Netflix will start publishing video games, has hired former EA exec | Hacker News Reader

Netflix will start publishing video games, has hired former EA exec

arstechnica.com

48 pointslaktak48 comments

A certain public American company I used to work for reached 20 million users. They stayed at 20 million users for years. Sometimes they gained some from the competition, sometimes they lost. The net average was 20 million with no real way to grow.

The problem was, every quarter they had to show growth or their stock price would tank. This was a profitable company with lots of cash in reserve. The only way to grow was to merge with a larger company and essentially disappear from existence, transferring customers to a new rebranded service, which is exactly the same service but more expensive.

That expected quarterly growth is the bane of any company. And is why Netflix will jump into video games when it has no business doing so.

Video games could be a real good extension to their business. They have all the technology to deliver content to users, games are just another kind of content. I don't know how this can pan out, but I am excited for Netflix. I hope they have a plan to provide streaming games, and this is just a start.

To offer a more pessimistic case this was true for Google, whose Stadia product flopped, and it was true for Amazon, whose video games utterly failed to take off. Currently something like Microsoft gamepass is a far better choice if you want to subscribe and play videogames.

On another note, Netflix has experimented with videogames before using Telltale "choose your own adventure" style games and fitting them into their existing product. They also did a similar thing with Bandersnatch a choose your own adventure from the film side. So I think with the demise of telltale netflix might just be bringing that in house rather than trying to offer a wholesale alternative to existing videogame providers.

> To offer a more pessimistic case this was true for Google, whose Stadia product flopped

Has it now? Their locations and games only keep growing, and the service is still their. Flopped is a bit harsh.

Yeah but Google made some stunningly poor decisions and have a very lacking game library compared to pretty much every single other streaming platform/console/steam/epic/gog/whatever.

With their existing tech chops I don't think Netflix would have to try very hard to put out a significantly better service than Google did. "Pay $X a month for this not garbage library of games, play on any device capable of handling the video stream and a gamepad". (Yes I know Stadia have fixed a lot of these issues now, but they didn't for a long time, and it's too far past the initial hype unless they get no new competition for a long time).

They also have a huge existing install base, stick the Gaming thing on the menu, advertise a trial, bam people are hooked.

The crucial thing is to make sure there's some sort of connection quality test that pops up a "hey, your internet doesn't seem so hot - your experience might not be great, but hey have a go anyway it might be okay" message. Otherwise a huge chunk of the market is just going to assume the service is terrible and then talk on social media about how the service is terrible, and tank the product.

>To offer a more pessimistic case this was true for Google, whose Stadia product flopped

I don't think that Google has ever shown any ability in pivoting if their first idea was not super successful. So they don't really have any business DNA about trying to understand what people want and giving it to them. Netflix has that DNA.

Netflix developed a game-like branching video about developing a virtual reality video game about a branching novel (Bandersnatch).

They might also publish live videos of real people playing actual video games (Twitch).

The odd thing is that each company wants to grow far above the average for the economy, which doesn't add up. Their entire reason for existence is "exponential growth", which can't exist in nature for very long. Greed drives underhanded tactics and rewards conniving. It would be better to be satisfied with a handsome profit and a good life with interesting problems to solve and contributions to ones community. That's the way to build a resilient society. Whatever we are building, I fear it isn't resilient.

There is a fair argument to be made that whenever you see a company taking the lion’s share of a market, whether in customers or profit, you’re witnessing a form of market failure. A textbook healthy free market has enough competition that profits are low and the market is evenly divided between many entrants.

That leads to a different market failure: inefficiencies due to redundancy. The free market will, left to its own devices, become less free as the most efficient company dominates. It may buy up its competition or simply outcompete them. That will allow the same amount of goods for less money since the redundant overheads are eliminated.

However, the ultimate end state of that is a monopoly, which frees them up to set prices wherever they want. In theory a new company could arise to undercut them, but in practice barriers to entry make that unlikely.

So the free market is always in constant tension between healthy competition and unhealthy inefficiency. The balance of it depends on the ability to differentiate, customer choice, and external regulation -- as well as the overlapping dependencies from supply chains and nearby industries.

This depends on the market, though of course it's not the case that a market would naturally tend to the best kind of competitive environment serving it.

For example, there is an argument that markets with one incumbent among several competitors can serve a market better, since the incumbent will have profits through it's economies of scale with which it can reinvest into R&D to serve the market better, that it needs to maintain its incumbency.

No, it does makes sense that the growth companies, and companies in a market that is rapidly changing, are expecting to grow faster than the economy. The rest of the economy is stable or in decline, which is how we end up with GDP of a few percentage points per year.

It is indeed destabilizing to have overall GDP growth beyond a few percent but less so for select individual sectors to experience it.

Greed is found just as much or more in stable industries. Belief that the pie is of a fixed size drives some craven behavior.

If Netflix plans to compete with Stadia, they have plenty of reason to get into gaming.

Netflix is already on TVs around the country. It makes sense for them to use that huge user base for games.

I am OOTL, is Stadia growing?

There's no official numbers, but probably - it has gotten lots of new releases, including heavy hitters like Ubisoft and EA's catalogues, including their latest games. Coupled with the unavailability of some latest gen consoles ( PS5), the slow arrival and subpar experience on some competing cloud gaming platforms (Xcloud), it would make sense.

On the other hand, Google's recent changes for better revenue sharing imply that things aren't going that great / great enough.

In any case, Stadia is by far the best in terms of UX and lag among the competitors I've tried ( GeForce Now and Xcloud). If it weren't for Google's terrible reputation for abandoning stuff ( even if it isn't directly applicable here because Google rarely, if ever, kill paid services) they'd be doing much better IMHO.

Maybe, but probably not as fast as Google was aiming for. There don’t seem to be any direct numbers from Google, but some sources have reported that they missed active user targets by “hundreds of thousands”.

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/320366-report-stadia-miss...

Its literally why things like Solar Wind hacks happen with cost cuts. Also products become unfixable, you get locked-in, random shit happens that requires everyone to spend a little extra and so on.

It always amazes me that people who adore the startup f-you mentality are shocked when they go public that this mentality fizzles out pretty quickly. Google & Facebook were adored as leaders in tech and now...

That maybe true but also no one thought their streaming idea was going anywhere either. I worked with telco/cable execs (comcast, verizon et al) back then, who would laugh at Netflix posing an issue. The internet wasnt cheap or fast in most parts of the world and content was locked up. But now we have blockbusters and live sports streaming that they used to categorically say would never happen.

They might well fail in gaming or they might kill off the never ending amount of ads on Android gaming or cause Apple to hand over more cash to game devs. The only thing certain in this uncertain world is competition keeps everyone on their toes. And thats not always bad.

Without knowing the particulars of that specific company, this doesn't always hold true.

Companies in this situation (handsomely profitable but little/no growth) can start issuing dividends (or share buybacks).

True, they wouldn't be valued as a growth company any longer, causing a dip in the stock price, but that wouldn't necessarily mean continuous decline until oblivion.

Bane of the stock market: those who believe that a company will grow price in their projected growth expectations and will therefore always outbid those who believe that the company is well set up for stable profitability but maybe not so much for growth. In the end the company will have an ownership structure that would feel cheated by executives who don't aggressively prioritize growth over earnings and/or stability, because growth is what the current owners paid for.

Not cutting up a golden egg laying goose seems to be a luxury that's effectively restricted to the privately owned. "I've paid so much for this goose, if we don't scale the golden eggs to factory farming I would have been better off buying bonds"

Paul Debevec just left Google and started at Netflix this month as Director of Research, Creative Algorithms and Technology, which is pretty big news (more earth shattering than some EA exec, in my book), about a lot more than just creating games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Debevec

https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-debevec-163212/

Here's the job he just posted. Looks like he's setting his own lab!

Senior Research Scientist, Computer Graphics / Computer Vision / Machine Learning

https://jobs.netflix.com/jobs/58051163

He made the Light Stage at USC:

The Congress (2013) Scan Scene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPAl5GwvdY8&ab_channel=JuanV...

Digitizing Photorealistic Humans Inside USC's Light Stage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6QJT5CXl3o&ab_channel=AdamS...

And also Rouan Revisited, with Golan Leven, at Interval Research Corporation:

https://acg.media.mit.edu/people/golan/rouen/

http://www.pauldebevec.com/Thesis/debevec-phdthesis-1996_ch8...

Interestingly, Netflix has grown soooo big so that they don't consider their rivals are Hulu or HBO, instead, they consider their rival are other entertainments such as video games.

A second thought this makes sense because ultimately the resource to contend here is users' time and attention.

Netflix does not need to compete with EA, MS XBox Game Pass or Steam, they just need occasional addictive exclusives to keep people engaged and continuing to subscribe. "Among Us" would have worked well.

Will we see lootboxes in movies too?

Se7en's "What's in the box?!" ending would change significantly if you had to pay to find out.

Worth a watch?

Yeah, it's a pretty good movie.

Too speculative and too explicit, frankly showing some very horrible things. Not watching again.

There are movies that are worth that one watch, but you'll never watch them again. Schindler's List is one of these.

And then there are movies like A Serbian Filme, where just reading the Wikipedia synopsis[1] is enough to nope the F out.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Serbian_Film

I found this one even more boring than disgusting. And it was pretty disgusting.

At least once.

Not unless you enjoy being saddened and disturbed.

Fantastic film. Well worth a watch.

It's a very well crafted piece of cinema that intelligently deals with the idea of detectives chasing down a psychopath. The characters are well defined and well acted, and the plot isn't really 'guessable'. It's Brad Pitt's best movie.

As others have said though, it is definitely a bit gratuitously sickening in places but not in a way that's out of step with the plot of the film. It almost crosses into the horror genre in places (in a Hostel or Saw franchise sort of way). If you're squeamish it's probably best to stay away.

Agreed, great movie. Only thing that I dislike is it does that trope where it makes a waaaaaay bigger deal out of somebody killing the villain than would actually be realistic, almost implying that somehow the protagonist has somehow become as bad as the guy who [REDACTED] his [REDACTED].

Probably something new that’s worse than lootboxes as more and more of the world wises up to them.

I get the jest, but hiring a former Zynga and EA executive seems like a pretty smart move to me. EA has sold people the same sports games every year, for what 30 years? That’s the kind of executive experience that an enterprise organisation cares about.

The most interesting thing about them making games is the amount of leverage they have with the consoles. Netflix video streaming is absolutely a killer app and I could see them using that to make some really interesting moves that wouldn't otherwise be possible.

Related article on Amazon trying its hand on creating games. https://qz.com/1999032/why-amazon-keeps-failing-at-video-gam...

I think Netflix has a better chance in winning on this. Games, like movies, have a skewness in their distribution-of-popularity. Some movies get too much popular, more than 1000x of an average movie. Similar distribution holds for games.

Netflix is excellent at spotting popular movies early-on (Compare Netflix with other streaming content creators). So I hope they can use the same way of making decisions in spotting and building good games.

My first reaction, how is this going to work on iOS?

Games are subject to App reviews, Apple would not pass any Game Streaming services unless each Game on the streaming services was individually approved by Apple.

Games are also not "Reader" Content. Hence Netflix will require a button for Account Creation, and under the new guidelines any Apps with account creation must also have account deletion within the App. This new account also means 30% of commission to Apple.

Are they "Streaming" the Games to your Devices? That has an extremely large infrastructure cost I dont see how this would make sense for Netflix.

Steam is totally fine without participating in a walled garden utopia. Netflix may do the same?

I'm going to go against convention and say this might be a good move for Netflix.

They specifically hired someone from EA mobile division. Console/PC games vs mobile games are built with vastly different audiences in mind.

Netflix has an audience that enjoys a bit of couch time. Couch co-op games are a heck of a lot of fun and there is a huge audience for casual gamers. Think games like Jackbox Party Pack.

This might be big for them if pulled off right.

I hope Netflix can repeat their success from their movie streaming service by growing, supporting and maybe buying some indie devs. There is certainly a space between the $10-15 games and the $60+ games that has been explored in multiple ways but that has never really taken off. Maybe a subscription service can establish that space.

It already exists in the form of gamepass. Owning an xbox and a gamepass subscription is a great experience. I was never into consoles even if I bought a few over the past couple of decades but having to pay good money for a game I'll play once didn't sit well and they ended up eating dust until eventually getting rid of them. Few months ago bought a an xbox series x and a gamepass subscription and I probably finished more titles than I had in the past 20 years. Subscription model for gaming works unless you need to have day one release titles.

A bit surprising, I feel live streaming like Twitch would be a more natural direction.

Or something akin to YouTube. In fact now that I think about it it would be very easy for Netflix to provide an equivalent of YouTube for user generated content where the creators get paid from the subscription revenue based on how much their content is viewed. Since there will be no ads, it can certainly become very popular.

In the game space, I don't think they'll be creating proper console/PC games, rather interactive movies as they have a few already on their platform. Not sure how popular they are though since I've yet to try any of them.

Both Twitch and YouTube are user generated content. This comes with a whole lot of baggage that they probably do not want to deal with. Games fit them better from a business perspective.

With their good (enough) recommendation engine they could try to become a Steam like platform. I wonder how well that will turn out. Mixing entertainment is one thing, but juggling both platforms is a big thing.

Cobbler, stick to your last.

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