Foreward note: There’s no clear FOR or AGAINST when it comes to Cloud Computing. There are so many possibilities and an equal number of pitfalls. There’s too much topic to cover here, so I’m going to broad-stroke some of the positive stuff and then I’ll return with a more critical eye on my next article.

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We already have a fair bit of the Cloud in our gaming. Online Gaming has been the big deal for the past 20 years (or arguably longer). It’s changing though and some new paradigms are coming: Streaming video is being leveraged for gaming-on-demand services like OnLive and Gaikai. Also, expect the likes of Apple and Google to pair Social Gaming and the Cloud very soon.

There are some obvious benefits below, but I’m going to start with one of the more exciting, less-talked-about possibilities with the Cloud beyond just streaming:

New Applications

A great example of Cloud Computing at it’s best: Google’s voice recognition on the Nexus One, which has blown me away for its surprising accuracy for an untrained voice system on a portable device. Typically voice recognition on phones suck, but Google’s Cloud makes this work so well: The smartphone sends your voice to Google’s servers, which do all of the heavy lifting rather than bogging down the mobile’s limited CPU. The results are returned just as swiftly as any other search. It’s seamless and just works.

It’s not hard to imagine how Cloud servers could drive Math-intensive gaming features like object physics and AI. Not only could burdens be offloaded from the gamer’s PC, but we could see new advancements in our games that haven’t been worthwhile to calculate per-PC. That’s hella exciting for me, particular in the area of gaming AI.

Ease of Delivery

From a developer’s perspective, this is the holy grail: Getting rid of the driver and configuration bullshit of PCs, or at least focusing it on one established application (video)– Well that’s just too damn compelling. Consoles are already successful in part because of the consistency of the hardware. The possibility of ignoring hardware constraints altogether must be giving developers a collective woody.

Video streaming in particular is something that most PCs and broadband connections can handle to some degree. Look at the success of YouTube and now imagine playing games through it.

On-Demand Immediacy

Richard Garriott (during Massively’s 100th podcast) explained in exquisite detail how the “casual” era of gaming is more about instant access than gameplay. Getting into the game quickly without bullshit means the game takes center stage. Even the simple (and crappy) Flash games that have given us immediacy have been compelling just for the sake of convenience. The more that goes into the Cloud, the quicker games will just switch-on to play. Even very complex games.

Never underestimate the power of convenience.

Go Anywhere with your Game

Portability has so much potential. When much of the complexity goes onto the servers, it allows the clients to remain simple. Smartphones. Tablets. Car systems. It’s like the old ‘dumb’ terminal concept on steroids.

Physically being able to stream data to any device becomes agnostic too. So pick the device of your favourite brandname, they should all be able to do it.

Social Gaming

Social Gaming is already a big thing, but I can’t help but think the games industry has just been taking stumbling, awkward baby-steps with it so far. The problem is being worked backwards a bit, thrusting information from games into databases and then squeezing it into social networking applications.

If the game is primarily in the Cloud, then the information will already be there too. In real time. Think about that for a second. There’s a lot more potential for immediate interchange of information between players in every kind of game (not just MMOs, which already have this). Games that don’t have to put you in the same virtual space (like MMOs do), but still allow you to share and compare progress with your friends.

Us MMORPG players are already aware of how compelling that kind of shared experience can be. I cannot remember a single-player game where I was thrilled to get a new mount, or some other kind of achievement. Just the simple act of sharing with anyone at all, it’s a big deal. I’d argue it’s an inherent part of the human nature. Acceptance and all that. We’re social beasts.

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I’m on the edge of my seat with this stuff. Cloud Computing is much more than just a catch-phrase. It’s going to affect our daily gaming in a very big way, like it or not.