SkyDrive, MyPhone, Hotmail, Live Mesh… all of the Microsoft “products” give you free webspace for your files. Websites like Meebo manage millions of accounts for users, free of charge, all with massive friends lists. At the time of writing, Google is offering 7.3GB of space with a GMail account. Microsoft offers “cloud computing” on a large scale through services like Azure, for a fee.

“Cloud Computing” has become quite the buzz word, lately… though the concept has been around for quite a while. I’m a huge computer geek, but I’ll try not to get too technical: “The Cloud” is basically any network that is generally spread all over the world, and is sometimes just a generic term to define “the Internet.” If something is saved/stored in “the cloud” you can access it “over the internet” at any time. As cloud computing grows in popularity, several companies are still wondering how to benefit from this, while shelling out for massive amounts of data storage, all in an attempt to impress their customers. If you can have access to your information at any time, why wouldn’t you want that ease of access?

“What does this have to do with gaming?” I hear a few people starting to mutter… the answer is already on the lips of most readers: everything. Through podcasts, written interviews, comments, forum discussions, and phone calls… we have all heard, time and time again, that the Xbox Live Friends List “is what it is.” Sticking users with a limit of 100 friends. Now, true, 100 seems manageable… the majority of us don’t LITERALLY have more than 100 friends, and the “Players” list should facilitate any users that you play with on a regular basis, but aren’t quite friends. But how is it that I can have 7 GB of email space, but the folks at Xbox can’t give us more than 100 friends? AOL’s Instant Messenger gives you 500. But this just isn’t your typical rant about the Friends List. Cloud storage goes so much deeper. Right now, the Xbox team does an amazing job at helping you track and display your Achievements through Xbox.com. You also get to share your digital self, as your avatar and gamerpics are available through the website.

Now, true, having more information available over the internet, and the ability to Recover my Gamertag at any location (if I’m patient enough) is also appealing. I can hang with a friend and be myself, from his couch or mine. Now comes the tricky part. The Playstation is getting better at doing all of these things as well, and PSN is also still free. “Here we go again,” you sigh, “another Xbox Live should be free rant.” Not at all. Now pay attention, because this is where it gets tricky. A lot of people think Xbox Live should be free… fine, whatever. I don’t mind paying for it – but the biggest benefit of paying for live is the MultiPlayer aspect. I’m not a big multiplayer gamer, to this day. I love storyline driven games, and playing when I don’t have to worry about whiny voiced brats, or staying up until God awful hours of the morning when my friends get out of work. Trade me features. Make multiplayer gaming free for everyone. But if you do that, nobody would ever pay for Xbox Live again. Unless, another feature was offered in its place. What feature am I talking about? The Xbox Cloud.

The Xbox Cloud would be a featured part of Xbox Live. Much as it exists now with Xbox originals, if you want to download a game and play it, have fun. Do I want to do that with “any” game? Maybe not quite, not yet… but it is a nice benefit to be able to delete the game from my local hard drive, and redownload it later without an additional fee. The Xbox Live Marketplace does a fantastic job with that. But the feature that I would gladly pay for: access to my Saved Game data, via The Xbox Cloud. That’s the highlight, the supreme feature, the boldest bullet point of my argument. Some people may be rolling their eyes, but I would hope that this would expand to “Games for Windows Live.”

You see, this past weekend I reformatted my computer’s hard drive, backing up the “My Games” folder – then reinstalled Windows Vista, reinstalled Gears of War for Windows, copied my “My Games” folder back over, and yet my saved game was gone. I get to start over, and I was all the way to General Raam. Frustrating. This would be a wonderful feature for Xbox Live, Games for Windows Live. You could easily free up space on your Xbox 360′s hard drive, never have to worry about going back to a game and worrying about whether or not you deleted files related to that gaming, never expecting to play it again. It would protect you against hardware failures (although, admittedly, Xbox 360 hard drive failure rate seems astonishingly low). For people upgrading to larger consoles and not bothering with Data Transfers, this would be an easy way to access your old saved games, or would facilitate faster transfer by giving you the ability to move saved games from your local drive to The Xbox Cloud before the transfer.

A feature like this isn’t likely to ever happen, as storing save game data for 20 million users would actually pile up. Perhaps some sort of statute of limitations, like the file must be access within 36 months, should be in place. It would take quite a bit, but I often wonder if every single Gmail user actually claimed all 7.3GB being offered, if Google could actually handle it. Again, that’s another free service – so why can’t at least some of my Xbox Live Gold subscription dollars go in to The Xbox Cloud storage feature? One can only dream. With the next generation of console we’ll see more titles available through digital distribution, but why not something to keep track of saved games? Just something to think about, next gen developers!

Before we get to this “vow” I speak of, let me share with you a little story. I sat down with a friend this weekend, in front of his Wii, and grabbed a classic controller. We loaded up Super Mario World. Those were the days. Mario and Luigi still looked exactly the same, with a small palette swap, but infinitely better than they had looked on the NES. You could swear that big round nose was going to come right out of the screen. The cape Mario applied to fly had so many frames it had to have been motion captured. Yoshi was the best addition to a video game saga in the history of video games. And the game itself was filled with just as many secrets as games from the golden years. Secrets which drove me mad.

My friend and I resumed a game we had already started – we made extensive progress through this Mario World, right up to Bowser’s castle, and several of the “SPECIAL” levels. Somehow, all of that was done within hours. This night, however, would be a tale of woe and frustration. As we paraded through the overworld map of completed levels, we looked for secrets we may have missed. One right outside of Bowser’s castle… a hidden exit on “Valley of Bowser 2.”

Frustration set in as I tried to remember if I had to obtain all of the coins to unlock the secret exit, or if there was a “POW” block that uncovered a secret door, or perhaps a winged Blue Yoshi had to fly my to the skies where I would collect gobs of coins. Nothing worked. My friend, meanwhile, spent nearly 90 minutes on the “Outrageous” level of Star Road. Our rhythm was gone. Whatever had possessed us to make it as far as we had was gone. “Our grade school selves would be so disappointed in us,” we agreed.

Angered, I searched the internet for answers. A key hidden in the valley would merely unlock another level I would be stuck on for hours.

I was defeated. By the game. Not only were we killing off our portly plumbing pals with prodigious persistence, but we had forgotten where things were hidden. We forgot our shortcuts, keyholes, and whether to be Super Mario or mini Mario. I resorted to a YouTube walkthrough.

“What happened to you?” my grade school self prodded. Before I had a driver’s license I was able to get a “*96” rating on my game (100% of secrets found). This was in the days when the internet was new, walkthroughs and wikis were non existent, and YouTube wasn’t even a twinkle in any of the tri-founder’s eyes. We did this on our own, with patience, and determination. We wanted the reward. To get from 93 completion points to 96 – to see that star.

It begs the question: am I too old for these video games? Did I find Mega Man 9‘s demo frustrating because I didn’t belong in that era any more? Have I forsaken reflex time, curiosity, willingness to explore my worlds? Have I given it all up for superior voice acting and million dollar story lines? Have I given up on my roots and found First Person Shooters and Party Games the only two forms of entertainment for a digital generation?

Today I vow to return to that which made me passionate. I will go back to the things that turned this from hobby to a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. I will find several of my all time favorites and replay them, with a burning desire to complete them, to not quit until all my continues are gone. And I hope I have inspired you to do the same. I may not be able to complete every game I ever touch, but how dare I turn my back on what it means to play a game, to enjoy it, to truly experience it. Today I take the vow of the Gamer.

The Gamers’ Vow

We are not like the rest.
We are sword, shield, heart, fireball, sneakers.
Where there is a star to be collected, I will be there.
Where there are gold rings, coins, and experience points to be gained, I will be there.
Where there are princesses to be saved, girlfriends kidnapped, and forest creatures to be freed, I will be there.
I will explore the unexplored, collecting medkits and health viles along the way.
Injustice, in all its forms, cannot hide.
I devote myself to tirelessly pursuing all my enemies to the ends of the Earth, or whatever plane of existence on whence we do battle.
Man or beast, sprite or model, my weapon is my controller, and together, we shall overcome.
I accept my faults, but do not hide behind them: I welcome challenge.
Though I may not always win, my defeat will be graceful, and our rematch filled with intensity.
I will not be defeated by evil, no matter how many years it may take.
No secret will stray from mine eye.
May my arrow, bullet, and plasma blasts fly true.
My brothers and sisters in this fellowship will form a kinship, carrying us in to the world after our continues have expired.
I will battle by their side when called upon, and will hold my fellows to these same high standards.
All duties and responsibilities bestowed upon me henceforth, as a Gamer, do I most solemnly take on, without purpose of evasion.
I am a Gamer.

If you have pledged this vow, leave a comment below!

So, yesterday at work, I’m listening to The Booom!BoxCast (if you haven’t, you’re missing out, click the link, or check out their AnalogHype page, or even download them on iTunes). As I’m listening, I was pleased to hear myself mentioned during some shout outs. Then I was shocked when I heard co-host “DaPhilth84″ (that’s his PSN ID) mention my name, some how, in discussion of the NHL Playoffs.

Now, I’m a hockey nut, it’s true. But when Philthy started listing off teams who had play off potential, I didn’t anticipate “NuAngel” would be among the teams. Evidently, neither did my co worker.

Before the work day was out, I was presented with these fun little tidbits. Enjoy.

Check the filename… NuJersey, get it?

Thanks to QualityBeats84 & DaPhilth84 for the shoutouts during the podcast, and Dalimatrix for the insanely entertaining graphics.