Cloud-based gaming service OnLive said this week it would make its SDK and development tools available to indie game developers, as the company announces a weekend-long indie game promotion.
"Independent game developers are known for pushing the boundaries of creativity in the world of game design," said John Spinale, OnLive's VP of Games and Media. "By leveraging an open PC architecture, game developers can now release their game on an exciting new platform with minimal effort."
OnLive highlighted that through the service, indie developers can create PC games that will be playable on televisions once the MicroConsole TV adapter launches later this year, without porting the game to a proprietary game console.
There are a number of indie games already available on OnLive's service, including Dejobaan Games' AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, 2D Boy's World of Goo and Hidden Path's Defense Grid: Gold, among others. Indie games on OnLive this weekend are up to 75 percent off.
"OnLive has been great for Defense Grid: Gold," said Hidden Path CEO Jeff Pobst in a press release. "Not only is the game extremely fun to play on the service, it's also enjoyable to spectate other gamers playing live to see how they're beating various levels with unique solutions."
OnLive's spectate mode allows users to view other users' gaming sessions, even if they don't own that particular title. Joe Bentley, director of engineering at OnLive recently told Gamasutra that the service's spectate mode has become an unexpected marketing tool, as gamers essentially use the feature to shop for games.
"We're going to see things with OnLive that were simply not possible before," added 2D Boy co-founder Ron Carmel.
I don't see how it could lag the system. The server calculates the input from the player and renders the output and then sends that out put to multiple people. Now if there were 10,000 people all speculating the same play session, you could probably see something akin to a DDoS. But I very well doubt that will happen.
Yeah, it's quite seamless. Spectators drop in on my games every now and then. At worst, it makes me nervous because I feel like they're JUDGING MY SKILLZ.
I would hope there's some way to turn it off for this very reason. Sometimes you just want to play games away from the prying eyes of the world outside.
I just checked it out, out of curiosity, and it does appear that you can go to the privacy settings and choose to let just friends, anyone, or no one at all view gameplay.
