Some are excited for the gaming potential that Google’s thrust into the industry can bring, such as being able to stream a wide range of triple-A games from any device, but many others see the announcement of the Stadia as a harbinger of doom for game developers.
To use the Stadia service, you will need a constant internet connection, meaning that consumers will be effectively paying for a license to play a game, but own claims to nothing. Your internet connection will need to be at least 30 Mbps for 4K, 60 fps gaming or 25 Mbps for 1080p at 60 fps. Given that the average internet connection speed in the UK is around 17 Mbps, this alone will discourage many potential players.
Stadia, perhaps, isn’t going to smash its way in as the future of gaming as quickly as many outlets will have you believe, but its arrival will make certain forms of developers consider their options.
Current pricing plans will hurt indie developers
We asked Google's Phil Harrison if the Stadia is meant to compete with the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The answer? Not…really: https://t.co/e9GB6AAnAt pic.twitter.com/twOtHUJuU6
— IGN (@IGN) March 22, 2019
The top-of-the-line pricing plans that currently exist for streaming services of other media are the likes of Spotify’s way of paying musicians when their songs are listened to, and Netflix’s method of paying a lump sum to get the movie or series.
A pay-per-minute approach may work in other forms of gaming, somewhat, but wouldn’t work for indie game developers. Online game developers like Aristocrat receive money whenever their game Buffalo is played at any of the online gaming platforms that host it, but the developers also create many other games to enable their games to offer new appeal as the overall game libraries continue to grow.
Indie developers would need a similar approach, but many of their games take a lot longer to make and don’t have the same longevity as games like Buffalo from Aristocrat, with superb titles such as Everything, Tacoma, Little Nightmares, and Blackwood Crossing having a firm ceiling on their income due to the games being just a few hours long.
Netflix-style pricing may hinder all developers
There’s already a lot of risk involved when creating a video game because there is very little certainty as to how the game will be received or how it will sell. If Stadia enforces a Netflix-style payment system of a bulk payment at the start and that’s it, many games will undoubtedly be greatly undervalued.
To cover these potential losses, more and more big-name developers will be forced into the live service and games as a service arena, which publishers like Electronic Arts have been forcing upon grand traditionally single-player developers like Visceral and BioWare to very little success or acclaim. This will lead to games needing to be constantly online, more games being released in an incomplete state to be patched along the way, and a tonne of microtransactions to earn what is lost by being on a streaming service.
All that gamers can hope is that the Stadia doesn’t take a leaf out of Epic’s book and start paying huge sums to make highly-anticipated, triple-A, single-player games Stadia exclusives.
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