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The gaming industry loves little more than a healthy dose of rumors and speculation about giants from other areas of the industry considering entry into this market.
Sometimes those rumors come to fruition – the long-speculated Sony and then Microsoft’s entrances into the console business being, in many ways, the grandfathers of this kind of rumor – and other times not, as it turns out. that a supposedly interested party is not interested at all after all (as has been the case with decades of rumors about Disney’s intention to gain a major position in the industry) or simply because ‘Turns out she’s interested but doesn’t really have a clue what they’re doing (alas, poor Nokia).
In recent years, all of the hottest speculation about who intends to steal some of the gaming industry’s revenue has focused on cloud services and video streaming companies, in keeping with the misconception that the technological future of the industry lies in this direction. It helps that there has been at least one fire in the smoke, although the real fruits of engaging these companies so far – like Google’s Stadia service or Amazon’s Crucible online shooter. – are more likely to join Nokia’s side efforts in the bonus round of an industry pub quiz in a few years than to seriously challenge one of the existing dominant players.
We’re so used to describing this holy grail of streaming services as “Netflix for games” that some assume that’s what Netflix would like to do.
Until this month, however, the large company with the highest smoke-to-fire ratio was Netflix. The streaming giant’s ambitions in the games space have been the subject of much rumor – bolstered by the company’s experiences with interactive game-like narratives, including the much-discussed Black Mirror: Bandersnatch as well as a variety children’s programming.
Details of what the company was doing, however, were so scarce as to be completely lacking, a void that was happily filled with all kinds of speculation about the company’s intentions. Some of the more outlandish claims – which posited that Netflix was gearing up to be the go-to game streaming service that would succeed where Stadia had failed – seemed to be based on little more than a language crash; we’re so used to describing this holy grail of streaming services as “Netflix for games” that some people have found it easy to assume that’s what Netflix itself would like to do in video games.
We still don’t know much about Netflix’s ambitions, but we know one hell of a show more than a few weeks ago. We know that the ambitions are real, on the one hand; the hiring of former Facebook Reality Labs and EA Director Mike Verdu as vice president of game development confirmed that Netflix plans to develop enough games to justify having a vice president for it, after all. The fact that the company intends to grow in the game was confirmed by a brief mention in its quarterly results, and we got a few more details about that in the call to investors that followed the results.
The details we have seen have confirmed the second most important thing about Netflix’s gaming ambitions, beyond their mere existence: To hell with name determinism, Netflix doesn’t intend to be the “Netflix” for games “(god, this is confusing to write). It starts out relatively small, initially focusing on mobile titles that link to its movie and series IPs in creative ways – seeing games as a way to increase the value of those IPs and fan engagement. with them, while also creating additional value in people’s existing Netflix subscriptions.
This is likely going to be seen as a major disappointment for those who bragged about Netflix picking up the bullet from Google and carrying it over the line – but looking at the situation rationally, it makes perfect sense that Netflix deals more with games. cautiously and in a way that organically builds on its existing department and plays to its strengths. Trying to launch an AAA-focused game streaming service would be a much more drastic departure for Netflix than many people seem to assume, to the point of essentially retooling everything the company does; despite the comparisons that are often drawn between them, there actually isn’t much direct synergy between running a service like Netflix and running a game streaming service.
Despite rumors that Netflix would compete with Stadia, the company seems more interested in using games to expand its IP and add value for subscribers.
Only a minority of the technical issues are shared between these two professions, and the model of player engagement in games (in terms of time spent, regularity of interaction, etc.) is very different from that of television. Additionally, the expertise that Netflix has amassed as a content creator in many parts of the world (which is often overlooked but arguably its most valuable advantage as a business) will generally not translate into games – it can even interfere with efforts. on that front by creating a host of things the company would have to unlearn in order to become an effective game designer, as many developers who bear the scars of trying to work with film and television studios can tell you. The list of reasons why Netflix is trying to become the “Netflix for games” doesn’t really make sense is long.
Above all, these reasons mainly apply to other big video streaming giants. Amazon’s cloud services division might allow them to take that slightly more sensible path, but it would be a huge start and a likely disastrous undertaking for Disney +, HBO Max, or Paramount Plus. Each of these media and streaming giants has large libraries of IPs that, on paper, make it appealing to make a case for becoming a major player in video games – Marvel, Star Wars, DC Comics, Star Trek, etc.
Trying to launch an AAA-focused game streaming service would be a much more drastic departure for Netflix than many people seem to assume.
But in practice, the degree of effort and investment required to make “Games” a meaningful tab on this Disney + home screen would be mind-boggling, and the eventual value of such a proposition, compared to a simple investment. more important in video content, is far from certain. (From the perspective of the broader industry and its consumers, of course, the good news here is that these IPs are unlikely to end up being balkanized on various competing streaming services and remain available on d ‘other platforms and services for the foreseeable future.)
Instead of a pipe-dreaming effort to transform himself into a dominant video game player overnight, what Netflix seems to be proposing sounds like an exploration on two fronts. He is interested in developing mobile games to develop and promote his films and series – not a new idea, but certainly an area where there is a lot of interesting creative work that could be done if the company is ready to really support the concept.
This approach also allows her to state up front that she will not do any kind of microtransactions in her games, which is interesting in part because she clarifies that Netflix does not view games as an additive revenue stream, but also because it looks like another data point tied to a growing public retreat against IAP and other similar systems from companies who prefer a fixed subscription business model.
The other front that seems interested in Netflix (which overlaps this main front, at least to some extent) continues to develop branching narrative titles, both on its own streaming platform and via mobile devices. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is often mentioned as the ancestor of this domain for Netflix – although titles focused on children, including an adaptation of Minecraft: Story Mode from Telltale, pioneered this type of interactive experience on the platform.
The whole notion of branching storytelling – or “choose your own adventure,” depending on how many chases you want to get – is one that has seen a renaissance in recent years. Drawing inspiration from sources such as the titles of Japanese visual novels as well as childhood memories of the creators rolling the dice to see which page they should turn to next, the types of games created and refined by studios like Telltale and Dontnod have proven to be extremely successful, allowing for creative experimentation with narrative and character, and attracting a large and diverse demographic.
As of now, the technology to deliver a full experience comparable to something like Life is Strange via the Netflix platform isn’t quite there – but the proof of concept has been done, and with new interest from Netflix for mobile development, the potential for cross-media games that connect different platforms and open up a whole new audience and a whole new business model for branching storytelling games seems huge.
The disappointment that some people will no doubt feel that Netflix’s ambitions in games do not lean more heavily towards AAA streaming should be tempered by the fact that what the company is actually pursuing is much more realistic and plays its true strengths more effectively. . More than just a wealthy company entering the market with the intention of spending more than its rivals to dominate an existing market sector, it is far more exciting to see a company entering games with the intention of using its significant resources to try something new – and potentially creating a whole new market segment in the process.
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