online games were produced and achieved great popularity. Most of the successful new MMORPG's based their game philosophy on Diablo. A game character increases his level by gaining experience points normally done by killing monsters. Character statistics are generally divided into strength, intelligence, dexterity, life. Character statistics may receive different names in different games. Intelligence is usually associated with spiritual force or mana. Some games make a distinction between agility and dexterity. Each role type in the game needs to build one special statistic to be effective in game play.

Online Game Bosses

MMORPG's normally have storylines which were used to create the game maps and character roles in online games. A game map is a virtual location in the game characterized by having one set of monsters more or less belonging to the same level of difficulty. These monsters occupy that location and the player increases his levels by defeating these monsters. For each location, there is normally one outstandingly strong and well defended monster whose life statistics can run up to the tens of millions. This is the boss of that map. Some bosses can be killed by a single player and some require the players to group into a party to kill it.

Online Game Virtual Incentives

Like the real world, online game worlds also have their economy and their monetary units. Very often, wealth is measured by silver or gold. Diablo II uses gold as its medium of business. Other games invent their own currency; Granado Espada uses vis to conduct transactions. At the lower character levels, the player acquires money by selling items dropped by his monster kills. The value of the items is proportionate with the level of the monster of enemy killed. Once in a while the player manages to pick up items with exceptional attributes, a powerful weapon or very strong defensive gear or items with great magical power.

Online Game Group Play

Many online games feature a group play module where players can assemble in groups for a specially difficult task; to kill a boss monster perhaps. These groups may be variously called parties or squads. Credits for monster kills are shared among the members of the group. The game may provide various options for sharing item drops. Items are usually awarded to the group member who deals the strongest blow. These group escapades are often assembled for quests. Quest items are usually granted to all players in the group, regardless of who dealt the strongest blow. Some players prefer to play alone to avoid squabbles over items but in general playing in a group speeds up the acquisition of experience points.

Online Game Guild Formation

The players of an online game may be given the option to join clans, or guilds or families. These clans have a grand master who has different titles in different games.

Acquiring membership in a clan or guild usually awards bonus statistics to the individual player. These statistics may be different from the normal ones determining the individuals physical and magic powers. Clan membership is an advantage to a player because he can ask for the help of his clan mates in performing quests, sell his good items to them or buy items from them more easily than if he were to make a similar request to other individual players.

Online Game Player Control

The prevalent policy in online games is "one player at a time." Although a player can create as many as 20 characters for a single player account, in nearly all cases, he can only play with one character at a time. Granado Espada, however, popularized the concept of controlling many characters at a time. You can control from one up to three players in this game. The obvious implication to this is that the game experience points are shared among the three characters. Limiting play to only one character in games like this speeds up the experience gain for that character but makes self-defense a little bit harder to negotiate.

Making Money with Online Games

There are many players who have made playing online games their profession. For a diligent and consistent player, money can be made selling game currency, game items and even game accounts for real life currency. This practice has sparked a major controversy between players and gaming companies which involved some internet merchant sites. The game companies maintain that the registered player of their game doesn't really own the account he made. This goes for everything that account encompasses, characters and items included. They hold that the player merely has the right to play that account by virtue of having registered. He has no right to sell it or anything associated with it.

Ways to Get Around Item Sale Issues in Online Games

Ever since the scandal involving a prominent Internet marketing site, selling online game items has stopped being conducted in the open market. Players now resort to contacting prospective buyers on line or through the chat module provided by the game. Although some game management policies penalize using the game chat for real money transactions, it is still largely used for such purposes. It's a confused issue because some players claim that some insiders of management, specially game masters, often transact their items for real money. This is probably the reason that the game chat has become a safe mode for professional players to make money.

The Future of Video Games

I’ve recently been thinking about where video games could be going in the future. I’m hoping to work in the game industry one day after I’ve finished university study and I’ve been wondering about it a lot. What do I want to see happen in the future? Well I may not have too many answers right now, but I have come up with a few ideas that I think may come into ‘play’ in the not too distant future.

Firstly forget Virtual Reality, as we know it. They’ve tried VR goggles and they made a lot of people sick in doing so. It’s probably never going to work very well in its current form. They’re still around and you can still buy them but they really don’t seem to be taking off. It will probably take a lot to get people totally immersed and involved in a new form of game play. It’s threatening to lose touch with the outside world and the people around you aren’t going to appreciate it much either. The Sci-fi neural implants are also both a long way off and not likely to be accepted by a majority of the general populace without some severe marketing and luck. I for one am not planning on going through brain surgery just to have a computer attached to my head. In fact I never want anyone to able to plug into my brain.

A technology that was brought to my attention by a zealous presenter at the local ‘Science and Technology Centre’ (a sort of science museum aimed at making science fun for children and juvenile adults such as yours truly) is that of ‘Augmented Reality’. Augmented Reality is essentially the overlaying of virtual elements onto the real world, such as a pair of transparent glasses that can display certain elements over the top of what is actually there. I agree with the presenter in that this could indeed have some awesome potential. Forget all the socially beneficial applications such as workmen being able to view underground pipes before digging, think about it from a games point of view. This technology could provide gamers with the ability to run around looking like complete idiots shooting at things that aren’t actually there and that no one else can see, kind of like in the film ‘They Live!’ The upside to this is that it would be a lot of fun. A group of people from the University of South Australia created the ‘ARQuake’ project, [http://wearables.unisa.edu.au/projects/ARQuake/www/], merging the classic shooter Quake with this Augmented Reality technology. Again, this technology may not ever become overly popular, but it would be entertaining to play with.

Technology has driven the games industry for a long time with new games always trying to keep one step ahead of the competition. It started way back at the dawn of technology and it continues to this day. 2D graphics gave way to 3D and 3D is becoming ever better. Graphics are starting to lose the ability to impress like they once did. The step between Quake 2 and 3 was amazing, but DOOM 3 while being visually very impressive isn’t leaps and bounds ahead of its competitors in the same way new games used to be. 2D graphics encountered a similar problem; there comes a point where you just can’t do much more with graphics technology. It is this that turns graphics from striving for technological achievement to becoming art. It is my hope that we will start turning away from tech demos and return to game play and making great entertainment. Games such as Zelda: The Wind Waker or The Sims that strive to show greater depth of character through simplifying the game enough to portray emotions will hopefully become more common (and more fun… but that’s just one person’s view…). Technology plays a certain part in the conveying of emotions and story but it’s quite hard to focus on everything at once. When technology is easier and less essential to game sales we’ll hopefully see an increase in games that cast a lasting impression.

Somewhat unfortunately the rise of the ‘Casual Gamer’ will probably lead to more simplistic games being released. While personally I would love to see depth of story and characters, there are a significant number of players out there who want to pick up a game for twenty minutes or so, have a bit of fun, and then put it down until another time. These gamers are generally less interested in the latest greatest technology and more interested in a ‘fast food’ kind of entertainment that satisfies the moment, despite the lack of quality or the lasting effects. Hopefully the two game types can co-exist peacefully although recently it has been seen that some developers are cutting down on some of the planned depth of a title in order to accommodate the more casual gamer.

As technology pushes forwards boundaries are slowly being broken down between systems. We saw the Bleemcast a few years back enabling the running of Playstation games on the Dreamcast, and the PC is able to run almost anything given the right emulation software. Consoles are able to emulate other consoles and new consoles are being announced that promise the ability to play PC games. The Xbox 2 is reported to have a model in planning that comes in a PC case and with the ability to run both PC software and Xbox software. Macs can emulate Windows software and vice-versa. We’ll probably start seeing less of a distinction between consoles and PCs as the price of technology continues to drop and consoles continue to become more and more powerful and able to compete with the more expensive computers. Ideally we’ll see a single platform come into prominence so that everything can be run without purchasing a copious number of different machines, although that does have a downside in that it can establish a monopoly for one particular company.

The technology price drop and increase in power has also lead to more powerful hand-held machines than before. Real games, not just simple toys are now available for the portable market. The advent of PDAs and mobile phones with the ability to play games raises awareness of portable gaming and new competitors are starting to get in on the field that was once primarily dominated by Nintendo’s GameBoy. There is a new product, the gp32, that can run many different emulators and hence, many different system’s games (including some PC games).

I can’t say for sure what’s going to happen but these are just a few ideas that I’ve had recently. Hopefully the games industry will continue to strive towards new heights with new and interesting game play, stories, characters and ideas. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens in the next few years.