Beginning at the End Credits
As the credits scroll past the cast and crew, I’m fighting against the obvious next step, to turn off the television and retire for the night. Faith, Farm, and Fury was exactly what I had hoped it would be, a non-stop action title in the style of John Wick, with not just one but two retired special forces/assassins coming out of retirement to save the day. Though the adrenaline high is still there, it’s probably time to return to real life. … However…
A popup appears during the credits that suggests there is something more in the FFF world. Selecting “Play Now” on the screen, I reach for my controller and enter the world of the movie. I am now in the role of the balder of the two main protagonists. I find myself outside of the warehouse from the final scene, which has obviously not exploded as it had in the film. The mission objective appears, “Locate the Tamper and help her escape”. Our blonde team leader has been captured, like the film depicts, and now I am the one who is left to bring her home. I settle back into my seat and select PLAY.
Fertile Ground
The ability to stream an AAA experience to a living room set already exists. Pixel streaming a Unreal5 experience is currently happening with YOM technology. What is new in the scenario discussed above is the concept of a video streaming service hosting a collection of experiences based on their video content. There are two main factors for why this does not yet exist, each solvable with YOM technology; cost and latency.
Hosting and streaming video content is in the realm of affordable because there is less data being hosted and transferred with video when compared to game data. The subscription price each consumer pays can cover that data transfer with a healthy profit margin for the services, (so long as they make content people want to watch). With games, there are both game data hosting costs as well as game compute volume that has to be paid for, even before the pixel streaming costs are accrued.
There is the additional hurdle of removing latency. Games require that they are near immediately reactive to input from game controllers. Any latency in the signal will mean, for many game types, an unimaginable amount of frustration for the player. And actual IRL distance is an element of latency. The best gamers would do well to live next door to an Amazon web service building.
Of course, we also have spoken plenty about the energy inefficiency of these large central cloud services. Environmentally speaking, there is a cost beyond the money cost to relying on these services. But even if those services were to run on smiles and positive thoughts, centralised servers still would not work for the future described above.
Planting Seeds
I do want to save The Tamper, though. As a gamer and consumer of entertainment media, I want to explore the world of a film I just finished, taking the place of the lead protagonist and saving the world a la Golden-Eye. Fortunately, we have created the YOM ecosystem.
The decentralised physical infrastructure network (DePIN) that YOM has constructed is aimed at replacing the large, inefficient centralised cloud service that the current market is reliant on. By hosting game data and moving game computations across a decentralised network of GPUs located across the world, we are solving the issues that prevent video streaming services from adding that last gaming chapter to landmark films like Faith, Farm, and Fury.
The cost of hosting on the YOM network is estimated to be about 80x less than using traditional clouds for a number of reasons. First, decentralising the GPUs means that costs such as construction, leasing, and operational costs for large buildings are not a concern. Cooling costs for those central servers alone can run the budget of some cities. With this massive reduction in cost, broadcasters will have an open door to add this additional content to their film libraries. And those large areas slated for a massive data centre can be reapportioned for a nice park, green space vice concrete and silicon.
Secondarily, the centralised servers have created something of a monopolistic model, or at least a thinly competitive market, for their services. Rather than going to work for one of these large data centres, we’d just as soon help people employ their GPUs on our network and be paid for their unused cycles.
Finally, the decentralised nature of the network also tackles the issue of latency, as the likelihood that any user is near to any network GPU increases as each node is stood up. And because of the economics design in the reward program for beacon owners, there are incentives to stand up services where the need is underserved.
Harvesting Time
So now I’m in control of our protagonist, who likely goes only by his surname Griffin. Though the movie didn’t exactly explain all of his background as a special forces/ assassin, or why he really has a heart of gold under his gruff exterior, I’m enjoying my time in the FFF world, executing the henchmen and freeing my friend. And I did all this without leaving the streaming platform, so they have gained that all important attention credit that could have otherwise gone to some other entertainment platform.
When I finish this level and free the Tamper, she rewards me with a mission trophy in the form of a new briefcase that I can display in the same 3D social media apartment space discussed in previous chapters of the YOM documentation. My trophy room will grow with each experience tied to our interconnected universe of UE5 experiences. Now when my friends visit my virtual apartment and click on that briefcase, they can jump to the streaming platform and play as Griffin, or his partner Mac, and save the Tamper themselves.
The Farm Analogy Ends
We are moving at a furious pace into new markets and new content streams on the back of YOM technology. It is not hard to imagine a service as large as YouTube that is pixel-streaming gaming content with the freedom and ease that video streaming is now enjoying. This opportunity of course also opens the door to user generated content hosting, once again as the tools evolve and costs continue to be reduced.
A new future is on the horizon so long as we keep our hands and minds working and so long as we have faith. And farms…. And fury!
The (Top Secret) Ecosystem Director
