I Want It Now! The Fierce Urgency of Videogaming's Future »

LAS VEGAS — Videogame execs say impatient gamers increasingly act like Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory — they want their games now, Daddy, and if you don’t give them what they want, they’ll find somebody who will.

“People have no patience,” said Steve Perlman, CEO of OnLive, a company that is currently beta-testing a service that streams high-def games directly into homes without the need for consoles. “What they want is all media, and they want it instantly delivered.”

OnLive isn’t the only one trumpeting gamers’ need for speed at the DICE Summit here this week.

“We lose players on the loading bar,” said Brian Reynolds, chief game designer at Zynga, maker of the hit Facebook game FarmVille. Virtual vegetable farmers are so anxious to get playing that if the game takes too long to get going, they’ll close the browser window, he said.

The 20th-century notion of waiting around to watch shows when they air on television, or saving up to buy CDs, is quickly becoming antiquated as technology makes it easy to consume movies, TV and music on demand. As game development and distribution methods evolve, the same trends are changing the way the videogame industry works.

Read More http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/02/i-want-it-now/#ixzz0gDenPH5b