Why Google's gaming studio was a catastrophic failure
Even with billions of dollars, they couldn't get it right.
Google is so big and powerful that it’s hard to imagine the company losing. It’s like watching the Brooklyn Nets lose to the Timberwolves in a 7-game series even when Kevin Durant, James Harden, and Kyrie Irving are all fully healthy — it just shouldn’t happen.
Still, even with some of the world’s best developers and insane amounts of cash, Google’s plan to build a dominant gaming studio somehow failed as badly as Ben Simmons’s attempts to get better at shooting.
I’m not exaggerating when I say “insane amounts of cash”. At the end of 2020, Google had more than $136 billion worth of cash equivalents on its balance sheet. That’s pretty close to the size of the entire gaming industry in 2020.
Today, we’re going to explain why Google’s plan to dominate gaming failed. We’ll break down why Google’s internal gaming studio was forced to shut down, and what Google could have done differently to prevent this from happening.
Google Stadia explained
In 2019, Google announced that it was launching its own game streaming platform, Google Stadia. Unlike an Xbox or a Playstation, gamers didn’t have to buy a console to get started. Stadia was completely free. Gamers just had to pay a monthly subscription fee to get the ability to stream games like Borderlands 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2.
On paper, Google Stadia was a great idea. There are definitely people out there who might be interested in playing games but can’t spend hundreds of dollars for a new Playstation 5. Since Wi-Fi speeds have gotten significantly faster in the past decade, it makes sense that people would want to stream games from the cloud.
Google even had a good plan to get people interested in the platform — they started their own gaming studio to make exclusive games for Stadia. This strategy makes a ton of sense. After all, I’m sure many of the guys reading this article probably bought an Xbox 360 back in 2007 just to play Halo.
To run this new studio, Google hired some of the biggest names in gaming. The company brought on the leads behind games like God of War and Assassin’s Creed. It seemed like they had all the talent they needed to succeed.
Why Google’s processes didn’t translate into gaming
Over the years, Google has built processes that have helped it build the greatest search engine in the world. Unfortunately, the same processes that help Google become a trillion-dollar company actually hurt its gaming efforts.
Google’s lame hiring process
There’s a reason why your search results seem to get better and better every year. Google has set up a hiring process that ensures they’re getting the smartest people in the world. It’s estimated that Google’s hiring rate is 0.2%. That’s significantly lower than Harvard’s acceptance rate of 5.2%.
Google’s hiring process is also incredibly long. For every job I’ve ever interviewed for, I’ve had 3 interviews at most, and the process usually wraps up in less than a month. Meanwhile, Google has 15-25 interviews over the course of 6-9 months.
This process might work well when it comes to hiring engineers to work on search and Android. After all, Google already has thousands of talented engineers, and taking time to hire one additional employee definitely isn’t going to hurt the company.
However, this hiring timeline didn’t work at all when it came to developing video games. Since making a game is such a complicated process, the studio needed to hire people quickly. Unfortunately, its team needed to wait close to a year to get help.
A really stupid way to evaluate developers
The developers that did get hired by Google saw even more stupidity inside the studio. According to WIRED Magazine, developers were evaluated based on metrics that were originally created for visual designers.
This a totally ridiculous way to evaluate game developers. While design is an important part of gaming, it’s only a very small part of what makes a successful game. Just listen to the guy who created Mario explain it.
A great game does have great design. It also has an engaging story, relatable characters, and immersive gameplay. These are all things that weren’t captured by Google’s evaluation metrics.
You might be saying something like, ”Dude, this is some really nerdy, in-the-weeds shit. Why does this even matter?”
Look, the way companies measure their employees’ performance has big implications. It determines who gets a raise and who gets a promotion. If you’re working with a flawed evaluation rubric, the best performers don’t get rewarded and instead end up feeling frustrated and dissatisfied.
The end result: 0 original games
In the end, billions of dollars couldn’t save Google. In February, the company’s two in-house gaming studios shut down without ever having released a single game.
According to WIRED Magazine, Google’s game streaming platform Stadia was not hitting its subscriber goals. That’s especially bad when you consider how much gaming has exploded during the pandemic. At that point, Google probably realized that investing in original games wasn’t worth the cost, especially since there was so much dysfunction in their studios already.
What Google could have done differently
While Google’s strategy for conquering the gaming industry didn’t work out, it’s possible it could’ve had better results if the company did a couple of things differently.
Acquiring a game studio
Instead of starting their own game studio, Google should have simply acquired an existing one.
Google didn’t need to start from scratch and try to force processes that worked when it came to search engines onto game development. All the company had to do was find a successful game studio that already knew how to hire game developers and properly evaluate them. Then, Google could have given the studio all the money they needed to build out well-crafted games.
This is the strategy that Microsoft has followed in recent years. Instead of building all their games completely in-house, they’ve acquired the studios behind games like Fallout and Minecraft. Microsoft has also seen much better success when it comes to actually putting out games — it’s got games like Psychonauts 2 and Halo Infinite set to release later this year.
Going the Nintendo Wii route
It’s possible that Google was pursuing the wrong strategy all along. As I said earlier, Google hired leads that previously worked on games like God of War. These types of games are usually played by hardcore gamers who already play games on their PC, their Xbox, or their Playstation and aren’t in the market for a new console.
There’s another reason why these gamers would want to avoid Stadia. Remember, Stadia gave users the ability to stream games without the need to download them. However, hardcore gamers know that a few seconds of delay can make a huge difference in a first-person shooter. If they’re planning to play games like Call of Duty or Fortnite that require speed and quickness, Stadia would hold them back.
Instead of trying to compete with the Xbox, Google could have tried to build games for casual gamers who don’t want to spend the money to buy a console.
The Nintendo Wii succeeded by using this exact strategy. While hardcore gamers had no interest in it, casual gamers got the Wii just so they could play Wii Sports. As a result, the Wii sold significantly more units than its two main competitors, the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360.
Maybe in an alternate timeline, Stadia could have been the Wii for a new generation. Now that Google’s gaming studio has shut down, we’ll never know.
In conclusion
There’s one moral we can take away from this story: Even with all the money in the world and the help of some of the most talented people, you can still fail catastrophically. Keep that in mind next you feel like a fuck-up.