And then you decide to visit that brooding city known as Gotham, where Batman must stop the latest fiendish plot instigated by his arch-nemesis, the Joker, from a dank cell inside Arkham Asylum. You explore the notorious maximum-security psychiatric hospital, seeking clues to solve the Riddler’s puzzles and defeating the Joker’s henchmen. You work your way toward the climactic showdown…

And then you travel to a planet called Pandora, a place colonized by the Dahl Corporation, which abandoned the world after depleting most of its mineral deposits. Colonists who were left behind had to fend for themselves when the local wildlife awoke from winter hibernation. Your character has traveled there to seek “The Vault,” a mythical treasure trove of alien artifacts and other riches. In this action role-playing game called Borderlands, you must seek The Vault and uncover a mystery of cosmic proportions…

Bumper to Bumper. Watching someone play DiRT 2.

“There’s an immediate sense of a live connection [when you enter OnLive].”

- Steve Perlman, CEO

But even when you’re done, there are more games to play, each available at the click of a mouse, each filling your display with hours of action and adventure without requiring you to install anything. Welcome to OnLive, a new way to experience games. All you need is a web browser and a broadband Internet connection. System requirements are a thing of the past, because the games run on state-of-the-art hardware in a data center.

Pick Your Play. The Marketplace offers plenty to choose from.

Immediate Feedback

“This is long overdue,” says OnLive founder and CEO Steve Perlman. “Feedback from Mac users has been great: some of them have been saying ‘This is awesome; I wasn’t going to run Windows in Boot Camp to get this game.’ Games that previously required high-end hardware to run on the highest settings will now play on any Intel Mac.”

When it launches, OnLive gives you an impressive view of what it has to offer: hundreds of tiny windows, each a real-time glimpse into a gaming session happening at that moment. From the main menu, select the Arena to zoom in on dozens of those sessions; click one to watch it full-screen, where you can cheer or jeer the action and add that player to your Friends list, or send them a message if you’re already connected. You can also simply spectate for a while, if you want to pick up a few tips and tricks.

With Friends Like These... From this screen, you can peruse Brag Clips, games owned by your friend, and more.

“We’ve turned games into a form of pure digital media … OnLive is the future of gaming.”

- Steve Perlman, CEO

“There’s an immediate sense of a live connection,” Perlman notes. That connection continues with your Friends list, where you can see what games they’re playing at that moment (and jump in as a spectator), send them messages, peruse their profiles, and view their Brag Clips. That last one involves ten-second snippets of gameplay deemed worthy of saving — perhaps they showcase incredible maneuvers or silly moments. All Brag Clips created by you and others are publicly available, unless you choose not to do so.

Tricks of the Trade

Perlman helped develop QuickTime at Apple and later created WebTV, which was purchased by Microsoft, so he knows a thing or two about streaming video over the Internet. Eight years ago, he set out to create OnLive.

“When we started, we simply wanted to see if it was possible,” Perlman recalls. “Our first algorithms used up a lot of bandwidth. At one point, we closed a round of funding with data streams that were twice as large as they are today.”

Cheers ‘N’ Jeers. Many spectators appreciate this member’s Just Cause 2 gameplay.

His team eventually figured out low latency video compression, but they had to add two tricks along the way, one high-tech and the other straight out of a psychology textbook. “The problem is, data on the Internet doesn’t always take the most direct route, which adds latency, so each of our data centers has lots of connections,” Perlman explains. “Then we figure out which one will deliver the data stream to you via the quickest, most direct route.”

He adds: “The thing we can’t control, though, is data packet loss. Unlike, say, streaming a movie trailer, we don’t get a second chance to grab a dropped data packet. So we’ve had to rely on some psychophysical tricks to conceal those errors so you don’t notice them.”

Each game added to OnLive also gets a final tune-up with algorithms adapted to its style of play — “A first-person shooter is much different from a driving game,” notes Perlman — and advice from outside the company. “We bring in experts,” Perlman says. “Sometimes, it’s members of the original development team, but often it’s simply someone who is really good at that game. They let us know if it plays the way it should.”

Pick Your Path. Those images are games being played right now.

Looking to the Future

Thanks to OnLive, hardware upgrades are a thing of the past, since the company plans to keep its data centers on the bleeding edge of technology. “We take care of that so you don’t have to worry about it,” Perlman remarks. The service also lets you try games before buying or renting them, and if you ever switch between computers, all you need to do is log out of the service on one and log in on another to pick up where you left off, including saved games.

“We’ve turned games into a form of pure digital media,” Perlman observes. “Games are a kind of app, and you can handle them like any other digital media. OnLive is the future of gaming.”

If you liked this game, check out:

• InstantAction