Mar 20, 2019
We’re asking the wrong questions about Google Stadia
Here’s a picture: you’re on YouTube watching some gaming videos when you come across a trailer for a recently released game. The trailer makes the game in question look fantastic and you decide you have to play it for yourself. So you click the button under the video that says ‘Play Now’ and within seconds you’re looking at the game’s main menu screen, ready to start a new save and begin playing. Sounds good, right? Well this is what Google is claiming the future of games looks like. Google Stadia, announced yesterday, is the tech giant’s foray into the gaming space. As is typical of Google, this will be platform agnostic and all the work will be done on their end, meaning no console or PC required. You just need a screen, a Google account and a decent internet connection. Predictably, this announcement has been met with a lot of skepticism. The primary reaction seems to be something along the lines of “that sounds great, if it works, but that’s a big if.” I’m skeptical for another reason. I think it will work. Perhaps not flawlessly to begin with, but with enough time, any technical limitations will be overcome. My concern isn’t that it won’t work, but that it will.
Let’s ignore the technical question for a moment. Let’s assume that Google Stadia is a success, the input lag woes of OnLive a thing of the past, and any moderate consumer grade internet connection able to provide an adequate gaming experience. Certainly, that sounds like an idyllic gaming landscape. Gone is the need to purchase expensive games consoles, you never have to wait for a game to update again, you can seamlessly transition from your PC to your phone to your TV, all without skipping a beat in-game. That sounds like a great way to play games. My worry, though, is that such a fundamental shift in the manner of consumption of games will almost inevitably lead to a similar shift in the games themselves. We have no information yet about how Google plan to charge for this service. And beyond that, how do those funds get distributed to developers and publishers? The last decade has seen the AAA gaming industry take more and more inspiration from the psychologically abusive mobile gaming market and with it, more and more liberty with gamers’ wallets. Cosmetic upgrades, micro transactions, and loot-boxes are now standard fare in full price games, as are Premium Editions and Gold Editions and Extra-Special-Champion-Platinum-VIP-Give-Us-All-The-Money-You-Have-And-We’ll-Give-You-A-Shitty-Statue Editions. What happens when these destitute, needy, struggling-to-make-ends-meet and definitely-not-fleecing-you publishers have their share of a game’s proceeds reduced? Does it seem likely they’re going to simply roll over and get on with it?
No, I don’t think so either. When you take away the initial purchase price, these publishers will be forced (at least, they’ll say they’re forced because “games are expensive” and “what, do you expect us to not make $10 million a year or something?”) to extract as much money from returning players as possible. I don’t know what this will look like. Maybe publishers will receive remuneration on a time-played basis, like royalties, and so they start adapting their games to stretch out a player’s time investment. Or maybe in-game transactions will all go directly to the publisher, bypassing Google’s take, and before we know it, AAA games are even further monetised into the ground. You might think this is cynical, but I don’t think it’s possible to be too cynical about the practices of the AAA gaming industry. Let’s not forget on-disc DLC, XP-boosters to fix broken progression rates, and purchasable save-game slots. And this isn’t to mention what this gaming revolution could mean for smaller developers, or those who develop games that aren’t designed to keep players coming back day after day ad infinitum. Or what it means to have yet another device in your home always listening (the Stadia controller will, naturally, have Google Assistant built-in), always feeding valuable information to Google for them to sell on in whatever way they deem fit.
The conversation around whether Google’s vision is possible to pull off is, in my opinion, the wrong one. It either is possible or it will be soon enough. The real conversation worth having is if this is the right move for the gaming industry — an industry which has time and time again shown us that it values exorbitant wealth over customer satisfaction and is more than willing to weaponise people’s own psychology against them to make a quick buck. Streaming has revolutionised the way we watch television and movies, and listen to music, but it doesn’t come without a price. There are more than enough naysayers in each of those industries to encourage us to think twice about whether streaming really is the future. Just ask a recording artist what they think about Spotify.
Google Stadia is interesting. I’m not here to say it will ruin everything we love about gaming, because maybe it won’t. Done right, it could be a truly consumer friendly and just downright cool bit of tech. But that’s not a given, and we would do well to maintain some composure around it. The vision Google is pedalling is an attractive one, but it necessitates that the games we’ll be playing on Google Stadia are the same games we’re playing today. I’m not convinced that will be the case.
