Future For Rural Gamers?

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Alive.777

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Good high speed, low latency internet connections are prized in the gaming community, but what of us rural gamers who are stuck on satellite or dialup? Now, the problem is not being able to game online or not, it's more so the GAME UPDATES!!! They are a nightmare. Steam is a huge cultrate for forcing you to update your game regardless of whether you think it is necessary. If you don't update, you can't play. This has been a huge problem for those of us with 256/64 kbps satellite connections or a 56kbps dialup modem. I can't play my $100 copy of Modern Warfare 2 because stupid Steam needs to update it, I left it for a full day and came back to find out it was just touching 6% complete.



This same problem occurred when I purchased a brand new shiny copy of Just Cause 2. It took forever to update and about 4 attempts to do so. It really pains me to buy any Steam games anymore, fearing that it will demand a huge update like Modern Warfare 2. I fear that soon, high speed internet connections will be needed to play any game, let alone update it. Also, I hate it how some game producers focus all there resources on making their game's multiplayer really good, and just throw in a crap single player mode like Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Its single player campaign makes little sense, and yet the multiplayer is perfected and totally awesome.



System updates are also a problem when the file sizes get big. I CAN, download the latest 82mb ATI driver in about 1 hour and 30 mins. That isn't so bad but as technology becomes more advanced, drivers are only going to get bigger. I really enjoyed the time where you could go pick up a game from your local EB Games shop, punch in the CD key and just play it, No need for any updates or online DRM's. By all means, Steam is a great program but its updating service drags it down. It could actually see more people pirating just to avoid the updates, this can be a serious issue. What producers need to do is release patches in smaller sections. It can takes me way longer to update a game than usual due to dropouts. Game producers need to understand that no all their customers have high speed internet available to them.



If they make games more internet friendly then I am sure they would see more happy gamers which = more $$$. Myself and many other rural gamers just don't want to see all games in the future needing fast internet connections. We already pay our monthly fee for the internet, we don't want to use it all up on updates. I hope something is done about this soon.

Would you guys agree?
 
I hear ya on that one, I can't even sign into XBL due to me being on a satellite based ISP, and mine blocks bittorrent for the most part, ever try patching a game with an ISP that does that? The only way is to use a VPN with an encrypted connection, and most games, you can't use your own client, you MUST use theres.

To top it off, I have a daily bandwidth cap, 500mb, I go over that, my connection gets cut into 1/5th its normal speed, and it has a lower priority on w/e they use for QOS.

The "Always on" required stuff is also bullcrap, last time I tried a game that required that, I said bye bye to my downloading for two days because in 3 hours, my download was capped.


I don't mind these large updates, but, I also stay away from steam, if I need something over 100mb, I just schedule a download of the patch files for the only time I can use w/e amount of bandwidth needed, and that's a VERY small window of 5 hours in the dead middle of the night.
 
Hangon...

This: Australia to invest $31 billion in broadband | Reuters
Compared to: UK Governments 2Mb Broadband USC Will be Equivalent to Dialup Speeds − ISPreview UK

I know where i would rather live. That said, i totally feel sorry for you. I totally HATE my 2mb DSL. The worst thing about the entire infrastructure is that, whilst i hate to label people, people living in inner city areas are those who are less well off, yet those are the ones provided with cable and fiber services. Everyone who is better off living in nicer more rural areas get no good services. So people who can afford it cant get it and people who cant generally afford it can get it. Yeh thats a spectacularly good idea. Atleast in my country the Labour government who supported the working class are out and middle class Conservative party are in and might sort things out :grin:

That made me sound so stuck up :p I'm not, i think there should be universal access. But the middle class are so left out in this country at the mo.
 
Yeah, that stupid, "NBN invest $31 billion in fibre across the country" You see, in Australia, the government does what will get the most money. This is a problem and it shows in the NBN plan. Towns and cities in australia that already have Cable and ADSL available to them are getting the Fibre Optics layed by NBN. The Rural areas that need better internet aint gettin nothing!!! This really makes me angry. The towns already have good internet.ect so why should they need even faster internet? Its all messed up.
 
^The problem is there's ~1000 people maybe in rural areas? :p Compared to millions in the cities. Is it really worth spending a few tens of millions more just to hook up some town in woopwoop with uber internets? The cities and their surrounding suburbs are by FAR the majority of the internet users in Australia. I'm thinking more than 95%. So really, I think they've made the right choice.

That being said, the NBN is still going to take at least another 6-8 years before it reaches me, so it means **** all as far as I'm concerned.
 
I sorta agree with you SOULphIRE but they should atleast do something for us rural users, instead of keeping us on satellite and wirless. Sat is incredibly expensive to run and wirless is usualy congested from my experience. I wish they could do something for us :(

Btw, iam like 1 km out of reach from 2 exchanges and from what ive learnt, nothing is going to change. Its not hard to put 1 exchange inbetween these 2 and it will connect at least 150 houses.
 
I am 20 miles from a major city, and less than one mile from a cable drop, the ISP's only run high speed access in areas where they can make the entire cost up in like, two months, then just profit from there.

To them, there is no reason to run a cable line when I am the last person left on this road, though, there are a LOT of houses, they are all vacant.
 
Soulphire, the "Digital Divide" is a terrible thing. And you are totally wrong, they have not made the right decision what so ever. Digital divides like those forming in more and more countries has a very detrimental affect on the infrastructure. It would be similar to building roads only between cities and leaving rural people needing off road vehicles or horse back.

In fact it should almost be the other way around. City people have easy access to shops, goods, services and entertainment, and people that live in the city nearly always work in the city. Rural people have to travel further for food and goods, have less services, and again have to travel for entertainment. And despite living in a rural area, a large majority of people will still work in the city. If these people had high speed internet access, they could shop online, use online TV services, and work from home. To have a truly integrated society and country everyone needs the same services, but unfortunately all but the richest of countries with smaller populations (Ahem, Scandinavia) can afford it.

Like c0rr0sive said, you can't expect a private company to implement cable/fiber where it isn't going to make a good profit. if you can lay 5 miles of fiber in London and connect 1million people, or lay 5 miles of cable in a rural village and connect 1000 people, what are you going to choose ? This is why government subsidization for private companies or total implementation using state owned money, workers, and companies is the only option.
 
Digital divides like those forming in more and more countries has a very detrimental affect on the infrastructure. It would be similar to building roads only between cities and leaving rural people needing off road vehicles or horse back.
Which is exactly what happens in a lot of places. The roads are old, neglected, sometimes even just dirt not asphalt.

In fact it should almost be the other way around. City people have easy access to shops, goods, services and entertainment, and people that live in the city nearly always work in the city. Rural people have to travel further for food and goods, have less services, and again have to travel for entertainment. And despite living in a rural area, a large majority of people will still work in the city. If these people had high speed internet access, they could shop online, use online TV services, and work from home. To have a truly integrated society and country everyone needs the same services, but unfortunately all but the richest of countries with smaller populations (Ahem, Scandinavia) can afford it.

Key word there in the sentence is 'smaller'. Not so much smaller population, but smaller land mass. Here we're talking thousands of kms miles to connect some places.
And again, even though 'city people' have *relatively easier* access to shops, goods, etc, it is still made MUCH easier/better by a fast network. If we connected these 100-200 or so small towns, we're talking ~100,000 people MAX I'd say. And not all of those people will even want to use the internet, if they even know how or if they even owned a pc. So the actual number would be more like 50,000 I'd think. Compare that to the city and it's surrounding suburbs. Even in little old Perth that's ~3,000,000 people.

These rural towns DON'T NEED uber fast internets. The type of businesses that are run from those places are not the kind of thing that are affected by slow internet. The one thing I could maybe say they'd really benefit from faster network speeds for would be schooling.

Like c0rr0sive said, you can't expect a private company to implement cable/fiber where it isn't going to make a good profit. if you can lay 5 miles of fiber in London and connect 1million people, or lay 5 miles of cable in a rural village and connect 1000 people, what are you going to choose ? This is why government subsidization for private companies or total implementation using state owned money, workers, and companies is the only option.

Agreed, but in a democracy like this, the majority of the tax comes from places in or very close to the major cities. So trying to implement a fiber plan for rural communities that would be funded by the government would NOT go down well.
Money isn't endless, they HAVE to make tough decisions on who to give access to and who'll have to wait. Like you said, for small towns the only way they'll get something like this is probably through private contractors lured in by government subsidisations
 
Re: Dingo Ate My Internets

These rural towns DON'T NEED uber fast internets. The type of businesses that are run from those places are not the kind of thing that are affected by slow internet. The one thing I could maybe say they'd really benefit from faster network speeds for would be schooling.

Last time I pulled out a laptop in Rural Australia, I was told to "Put the ****ing thing away!".

The problem with Australia is a big place with a lot of thing out there with towns about every 300 km or so with only a few hundred to a few thousand people in there. And most of these people are not really interested in internet for any thing more than email, education and business tool. I really don't see any one like telstra or optus laying cable out for a small township. And it's not just laying the cable, it's looking after it too.
About the only chance that rural Australia has with Internet is via satellite or mobile phone towers. Telstra keeps boast about how they got 98% coverage of the country. However it's rather amusing that i seem to find all the 2% places.

This has been a huge problem for those of us with 256/64 kbps satellite connections or a 56kbps dialup modem. I can't play my $100 copy of Modern Warfare 2 because stupid Steam needs to update it, I left it for a full day and came back to find out it was just touching 6% complete.

I have a gamer friend that lives west of Forbes. When ever need needs a game off steam, he ask me to hope on his steam account, download the folder onto external hard drive or DVD and then burn it over on DVD and express post it over to him. It's faster for time to do it that way.
 
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