Today in "why in my day..."

Not content with sticking their tentacles into every aspect of our lives like some kind of Lovecraftian elder monopoly, Amazon is now trying to be a gaming platform as well. Yeah, not only is this post going to be about video games-yes, again-and it's also going to be me weighing in on streaming services, so if you want to skip, I get it. Still there? Super.

Pictured: An artist's rendition of Amazon's business model.

After that Monster Energy thing,
they might want to lawyer up.

Anyway, they've announced a streaming video game platform called Luna. Yes, like the gendered granola bars-doesn't matter, Luna is a streaming video ga-huh? No, you're thinking of Google Stadia. I guess Amazon looked at that and said what if we did something like that, except it's exactly like that. Which is an interesting move given that Stadia has been something of a failure and Google's kind of gone radio silent about its future. In any case, Luna, like Stadia before it, is trying to make cloud-based streaming video games a thing. 

Of course, If they'd tried some experimental
new design, I'm sure I'd be calling them out
for that too, so no, they can't win here.

The idea is that you pay Amazon whatever money they haven't already extracted from you with Prime drone delivery, to stream video games directly to a device like a smart TV or a dongle. No game console or physical media required, although you can buy their controller which is infringe-ily similar to the Xbox gamepad and the Switch Pro Controller. According to their website, lengthy updates and downloads will be a thing of the past and you can "Experience gaming anywhere there's high-speed wifi."  

"What? America has the greatest
health care system in the world."

-The guy that runs Pfizer

And that brings me to my first issue here: high speed wifi. If you're anything like me, you live in the United States where high-speed wifi isn't always available or when it is it isn't necessarily consistent. Our wifi is only slightly better than our health care system which is to say, expensive and almost certainly not there when you need it. Mine goes out at least twice a day and the response from my internet provider-the only one available in my area-is basically "yup, that'll happen. Bill's due on the 24th." And while it's not quite the same thing as being unable to afford surgery, having your wifi go out mid-game sucks.

Ok, all that stands between you and old games
is finding a copy, and then removing decades of
corrosion from people blowing on the contcacts.

Maybe I'm just inherently suspicious of digital only gaming. Admittedly I'm someone who has hung on to and alphabetizes thirty year-old game cartridges, but still, there's something impermanent about streaming games and I just can't get behind it as a thing. And it's not just a hoarder mentality. Which again, not the end of the world, but we seem to be moving to a model where the streaming platform has complete control over access to gaming content and it just feels icky. Which physical games, all that stands between you and playing an old game is finding a used cartridge or a disc. But with Luna, if Amazon decides to de-list a game, it's just gone. 

Ok, second worst just behind
making Jeff Bezos even richer.

So I made a lot out of how Luna takes ownership out of the hands of the gamer and how dodgy wifi can be, but I also pointed out how similar it is to Stadia and it is, but there's also a couple differences. Stadia has sort of a combination "Netflix-like of gaming" set-up whereby you pay a subscription and have access to a selection of games or you can straight up buy them. With Luna I guess you're subscribing to channels. And while I'm not a fan of either model, it seems like this takes the worst part of their video streaming service and imports it to their gaming platform.

Truly those were barbarous times...

You know how you pay Amazon whatever per month for Amazon Prime, but sometimes you click on something you want to watch and it tells you you have to subscribe to goddamn Stars? That's what this is. You get the basic channel with the subscription, but then pay extra for other publisher's channels. So you're paying a subscription fee that grants you access to paying them additional subscription fees. It's kind of like how cable packages used to work, and is one of the many, many reasons people don't have cable packages anymore. 

Look, a lot of this is probably my crotchety, why in my day... attitude towards anything that attempts to upset the way gaming has worked since I first got in to it. Maybe this is the future of video games and it's just not for me. I felt the same way about MMORPG's and mobile gaming and look how those turned out. I mean, they're objective garbage, yes, but people seem to enjoy them, so what do I know?

Pictured: when I first got into gaming.