Eventually, the Stadia Games and Entertainment teams obtained the software and people they needed to gain momentum by creating prototypes of Stadia games. The fascination of a Google-sized paycheck and a haunch-powered hamster wheel exit ramp was enough to attract a critical mass of developers to Stadia Games and Entertainment. Artists, producers, audio experts, programmers were brought in with the promise of making unique games for revolutionary software – and, many believed, without the threat of layoffs hanging like the sword of Damocles, as is often the case in gaming companies. traditional. The teams were exploring what Google’s games could look like, how to better harness the power of Google’s huge data centers and showcase cloud games. Then Covid-19 attacked.
In April 2020 – a month after the Los Angeles studio’s announcement – Google implemented a hiring freeze. “Now is the time to significantly slow the hiring pace,” said Pichai in an internal message, “while maintaining momentum in a small number of strategic areas where users and businesses rely on Google’s continued support and where our growth is critical for their success. ”The games, according to four sources, were not one of those” strategic areas “.
“If the company agreed to put us in a hiring freeze, they also agreed to undermine our ability to create content,” said a source. “The studio was not yet fully formed and ready to produce games. This hit the brake and it was a statement. We interpret this as Google’s lack of commitment to making content. “
Google is not the first technology giant to face these difficulties. Amazon followed a similar arc. In 2020, WIRED investigated the enormous challenges that the Jeff Bezos empire faced in producing original games in its Amazon Game Studios. Like Google, Amazon hired the best of the best: trusted developers like Far Cry 2Clint Hocking, Shock system 2is Ian Vogel, EverQuestis John Smedley, and PortalKim Swift of the company, many of whom were enthusiastic about the stability and relatively higher wages associated with the tech giant. Amazon’s goal, according to several sources, was to make a billion-dollar franchise that would help advertise the company’s cloud technology, proprietary game engine and Twitch streaming service.
The approach, the sources say, was arrogant. Amazon wanted to “win at games” by developing several AAA games simultaneously, despite its non-existent track record in the industry. Amazon Game Studios director Mike Frazzini has no previous professional gaming experience. High expectations combined with Amazon’s idiosyncrasies – an obsession with internal software, for example, and a fixation on measuring success with data – led to failures after failures. Amazon canceled at least three of its games: Project Nova, To run away, and Crucible, the last of which was canceled just five months after launch.
AAA game development can cost between $ 100 million and $ 200 million. Successes like Blizzard Overwatch come from the ashes of failures, like the company’s discarded online multiplayer role-playing game Titan. Product design at major technology companies may not always be simple, but game design is a maze that requires a lot of resources and money.
“I think it’s a lack of understanding of the process,” says a source who works at Stadia. “It seemed that there were people at the executive level who didn’t fully understand how to navigate in a space that is highly creative and interdisciplinary.”
Throughout the Google hiring freeze, game developers have been hampered from reaching their goals. Prototypes were being developed without full resources; the studios did not operate at full capacity. When it came to performance evaluation, three sources say, Google judged game developers against benchmarks created for UX or visual designers. There is no number associated with “fun to play” or a process-based workflow for generating creativity. Veteran game developers pushed their work culture as hard as they could. Over time, Google seemed to soften. The developers got the tools they needed, the appropriate review processes. But not the number of employees. The frustration persisted.