p>I have been asked to be the moderator of a panel on Virtual Worlds and Gaming at the 2008 Harvard Business School Cyberposium later this month http://cyberposium.turnstilesystems.com/Default.aspx. This is obviously pretty exciting for me, as it’s a big venue and will be lots of fun. Why should you care? Because the topic is: how interactive gaming has gone beyond the die-hard gamer. Also, this topic has the opportunity to ENRAGE gamers (who care about performance & Lag), ENLIGHTEN gamers (who wonder about the future of gaming), and ENCOURAGE gamers (because my company Bigfoot Networks will be a big part of shaping that future). Keeping Lag down will be an even bigger challenge as newbies and “casual” gamers start to pervade our world, and Bigfoot Networks, the Killer NIC, LLR2 and all the other technologies we work on are poised to make an even bigger difference in this rapidly growing online world.

ver played City of Heroes? http://www.cityofheroes.com? It’s a blast of a game: a great MMO with a real story-line and innovative game-play. 

p>The Warez http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warez Serialz, Cracks, Crackers, Hackers, Modders, and Phreaks are alright in my book. They cannot be stopped with DRM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRM, Encryption, Fingerprints, or any other way. All the public debate recently over SPORE http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2617 by Maxis DRM crippling is totally legit. And here is the core of my BIG problem with it: it has NO SIGNIFICANT ONLINE component. EA and Maxis, and Will Wright have given me no REASON NOT to download the Warez version. So, the answer, HOW TO BEAT PC GAME PIRACE: Give me a reason NOT to Pirate your game.

ell just began selling XPS Gaming PCs featuring the Killer NIC!

he rumor: http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/09/17/google-valve  is that Google will buy Valve any day now. For gamers, this means your favorite program: Steam, which holds all your game logins and keys as well as makes it easy to buy and plan games, will get heftier and cooler. It also means LAG could become WORSE before it gets better. Google is set up for big things (like Yahoo), or slow things (like gmail), but for FAST things (like games) they could seriously slow your experience.

ecently, it was reported that gaming is supposedly slowing.  While this is alarming for those of us in the gaming business, it shouldn’t be taken too seriously. If you do any surveys or talk to gamers, you will find that they are spending increasingly more of their disposable income on gaming related purchases. Why? Lots of factors: Price of Gas, Quality of Games, Awesomeness of latest GPUs and Gen3 Consoles, and Casual games. So, why the disconnect from industry folks like NPD Group  and the gamer on the street? And what is it that will (or already is) making gaming blast off? My thoughts… I believe it is Online Gaming.. Read on.

o, my gaming laptop died.  I've had it for 3 years.... and enjoyed many many hours of WoW and Counterstrike Source on it.  It was a Dell XPS Gaming Laptop (called Gen 2).  And it was sweet....  Funny, it never occurred to me that OTHER people might be gaming on a laptop too... yep, it is a huge growing phenomenon.  It's not just a trend, but is real, and can be seen in the hallways of gaming conventions and even office buildings.  Its big... and growing... and I can't wait!  Lag issues on Laptops are even BIGGER than on Desktops...and serious gamers, that want to play on laptops should consider the Lag!

font class="MainHeaderText">From time to time I get questions such as those posed by JEMCRYSTAL on my last Blog Entry.  Since I get them often, I thought I'd spend a few moments answering them to all.  Its no secret, I love gaming, online games, FPS, MMOs, and all things to do with Networking these things together.  LLR, The Killer NIC, LLR2, and all things to do with Bigfoot Networks are the penultimate culmination of those combined passions.  On to the questions:

n a previous EndLagNow Blog Entry, we looked at how Counterstrike Source and Team Fortress 2 use Lag Compensation and other techniques to hide Lag from users and make the game 'work' over high latencies and a variety of network conditions.  The Killer Gaming Network Card has been my passion, my life for 3 years now... and i thought it would be good to explain how Killer works in context of how CSS and TF2 compensate for Lag, Latency, and how all that relates to framerates (FPS).  The short answer is, Killer not only helps yourself in the game, it helps the server and the other players too...  AND... less Lag Compensation makes for a BETTER experience, and if this matters to you, More Killing, more winning, and to some that means more fun.

t was great to be able to Sposor the Independent Game Developers (Austin) Summer Picnic this year!  We had a blast, as you can see by the pictures!  Everybody loved the Killer Bling Loot we handed out, and many of the developers were very receptive to the idea of  "End Lag".  I enjoyed meeting lots of old and new friends, and hope they email me and keep the fight going!  Thanks IGDA!

n amazing look into Lag & its causes in a real game (we all love) is a few clicks away.  The Video of Team Fortress 2 (a Valve Steam Source game) and the real game developer conversation about TF2 and Counterstrike Source are both incredibly revealing, shocking, and prove true what we at ELN have been saying for a long long time.  Lag is caused by the internet, the client, and the server... and in many cases, Lag is even introduced and expected: e.g. the things game developers do to try to "Hide Network Lag" from the weak (slow net connections), actually make those of the strong (like you and me with decent to good net connections) experience MORE Client Lag.  Not good my friends.  I'll take my game without Lag please...  read on for the truth, and straight to the point of the story.

orld-of-Warcraft Lag finally makes sense!  Some clever writer has explained the Physics of World-of-Warcraft (geeks like me only!)...  The diameter of the WoW World, the relative gravity, the dimensional implications, and of course, the reason "Time" is 'weird' in the game, especially Lag!  Reality is, you need something like the LagMeter (downloadable here at ELN) to actually tell what is causing your Lag... For WoW, unfortunately, it is the "servers" that are usuallty to blame!  That doesn't mean you can't get a smoother experience, you just can't fix their servers (yet)... Yes, We at Bigfoot are working on that :) GRIN :) (disclaimer, not officially announced with any partners except for Emergent Game Technologies)

ecently, I've been hard at work at not working hard.  Its not an easy thing to do, when I have so many fun work projects to do... but I do find a few minutes to 'not work'.  What I've found is that the state of the internet... the health of our backbones, and general online gaming has gotten WORSE!  Lag has gotten, statistically, worse in the 2 years I've been running this blog.

ant to do more while you game?  Killer NIC is all about that, and remember, doing more while you game usually causes Lag!  Killer NIC lets you do more while you game without Lag; now in a very unique way.

p class="MsoNormal">If you love FPS games, you probably already know that this is the year of the FPS Game.  Check out the IGN.COM reviews of Crysis, Call of Duty 4, Quake Wars, Unreal Tournament 3 (2007), just to name a few…  I believe that 3D VOIP is going to make all these FPS Games infinitely better.  Imagine communicating fluidly over VOICE with your team and smoothly hearing which direction they are on the map according to the sound of their voice.  Coordinating attacks couldn’t be simpler than that!  The price you pay for VOIP is performance though… and that performance price tag is the #1 Reason that VOIP is NOT being done in today’s games.  The Killer NIC is about to change all of that.  The biggest news, and why I haven’t posted in a while, is that the Killer NIC now supports fully offloaded 3D positional VOIP from DiamondWare.