Wired UK - 11.2019

and bad, but we will need to look at

merchandise opportunities – and some

kind of deal with the content streaming

platforms, like YouTube, to actually get

a cut from them when people use their

platforms to watch our content being

played, just like music companies have

for music being used in any context on

the videos on their platforms.”

Back in his office, Phil Harrison says

everyone is missing the big picture.

“Arguably, the least interesting

thing about Stadia is the fact that it’s

a streaming platform,” he says. “Every

successful technology disappears – it

becomes ambient, and you only think

about the experience. That changes

fundamentally the way that the game

is designed and the market works.”

For the last 40-odd years of game

development, Harrison maintains,

every game has been device-centric.

Game design has been gated by

the capabilities of the box, and the

hardware and software inside. Each

time a developer wants to move a game

to a different box, they have to go and

reinvent some aspect of it.

“Stadia turns it on its head,” he

says. “We are allowing the developer

to make the game once and then bring

it to any screen in your life, so that you,

the player, has the relationship with the

game, not the device. That’s a big mental

shift in the way that games are made,

but also the way that games are played.”

This shift can be compared to the

history of the moving image, Harrison

says. In the very early days of cinema,

the creation and distribution of content

was vertical, not horizontal. Films only

worked in certain cinemas, because

they had been shot on certain cameras.

“Then the distributors democratised

the exhibition of movies and created a

platform that everybody could build to

• which detonated a huge explosion of
  content and access to content.”
  What game would he design with all
  of Stadia’s potential? Harrison pauses.
  “I now look at games through the eyes
  of my children,” he says. “I would love
  to create an experience that my eight-
  and ten-year-old sons would allow me
  to play with them. To have that shared
  experience where we can go on a
  journey together as a band of brothers.
  “Those kind of experiences become
  shared and memorable, like if you go to
  a theme park with your kids and take
  photographs and videos – why shouldn’t
  you have the same experiences
  when you go into the game world?”�

Stephen Armstrong wrote about the

search for an Alzheimer’s vaccine in 07.19

is shifting towards in-game spending,

under which they earn more money per

minute of play rather than per copy

sold. Developers offering a game with

a defined end goal – such as first-

person shooter Doom (which on the

PlayStation 4 takes an average of 23

hours to finish) or the beautifully simple

puzzle game Gorogoa, which takes just

over two hours to complete – might

struggle financially on a subscription

streaming service.

That said, increased competition

among gaming platforms could be

good news for developers. In December

2018, Epic Games opened its digital

store for Mac and PC games, targeting

Steam owner Valve, which currently

controls 90 per cent of that market.

In a bid to disrupt Valve, Epic is taking

just 12 per cent of a game’s earnings.

Google remains tight-lipped about its

financial agreements with developers,

but Miles Jacobson, studio director at

Football Manager developer Sports

Interactive Games, says that Google’s

deal “works for us – which I haven’t

been able to say about other attempts

at streaming platforms previously”.

Jacobson does think that any future

arrangements will need to include

ancillary revenues. “We need to be better

as an industry at monetising away from

just core game sales,” he says. “Mobile

has done this in some ways, both good

Playing to win: Stadia’s product director

Andrey Doronichev (left) and head of games

Jack Buser at Google’s Mountain View HQ

11-19-FTGoogleStadia.indd 97 13/09/2019 11:11