Volnus

Privacy’s probably the most important aspect of all online activities these days, and I think that’s the real selling point for VPNs. Like the biggest advantage of a VPN is to stop other companies from tracking you. One of the biggest issues is there’s a lot of ad-tracking these days, where companies like Google and Facebook will collect data and plaster ads and recommendations. Like sure, websites ask you to click a button about their cookies policy, but that’s only to accept that other websites can track you; so you really would need a VPN if you don’t want to be tracked. And when you’re playing an online game, you really don’t know what’s hidden from you.

And I guess the other added benefit is to not be bound by a country’s regulation; I guess that’s where having more access to games to play comes into play, but I mainly prefer this benefit for bypassing blocked YouTube videos.

I would agree that esports have been quite popular since the lockdown. With less people traveling and more people staying at home, there’s more time to play competitively or watch other people play competitively. I am a bit skeptical about esports becoming a career however; I think it’s a good venue for having fun in a community with other competitors, but I just can’t imagine anyone making a long-term career out of it. I’ve always seen it as a fad, but perhaps esports could last longer than most fads can, especially with games ingrained in today’s world.

As a person who grew up technically along side technology, I can really agree to the fact that E-sport is one of the most popular way to become more than in gaming than just playing. Couldn’t agree more that E-sport even became more popular during this whole Lockdown since a lot of people are forced not to go out and do almost everything online, including entertainment and their competitiveness.

Could be a great opportunity, but I find it unfortunate that it’s only for year 9 and year 10 students. But at the same time, it does give a lot of insight to students that don’t know what they want to do when they grow up. Some students blindly enter universities with the hope of aspiring to become game developers and then wallow in fear with the amount of stuff they learn (a lot of material being stuff not related to game development), when they really should be looking for career paths to what they do enjoy.

Of these advances, I think AI is the most interesting. Games can often be predictable, but AI gives more characteristic and charm to NPCs in any game. With games becoming more realistic, it wouldn’t be surprising to see AI also follow that realism, where you can interact with NPCs and they can behave more realistically.

I’m not too interested in cloud gaming though. It’s good that it exists for people that might be interested, but it just feels weird not owning a game, but instead only having access to a service. But one advantage I can definitely imagine is cloud gaming being highly accessible for gamers with low spec PCs, therefore not having to rely on CPU, GPU, or Internet latency.

AI-enabled cheating will occur, but I don’t think it will be widespread in a way that’ll be disruptive to gaming. I mean there’s already a bunch of AI projects that exist all over the Internet, including some like DeepMind’s AlphaGo for playing the board game Go and AIs for computer chess. And AI for computer chess doesn’t deter from chess tournaments from happening; in fact, just the opposite. Having a neural network train an AI for computer chess is actually a good way to teach someone to play competitively and strategically. I think AI will be more useful in the hands of game developers than ne’er-do-wells.

I generally buy gift cards for online games, since they’re convenient to pick up while visiting the checkout lane at a store, but PayPal’s pretty convenient as well. I have Google Opinion Rewards (recommend it for iPhone, since the app on Android devices only transfer rewards to Google Play instead) linked to my PayPal, so then I could build up cash on PayPal and just buy any game I want.

Not a fan of Stadia (especially since Google operates it), but PlayStation Now seems the most eye-catching. Considering that most games these days cost $60, paying $60 for a yearly subscription with a library of hundreds of games seems like a pretty good deal. And as much as companies like Microsoft, Google, or Amazon might make every move to enter the video gaming market, you really can’t go wrong with an already established video game company like Sony.