Just over 10 years ago, the fact that Unreal Tournament 2004 came on four separate CDs and had a final install size of over six gigabytes was astounding. At the time that represented a sixth of my Raptor hard drive's storage capacity, which at 36GB was already straining under the load from other games and Windows itself.
Many games today don't even reach that sort of install size and even the world's most popular hardcore game, League of Legends, only requires eight gigabytes of storage capacity.
However, if you venture into the realm of the AAA, install sizes are much, much bigger. In the past two years alone, we've gone from an average install size of 10GB or so, sometimes 15GB, to monstrous 50GB+ installs. For that, we can thank the new-generation of consoles, with their much larger memory capacities and all those high-res textures that can be loaded into them.
If that wasn't enough though, if we look into the near future where Star Citizen is released, the developer, Cloud Imperium Games, has recently stated that the game could be as large as 100GB when installed, with patches ranging anywhere from two, to 20 gigabytes each.
Although the numbers there are impressive however, what I'm concerned with is the divide this might begin to make in gaming. Not in terms of storage space – although I'm sure my SSD isn't the only one that swallowed hard at the thought of a 100GB game – but internet speed.
While the biggest cities and towns might have access to fibre broadband, there are still huge swathes that can't get anything more than a few megabits per second. For those people, downloading a 30GB game is enough of a pain in the neck, but 100GB is akin to multi-day, all-day downloads.
It's also pushing the limits on some people's download caps, which creates further problems. Suddenly, these games are starting to cost people more, just with the amount of data they require for download.
Fortunately at least, these games are more often than not released through Steam, so an interrupted download, dropped connection or simply running out of time, doesn't matter, as you can always restart it later, but it still doesn't change the fact that getting a hold of these games is going to take a long time and if Cloud Imperium is right in its estimation of multi-gigabyte patches on a regular basis, that's a lot of bandwidth that people will need to factor in when it comes to their gaming.
But for those in the middle of nowhere, playing some of these games may simply not be viable. If you're stuck on a 2mb connection, you are downloading at just 200 Kbps, which means that downloading Star Citizen would take you almost a week and even then that's only if you leave your PC on for 24 hours a day, without interruption or hindering the connection.
What this has the potential to do, is create an interesting difference in audience for these larger games. Something like Star Citizen will miss out on certain audiences because of its ambitions and while I would never discourage that, it's something worth bearing in mind. Star Citizen will be dominated by people with more powerful PCs, with more storage and better internet connections and that means that it's likely to appeal more to affluent gamers.
Then again, the fact that the average spend price by early backers is over $100 a piece should have told us that.
What will be interesting to see, is whether we see a bit of a return to physical copies of games as the install size of titles continues to outstrip the rate in which our internet connections are upgraded. Could Cloud Imperium ship Star Citizen out on a pen drive to different gamers? What about some of the other developers out there at the moment who know that they too are working on a game that some people may have to jump through hoops just to play because of its monstrous file size?
How would you like to see game makers respond? Or do you think it should just be a case of tough-luck to those in outlying areas?
Let us know below.