Google Stadia is just another example of the games industry move to a ‘Netflix’ distribution model, in that respect it’s hardly a revolution. But that is the funny thing about revolutions, in tech they often don’t appear as some huge change for those that are ‘insiders’ or ‘early adopters’.

Take F2P, which now from the perspective of 2019 we can see what a massive revolution that change the industry, but back in 2009 there had been micro transactions in Asia since the early 2000’s and downloadable mobile games for nearly as long.

So Stadia is just another step in the evolution of game platforms and the underlying business models that we can trace back on Onlive and Gaikai, we can also see the same subscription model in Microsofts Gamepass. All of these try and do the same thing, to give players a huge library of games, freely available and instant. Games the player can play at their leisure, consuming when and where ever they like.

This is clearly a hugely appealing proposition, demonstrated by Spotify and Netflix in the other major media markets. It would seem extremely unlikely that games will not eventually follow it’s stable mates down the same route and become an ‘all you can eat’ buffet of interactive entertainment.

This has some very interesting effects to how games are built and marketed. If there is just a simple subscription then it is likely games will generate revenue based on the amount of gameplay time they generate. Games will therefore focus on retention and the length of gameplay rather than some of the monetisation mechanics in F2P which actually reduce gameplay time based on spend.

If anything analytics will become even more important and the mechanisms developers will deploy to keep players playing their game may be just as ‘unsavory’ as some of the monetisation mechanics used today. The concept of ‘just one more go’ will be paramount in driving revenue in games and the game types that favor long game sessions will do well.

This is where the business model may push game design in a direction and away from the quick fun fillers that we see in the casual space. Making casual work in this new model will be a whole new challenge.

So Viva the Revolution, interesting times ahead….

Over ten years ago I wrote a set of articles for Pocket Gamer on the History of Mobile Games. They charted the birth of game, the evolution of WAP and SMS and coming of download games in the form of J2ME and Brew. With the iPhone a recent launch I ended on the iPhone in 2008.

Many would look at this not as the end, but the start of mobile games, certainly mobile games as we would recognize it now. The iPhone and Android have dominated the market, becoming increasingly more powerful and combined with F2P, they have taken Mobile Games to a point where it exceeds Console Gaming in revenue.

The chip sets that drive mobile are now powerful enough to run console games, and full cross platform gaming is at least theoretically possible as Fortnight has demonstrated. But it’s not the visuals that have made mobile games so powerful, unlike the rest of the games industry where the drive for greater and greater realism drives each generation and the games that define them. Mobile Games are different, for the first time in the short history of video games, we have a market that is truly mass market.

For years the games industry has been trumpeting that it is bigger than Hollywood, but that is really missing the point. Hollywood and Cinema is not the driving force of films, it is the home releases that drive revenue and the cost point is 4-6x less than a typically AAA console game.

Games have been and with console still are a niche market aimed at the hardcore players that happily pay hundreds of pounds to buy a dedicated piece of gaming hardware and then £40-£60 for each game. The success of the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro shows that there is still a hunger for the most powerful gaming hardware available.

This is where mobile is different, the vast majority of the players have no idea of care about the number of terraflops their phone can drive or even the resolution of the display. They simply want a fun experience to get them through the wait for a bus. They want entertainment without the added geek tech.

Mobile has been a huge success for the exact reason that it has not chased technology.

It feels like ten years on this story should be finished, the first 8 years was interesting, but the story was only really half written.

Google Stadia, a Revolution?

The History of Mobile Games