“Cloud Player”

Welcome back! In May, I wrote a blog post about “cloud players”. As several weeks passed, I think that my explanations of “cloud players” are not enough. I am going to revise that blog post to give more explanations and examples.

Video games are popular all over the world. There are all kinds of game styles, play forms, players to talk about. But for me, I am very interested in a kind of special game players about video games. Actually, I can not find an English word online to define or represent that group of game players. So, I just directly translate the words in Chinese, which are known as “Cloud Player”. It is different from cloud gaming or cloud games that means using cloud storage as a game platform. “Cloud Player” means that some people enjoy the game without playing it on their own. Those people enjoy video games without actually playing those games. Instead of playing the game, most of the cloud players watch game videos or game streamer at some websites such as Youtube and Twitch. They like the game and also communicate with the “real” game players about the game. Some cloud players are as same as other game players. They know well about the game, analyze how to play the game, evaluate the game, and even introduce the game to other people who do not play this game. The cloud players look like other game players except that they never play that game.

It sounds a bit ridiculous, but as I realize, there are a bunch of cloud players now. With the internet and video websites growth, more and more people are becoming cloud players. According to my personal experience, more than half of my friends have the experience of becoming cloud players. It does not mean that we never play games, but for some of the games, we watch other people playing these games and do not play these on our own. Also, when I become a cloud player of games, it is not because I do not like these games as much as other games which I have actually played. Most of the time when I become a cloud player, I am really deep in these games. I even buy peripheral products of these games (such as T-shirts), but I hardly ever want to try these games by myself.

For me, the phenomenon of cloud players is quite interesting. I have many questions about cloud players. Why people become cloud players instead of directly playing games? How people feel about becoming cloud players? What games have most cloud players? In a few weeks, after I learn more from the group of “cloud players”, I add and reorganize my past blog posts, Player Communities with “Cloud Players and “Cloud Players” and Their Discourse Communities, to this blog to draw a more comprehensive picture about “cloud players”.

I “cloud played” a game—Detroit: Become Human and read the discussions of the game players. Detroit: Become Human is a movie-like game. Player make choices to interact with the story and gain different results from the story. Detroit: Become Human has many cloud players because that Detroit: Become Human’s play platform is only PlayStation 4. Console games play platforms are rare in China mainland. In the mainland, domestic PlayStation 4’s only have limit games due to the government control. For Chinese game players, they need to buy “foreign” PS4’s (mostly Hong Kong’s) to play as many games as the players of other parts of the world have. Thus, for one game in PS4, it is quite inconvenient and time consuming for actually playing it in China.

In the discussion, the actual game players try to separate cloud players away from their community. Many of them think that “cloud players” occupy their game resources because many “cloud players” do not buy the game and the game company cannot gain money from “cloud players”. Also, they claim that “cloud players” should not qualify Detroit: Become Human because they do not actually play it. It is frustrating that “cloud players” have limited distributions to the game sells because they cannot buy Detroit: Become Human without having PS4. But, “cloud players” do have some distributions. According to PS4 China company, these “cloud players” advertised the game and brought it to the wide-open public instead only among people who have a PS4.

Steam users is a discourse community that has lots of  “cloud players”. Steam is a PC(personal computer) video games platform, and it is used to distribute games for games companies. Many “cloud players” buy games from steam. The reason is that some console games are also distributed at Steam, and for players, it is more convenient(and sometimes cheaper because you do not need to buy the video game consoles) to buy the game on their computer than buying discs of video game consoles. Inside the discourse community of Steam, Chinese “cloud players” use the words “buy the ticket” to refer that after watching videos to finish the game, they buy the game to make contributions to the game developers. “Buy the ticket” may imply the reason of players in Steam friendly to “cloud players”. In Steam, as same as other players, the “cloud players” also try to express their love of the games and contribute to the games.  

All in all, the amount of  “cloud players” are more than I thought. All over the world, there are many video game fans of  “cloud players”. They are kind of like soccer or basketball fans. For Detroit: Become Human, it is interesting but true that  “cloud players” have some problems when they get into the actual player community. In Steam, “cloud players” use their actions to get along well with other players. As technology grows up,  there will be more and more video game players, and there will be more methods to “cloud” play video games. I hope no matter how video games will change, more players will be happy to accept those “cloud players”.