Stadia Shutting Down | Roundtable News Episode 258

[Music] what's up everybody welcome to another episode of gamedev unchained the number one podcast about game development and the lifestyle thereof what's up everybody i am your host brandon fam and this is a roundtable news episode and that means ray graham is just around the corner how are you doing ray i'm doing good man how you doing i am doing good dude uh it's kind of like a uh a quick coveted report we kind of had a little warm up but uh how are you hanging over there yeah um i've seen my vaccine at this point you know like i'm at that point now where i'm just like where's the vaccine at but um now you know a lot of people that's gotten it right now right so they're not barfing and choking no not no i don't know a lot of people

yeah i don't know no one you don't know a nurse or a doctor work in the hospital or something no i don't i don't have any hookups and i and i probably know a few people that i know directly that got cape naval covid but otherwise no um well you gotta get out of the server runes man and meet some real people who do actual things [Music] well that's the thing you're not supposed to be doing actual things right you're supposed to be in the hot zone helping people yeah at least for me i've had a few friends that um that are nurses in the middle kill field or in these like at least essential worker areas where they can have access and there's like two shots and so far they've been okay so there is like a mutation thing going on but i don't know let's worry about that later but uh i know we're late so uh without any formal introduction let's go ahead and

get right into it man i'm gonna go over to our bathroom [Music] there we go i'm pulling this up uh and i gotta pull this up actually right now so the the topic of today's roundtable news is none other uh stadia right that didn't stay too long as i kind of guessed uh i want to know your your your your initial reaction i know you kind of got into it a bit in the discord channel but can you give your general view of the news and how your friend's doing man [Laughter] no i'm bummed i'm bummed about it honestly because i thought at least like you know it's not surprising right yeah but it's but i'm just like i thought at least they were like yo make make a one game you know what i mean um but you know at the end of the day um and also of course that decision was made right before their earnings right

yeah and at that at the end of the day when when money's being spent you gotta you gotta make some some hard some hard choices right um they knew that that stuff wasn't like when they started doing first party games they had enough people on staff to know that making first party games is hard to make video games is hard so like i hate how the announcement kind of spun it as like this is something we kind of just noticed we just we just now are noticing that making video games cost a lot of money like they knew that and they knew that it was gonna take a while but it's just it's just like why put money into something like that you know when nobody playing stadia really when the numbers the user numbers don't really justify the cost that they're going to put into it you know so yeah makes sense it makes sense it's it's definitely sad uh i kind of said so myself that

um i kind of figured you know this this long kind of streak that we have with no layoff story right was kind of weird and i i didn't imagine google be the first one i was kind of like you like they would at least invest enough for this group that they all hired right that are professional game developers to kind of push one out there and like show why stated exclusives are important and we know with exclusive right they're the only ones that are going to really show the true power of their system or whatever right uh without that i don't think they have a trump card anymore uh i don't think they have bad technology sure but i'm starting to see through the grapevine like a lot of linkedin are kind of showing like no it's not just a development team like a lot of their core networking team and everything are starting to get laid off too i would say the core networking but it's the people that are getting let go is uh the folks that are like research kind of some folks on research side

uh content anything to do with any sort of content on stadia because here's the thing right making content is hard being a content provider is hard google ain't in that business you know what i mean uh they're in the business of technology they prove they've proven that the technology works uh nobody wants to play it but they they've they've proven that that it works right yeah and and now it's like okay what did we do with this thing right and if you read between the lines of their actual announcement like you know it's kind of clear that they they're gonna start trying to license it out you know like if somebody says hey i'm a content provider and i want to have my own content streaming service much like how everybody wants their own movie streaming service uh they could go to google and be like hey give us give us the tech we'll pay you some money and and then we deal with the issue of like making games for this thing and making the content and google sits back and makes platform

you know what i mean and just chills out um that is a bigger money money maker than than actually making content that will probably that could possibly flop and just be burning money in google's pocket right yeah i mean i think it's always like a difficult thing for people to come to grass with i do understand like there's a proven at least technology wise it was smooth as bitter i do think this streaming uh technology it's not like on live at all like the world wasn't ready i think if anything the world is super ready uh do you think so do you think the world's ready if nobody played it i don't think people were ready for stadia but i think people were looking forward to xbox and what they're offering what playstation you know uh can pull for their content level library like people were there was a good amount of like people kind of rooting for stadia right with that ridiculous pricing

structure that came out and and the and they just completely fumbled it right yeah it and i i still think they didn't really did good pr uh even up to this point right what was a missed opportunity was the pandemic what was another recent mis opportunity was cyberpunk right cyberpunk pc didn't get as much dinging as last gen it had bugs but there was actually people kind of rooting for well this is actually a great case scenario why stadia is perfect for someone who doesn't yeah but i mean i mean how much better can you get like they did a good job was with cyberpunk right they had numerous favorable articles that came out saying the best way to play cyberpunk is on stadia like that there was numerous times that that was said that it's if you didn't have a next-gen console because nobody could get one at the time if you didn't have a three thousand

dollar pc the best way to play stadium was on st sorry the best way to play cyberpunk was on stadia right yeah and so like it doesn't get much better than that when numerous people are telling you like you know what i mean right but the reason why nobody nobody wanted to play it is because like why like why do i need to play cyberpunk stadium when i could play it on other other platforms right he needed the app that's the thing i needed the killer app to say this is why stadius dope you know this is why you should be playing stadia and it just there just wasn't that it was just a bunch of games ported to it and some of them did have some exclusive exclusive features that came later but that was after everybody was already like uninterested in whatever state he was doing right i mean how far how late were they um was this avoidable from the beginning of well not the beginning probably mid last year to now like what moose could have done differently to kind of yeah it was available it was affordable

from day one if they just had launch titles first party launch styles from day one that were that were ready right like they like how they even got into it and just thinking oh we could get into it and then come out with first party titles three years later you know it's crazy that sounds crazy to me right you know um but then i think the pivot that they're pivoting now to to use this oh it's a platform right so stadia stadia as a brand as a consumer brand is probably dead right like like like stadia is dead right but as the tech itself somebody else may pick it up and and make it you know the activision streaming platform or whatever like whoever right yeah uh it's sad man uh well thankfully usually these come in threes like celebrity deaths right but it didn't sound like there was another layoff story i mean i don't i don't even know the the

exact numbers of how big that team was um like how many people did they lay off exactly but you heard like they said they're gonna find people other play positions within google right so i'm sure there's like a come on are you you falling for that that's the classic of using this right you know it's this right like if you are okay first of all you have to understand they probably got google rsus and stuff that vest over numerous years so it might it might not be the best idea to just bounce and leave all that off the table right but um but the the second thing is like if you if you're like i'm cool doing other tech whatever google has on deck i'm cool with doing that and like staying at google like i'm sure there's jobs for people to do but i'm sure some of them are like no i want to make video games that's why i'm here is i'm here to make video games and if there's no video games to be made i'm out right so i'm sure there's some percentage that are staying and some percentage are going because

they just want to make video games well at least for the person that was like the creative force of stadia she's gone jade raymond isn't out the door and what an unlucky streak she's been on man it seems like she's i feel like we know someone in history that has that knack of shutting down studios everywhere that they go right so it i don't know i mean again might be not through her fault but if you're supposed to be building up these studios from the ground up and have all the money in the world i mean you got to take some kind of responsibility here how much is it to blame to to jade i know she you know he gives her buddy you guys had house parties and stuff but i would love to kind of hear your untainted uh opinion of how much response responsibility billy is there as a creative of the studio too it would be fail i think i think it'd be one thing if they

released the game it flops and then says yes stadia state is not successful and then they and they flush it right and it's another thing to say hire team build a new office like you know do do all the things and then before you're even able to finish do the thing they're like nah right you know like right so that seems like that seems like it's kind of like the bean counters and and the financial folks are like no we we have to we have to turn this around we have to we have to recoup some of this like nah we can't do this i'm sure i'm sure there was at least as we can imagine right internal meetings you were kind of mentioning this kind of happened before earnings call internal reviews green light meetings that just wasn't meeting up standards or at least what was promised right as we can probably guess it probably didn't meet certain deadlines here i i can guarantee you it probably hit deadlines

but they but they're like guys you want us to knock you want us to knock people's socks off we need to hunt like you know we need 200 300 million dollars to make this video asking for more right yeah and google's like nah they're great so like that's probably what happened right it's probably all about like the the cost benefit to google and they're like why are we doing this and also like they're not a company that makes video games they don't understand this like i don't understand what they even got into in the first place you know what i mean but they did i will say this and it's like nah we can't do this this is just too much it's a bit short-term thinking like if they quit now that means they're never gonna go back in um yeah and video games if anything is growing as the pandemic shows and um i really do think facebook is in the on the cusp of like really proving out vr to the masses right with requests uh and for google to not have any part

of that into the future i think it is a mistake that they are cutting their losses too early do you think that do you think they don't have like that's what i'm saying here's the headline focusing on steady's future as a platform bro i don't care dude no you don't care but like from their perspective right they don't understand what what makes a system important then is it easier to to run service to dig a ditch or to sell the shovels you know what i mean right that's that's what they're doing right they're like let's just let's just sell it as a service yeah okay but google has a knack for like quitting the shovel business and the whole business all at once because it's not google maps or google search well i will admit i will admit that um that even now if you if you came to me and say hey here's sadie as a platform do you want to pay us a licensing fee like how am i how can i trust if it's still going to be around

exactly you're just getting yourself i understand that i understand that well i mean you're one of these suckers right you got this we got for free but you have 150 uh waste basket or or like uh [Applause] i got a chromecast out of the deal and a crook and the crowcast does stuff so that's that's fine all right i mean you want to navigate down loser loser talk sure but like that's a lot of disappointed people like if i had one right now right i could imagine like this is no going nowhere they're quitting um and from the get-go they've been failing me from launch yeah to now there's no way this is going to get any better at the end of the day um streaming may be a thing and it may be something that is happening in the future oh it has canceled the up there's xcloud you know there's there's people there's other players coming with stuff right um it's still going to be a thing

right and so just you know google stadio was a blip to show what was possible right and to show hey it is possible the tech does work right and now now it's really up to somebody else to really productize it and make it yeah like playstation xbox like yeah we know it works the idiot doesn't stop bothering us we don't need you to tell us how to run a game business well stadium is better than uh the playstation now let's just be real i'm sure in terms of lag free experience um but that still people are still uh i think giving those other platforms a chance because they're they're in it to stay with it you know and that i think that speaks volumes to her customer loyalty it's like there's nothing worse than buying a windows phone to find i can remember the day that renato talked me into it

and he was like windows dude don't you use windows on your pc all right so now it's on the phone it's not going anywhere two three years later uh he was like one of the first one out of it's like this going [ __ ] nowhere right and it was the most perfectly heartening he was not he was not one of the first ones out of it he was hanging on he was hanging on to that windows phone up until like a year or two up until like the chase app the banking apps said that they would stop supporting when does it's the saddest notices ever it's like are they actually like does it cost them to maintain this to not update anymore does it is that how it works so it's so bad that they rather just say goodbye to a few hundred other people uh didn't even spend any more time on that yeah but yeah i you know being a victim of that i i it's it's really hard to go back like if windows

suddenly transform themselves like hey we figured out the kinks you lost you man uh same thing with stadia uh you know you killed you killed as part of me a long time ago there's no way stadia is a thing ever there's just nowhere coming back i mean i'm starting to see studios severing ties you know these third party that are supportive supposedly the focus of stadia are slowly cutting ties with them so i mean the writing's on the wall there's no one's left except for phil the only people the only people that were at like the games that were on stage were paid for mostly right so they're like yeah sure we'll put you up all right so they're just finishing what's on on yeah they're not out there fishing for more developers yeah well i would i would imagine i would imagine with this new focus that they're definitely not looking to put more games on like i cannot see stadia as a brand uh living much longer yeah and with this and with

the notices heading down um sg e they very well could have just said hey we're just gonna kill stevia entirely as a brand and and and pivot it elsewhere but they they stop short of that which like that's also kind of odd to me um what is this i'm trying to read this support platform smoothly for it i've not done anything to violate your terms of service ah see every time i see add google stadia what is this about you know some context is i i also thought that's that but that's nothing really that's just like the headlines were all like trying to blow it up but it's really just homeboy lost access to all of his google stuff somehow through some reason and he was like and he's like this is unacceptable i'm gonna just make sure my game doesn't come to save you at this point because google's trash that's really that's really what happened right it has nothing really to do with sgme being shut down is more to do with

his personal google account got wiped somehow or you lost access to it somehow and then got really bad about it yeah well terry is a big game yeah rightfully rightfully so rightfully solo you know what i mean so all right here's some numbers here 150 employees that's all they had that was it so recently shut down all of its internal games to you affecting approximately 150 people well i thought they were like in the thousands or something so they were still growing yeah there's no way man you need to build a triple a game with 150 come on now well you gotta start small like you have to figure out what you're doing first right i did the team in much longer you start small three years ago you don't start small three years in so probably there is some credence to what you're saying now they're asking for 300 miller growing the team bigger and google's like what do you mean like you saw that you saw the the letter that they wrote like what does this say

you know let me find it a formal letter of why they're shutting down yeah uh i guess it is worth reading let me kind of pick uh pull it up right now was it phil that wrote it yeah there's a letter from his fell but um [Music] that dude where else he's gonna run to yeah see like one of the one paragraphs in 2021 know we're expanding our efforts to help game developers and publishers take advantage of our platform technology and deliver games directly to their players we see an important opportunity to work with partners seeking a gaming solution all built on stadiums advanced technical infrastructure and platform tools we believe this is the best path to building stadia into a long-term sustainable business that grows with the industry right so this is the same uh video games ain't where it's at we're talking about because at the same

time you know the amount of money that google's dealing with and the type of profit and scale that they're dealing with right yeah like video games ain't that for them you know what i mean and they're like no like the way they get scale and actual make it a long-term sustainable thing is to turn it into a platform right like it makes sense if you're if you're on the bean counter side of things you know what i mean and you're just like trying to make it try to make it make sense how do we get the maximum amount of profit out of the money that we spent yeah but no one's going to your yard to taste your milk if you're not doing any custom stuff to show off the technology because people are are converting stuff maybe but it's going to be minimum spec of just like it being there to show true power of exclusivity it's important and the one thing about this too or the letter where he goes what does this mean

if you're a current or future stadia gamer you can continue playing all your games on stadium say you're pro and we'll continue to bring new titles from third parties to the platform we're committed to the future of cloud gaming and we'll continue to do our part to drive this industry forward that paragraph yeah i don't believe i don't believe you bro like i don't i don't believe i just don't believe you at that point right oh yeah it's a done yeah at this point that's that's where you that's where you lost me right so yeah we'll see we'll see oh my god so like there's so many things to this where we're i told you so man i told everybody on this show as soon as it was announced it's like it's google man they're gonna quit as soon as it doesn't look like a billion dollar thing day one i will i'll just i'll just challenge you a bit and say you're like you you figures the whole stadia thing would just flop and be dead off right it's dead dude

you're holding on to it corpse dude it's still alive as a spoiler like wanda with vision you're holding on to the corpse get out of westfield west view why are you spoiling it's episode four and it's your fault uh for not watching the best show ever but some people are waiting for the whole season to be done before yeah and they're lame they're they're prolonging their chances of being spoiled is not my fault um but yeah there's nothing left here i i will say streaming is still kicking in alive there's so many streaming services even nvidia ironically is lasting longer than stadia didn't see that coming i thought cd would stay a little longer but you know what xbox is doing and their focus of like

acquiring like some major studio power and iep it's really exciting uh i think they're gonna out of everybody is gonna do it right they're gonna have the content exclusives to make it fun and awesome and playstation will kind of lag behind in terms of that because they have such a strong sixty dollar seventy dollar purchase strategy going i have no idea what tony was saudis doing in terms of cloud gaming honestly because playstation now is not it right places now is a slow test but what they have is like this library of playstation previous generations that like nintendo they just put it somewhere man i'll be happy to tune in and and play final fantasy any of them really uh just to have a service going and not be worried about my phone chugging and stuff like that there's a lot of value in it for sure i i don't know about i don't know i don't like i clearly see what microsoft

is doing like clear clear clear as day i don't see what's what sony's doing with with the whole excel with the whole streaming thing at all i saw is in the mix of course amazon i i i never you're not talking about that uh that article but anyway it was uh the last article was the bloomberg one the blue burger i i don't know the specific article the last thing i saw was that new ceo really putting a focus on the gaming division like he as part of his which is pretty surprising of the ceos like highlighting games as like one of his focus i'll say that's very convenient after the bloomberg article okay so what was the bloomberg article king i'll pull it up as you kind of go over there well this is generally it was just like an another you know jason schreier thing schreier's ripping ripping a new one expose just talking about um the video game division of amazon

game studios and it was not it was not very flattering um oh you mean they suck and i think the headline was something like you know absolutely area so much money but why can't they make a good game or something i can't even remember what the headline was well i hate to say it they just got the wrong people running the ship so here's the bloomberg article you basically amazon you basically summarize the the multiple page long article yes they have the wrong people running [Music] amazon can make just about anything except a good video game yeah yeah yeah so uh i think uh i think they probably have a hand in google's decisions like hey who's similar to us who's kind of a little ahead of us who has the muscle power oh [ __ ] down the block amazon how many years they're in that that article is talking about their game division which is actually separate

from the division that's doing luna right and right luna is their engine luna is the it's the streaming service they're uh streaming yeah okay the game thing is there's like lumber yard and actually lumber yeah that's right like if you could name if you could name one video game that amazon game studios was making without looking it up i would be really impressed um dude i'd be impressed if someone's actively looking for a game that amazon is working on let's just take it one step at a time who's really caring at this point i think two of them came out two of them have come out actually um you know the grand tour the grand tour game was from amazon game studios yeah no one's playing it and also crucible principle which which was a free-to-play game and it got shut down like sometimes yeah because it's a dumb name for a game there's nothing exciting about that everything i've heard about amazon and them trying to figure this out and pump

something out it's again we're not talking about the individual talented developers it's just mismanagement really it's it's not understanding how the game dev business work and i think at least through the grapevine there's just been challenges internally of not really breeding creativity and that's just classic bad studio culture and so under those environments you can't pressure someone to make hit and you have these egos that are probably under qualified to even take care of things and they're running the ship to the ground i mean what's guys like if you want to rent me to give you a 101 on game development i'll be happy to tell you and i i'm i can do that like you know eastern asian thing where i read your face and be able to tell your whole life just from the expression he's an [ __ ] don't trust that guy

don't go down that hall uh you'll never come back with any productive right that group is trouble uh but i will say this i do respect that they are going and they are cranking it and they have the willpower to figure it out and the thing is yeah honestly i was calling i was calling their demise much sooner than google stadium yeah so see how far wrong you are yet again brandon is correct amazon here's the thing figured out here's the thing am i wrong right when they've shipped no games or the game station ships have been bad and they've been canceled uh or like which ones which one's worse like completely shutting down just giving up or keep going and just never shipping anything of any of the latter by far because then our friends keep getting employed and they get paid

pretty damn good salary right for them for that yeah pretty good pretty good salary but that's also what bred the studio culture that's what made people miserable and that's what really made it a terrible place for a lot of people well i think during the pandemic people are actually okay it's like this is not so bad uh now that i'm away from that a-hole uh amazon is pretty amazing [Laughter] right you gotta look at the perspective of things like and then also like the whole decision around in choosing cry engine as your engine and then modifying it and then saying you have to shoot games on this thing and then was that weird and then switching and then switching gears and saying okay well yeah no you could choose whatever engine you want to do your game on after spending years of burning money so i didn't hear about that part is that last part in the article or recent years they just it's like an article it's an article yeah but it's just like come on man

because at that point management just want to ship something that looks like actually actually one of the one of the articles was talking about this and uh the article was talking about one of the closest article that i was laughing at was like um instead of choosing like community or unreal uh which is like you know unreals to coca-cola and unity is the pepsi yeah they decided to make rc cola right and i guess i [Laughter] that's true i mean obviously the the decision to that's cold the the the decision of pulling uh cryengine out of the fire as a and use that as a foundation for your engine was always a weird one it's obviously a business decision right it's like hey we're serious about this we're gonna be able to not have to pay licensing fees every time we have an idea yeah here it is amazon's designers and

programmers needed a game engine a collection of tools used to build games for both studios there are really only two options epics unreal engine is coke and unity software inc is pepsi amazon in effect decided to make an rc cola [Laughter] but it's it's those hilarious moments man that you gotta laugh as a insider at the studio i mean i'm sure those decisions were all coming from top down right there's nobody as a developer i also i kind of disagree that though i think there is like there is some some benefit to owning your own tech stack of course yeah and building your own age and like doing all those things especially if you like the reason why people don't do it or is not recommended is because it costs money right cost money dedicated group of people just doing that yeah but you're telling me that amazon got money to spend on that right so like it makes sense in that way but then um but at the same time making

a video game and building engine at the same time is also one of the you're just doing that on hard mode at that point right yeah it's harder it's the biggest no-no game yeah harder for your game to be good you know so yeah there's an advantage of having a dedicated company yeah concentrating on the tools and upgrading that um without having to worry about an ip for sure i mean we've seen it over and over again i still gotta respect amazon's stubbornness though like to me google google is just a bunch of quitters man like everything about them just like you say you say that as as i look at like the stock the stock tickers i don't know about man if if in terms of in terms of adoption of new programs i have to say it's got to be below five percent of customer loyalty everybody knows whatever new thing

has that looks promising is getting shut down that can't be a good percentage for for new projects right somebody i'm talking about internally and externally that's another friend of mine about this right google just operates at a different scale right the scale is google search how many people use google search every single day it's it's billions right like it's it's stupid right it's like a lot of people right that's the scale they're operating at and so you're telling me they're going to release like i was mad when they got rid of like you know google reader you know what i mean yeah right or they got rid of wave like i i remember those things right but you told me google reader had what what maybe maybe a couple hundred thousand people using it at the scale google's operating that it don't make no sense but like everything that becomes big it starts small google search was a thing it didn't just blow up overnight it took time sure but like if if um

if they're just shooting everything as it's growing uh they're they're gonna shoot down the innova i mean the whole the whole thing of making it the alphabet was to to kind of have to because they they themselves recognize if you're not innovating then you're going to be falling behind right they themselves recognize that that's why the alphabet contains like multiple versions of these smaller companies right but are you telling me they're not innovating like they're spitting up small experimental super costly things trying to innovate and then when they're like nah they're like nah and then they bounce to the next thing yeah yeah but they're doing it so much now i i think internally morale can't be good externally as a customer it is definitely not good i don't believe in anything they say anymore they bought fitbit right and i got a fitbit and you know what i'm worried about they're gonna shut this [ __ ] down it's like oh my god this watch is gonna be absolute in two years time in favor of uh in

favor of a google pixel fitbit or something yeah even then that thing's gonna they're not gonna have watches anymore in a few years like that's how far they've gone with this shutting down as soon as they open up i will say this the biggest point at least for gaming related stuff youtube should have been twitch right but because they didn't experiment towards that live streaming as much as they should have right they just kind of are like the uh the the the comfortable you know gluttonous king right they they never went down that route to discover why how is twitch like i still love youtube live tools better than twitch i think twitch is still trash and they have a lot to kind of catch up to the youtubes you know uh at least infrastructure right but like

they're they're still number one and i think it's like that's a multi-billion dollar uh industry that youtube is still now trying to get into but it's too late i've been paying no i haven't been paying any attention to that but i like the the the podcast or the streams i do watch i i watch a fair amount of them on youtube and there's a there's also a fair amount of them on twitch as well right like i don't know what the market share it's just one percentages are there at all tears of streaming man there's a reason why like you know the stream kings are over at twitch and you know doctor disrespect is pissed that he's not over there it's it's just in terms of millions of uh hours watched it's like at a tenth right it's not even half so it's very it's very far off but like why did that happen right i think it's decisions like this where at the same time though google's too comfortable at the same time youtube streams all sorts of stuff

yeah i mean and not just not just gaming um so like like i don't know right you know what i mean like like i think their focus is yeah they try to get in gaming with youtube gaming and all that um but that just seems no it's too late no one cares about it poorly thought out yeah it's probably thought out but they don't have again it's a runway issue right yeah they could have figured it out and they should beat twitch at everything but they're not and it's because they cut short of it because you know two weeks time they they're not better than twitch for some reason why why aren't we better than twitch uh it's it's poor mentality like in the same way they don't grab some charts they're like oh we gotta spend another this much about to get this nah or not dude yeah so i don't respect it like amazon to me at least they try everything [ __ ] uncle spending this week if you have all the money in the world and google does

and there's like an excess of cash it's like throw money at it and figure this [ __ ] out like i respect people who like stubbornly figure things out um because as a as in terms of a customer loyalty like you know i know amazon's not shutting down anything but google i feel like they shut down everything it's like it's very polar opposite how these two tech companies operate at the end of the day i i i play any of those games forever no i'm not playing any of those amazon games doesn't matter how stubborn they could be but what's scary is that you know i i feel like because they're in year eight or whatever right they'll be around in year 20 and honestly like how they run out the mom paw shops in every town right it's just a matter of time that they're going to crack that nut and they're going to have the right people you know probably the respawn

co-founders get bored of ea and they need a new place to stay right it just takes that little small monumental move to kind of turn the studio around uh and i think if they're around by year 20 they're gonna have that there's gonna hey we have all the money in the world you know we have we're super connected with luna with uh with twitch streaming right we just need to write game with the right people can you do that it's like all right move aside uh double helix let me show you how to make real games here but i don't know that longevity thing is it's saddening to hear that stevia is closing up because i do think they have that advantage i i was really looking forward to kind of seeing that jump into watching a youtube stream and then be able to play the game like rocket league right right then and there right that is so cool and out of everybody i think they're the only ones that can do that like amazon can't do that playstation and xbox

wishes they can do that it's just sad it's so much potential whoever does their trailers man he should be in charge he's like whoa what are you guys doing you want to spend eight years i want cool [ __ ] now how do i get cool [ __ ] now focusing on state is future as a platform i'm just going to leave you with that yes that is that is the direction it's going you know and yeah and ea might go hey we want to do some streaming okay let's just buy this tech comes as a package and let's start doing a streaming stuff i doubt it dude i doubt it i'll be very surprised if every anyone at dude we talked we talked of intern and externally right and third parties right especially well small small indie groups but like big big companies they've done dude they're not gonna exchange shaking up hands with google at this point you guys are not gonna even be around in two months what deals can we make

here i'm not gonna spend my resources if your guys aren't there's nothing there dude like i agree no i agree with you on on that part where it's it'll be it would be a very like i would need all sorts of assurances that oh yeah this stuff is still going to be around if i'm going to base a lot of stuff on it right yeah it's basically going to be phil harrison with his green screen shows like yeah we have a whole team behind me it's just him this home is like this is it this is the google team [Laughter] don't you trust us everyone's at work you know what's great you know it's crazy out of you know our friends over there who didn't get laid off but are on stadium still so so they're on the hardware side or on the on the sdk side or whatever why are they doing it and uh i mean they're still getting paid so that's why there's something you know i mean and um yeah and uh the recruiters man are just like the day of the body was not even cold yet and the recruiters were here

but my emails were flying and i'm just like wow like you know yeah that's that's kind of crazy flying from the google or for google oh like they were receiving numerous emails on day one day one like the as soon as it got announced hour later emails were getting sent out about of course man it has been the most stable year for game developers in game development history of these like christmas moments for recruiters you call this stable is that we got this bro bro it's this year this pandemic year for game developers what other layoff story have you heard this is the only one no you're right i haven't heard any layout stories but i wouldn't necessarily call this stable like this is like this is probably this is like this is stable compared to what we yeah staple interior we have you're not gonna get fired maybe no man people are piling on and like

you know holding on to like employees like crazy just to meet these deadlines if not they're asking for more people the one thing that's happening during their pandemics people are paying playing more video games oh yeah more play more and then people are having trouble kind of still transitioning and getting deadlines done so there's actually more recruitment for teams to kind of get the system going right and when google sees it happen with the layoffs that's christmas time for recruiters man those guys are vultures it all starts like the same way too the fakeness is like oh i'm sorry for the loss but hey guys we're we are actually having a few openings why don't you check it out maybe we can help you out it's within two sentences it always starts like that yeah it starts like that oh man i heard what happened i'm so sorry yeah yeah by any chance would you be interested i'm just waiting for someone that you know they always copy paste that

right just blank just leave the blank name as to like fill in the blank [Applause] i feel sorry for what happened but i wish we were we could be helpful here which is good in a way of course you know it's good to kind of see the industry it's it's weird it's it's those moments where i feel like it's always weird it's like we're either very polarized of like get out of here here's your two-week notice or it's like hey come over on this side you know where we're not like them it's like you're exactly like them when things go bad but uh hopefully i don't know uh in a weird way i i hope this pandemic extends i do like the fact of this period this period of no layoffs uh have been pretty peaceful for at least my friends and and everybody that's in it like i mean

i understand what you're saying and i understand that that's a that's a good goal to have but like maybe we should have no no in reality we want to get out of here we should have that goal and also getting out of quarantine i'm sorry bro it doesn't happen that way as soon as we get back in the office and we have these producers on our backs suddenly deadlines don't matter anymore and budgets become everything you know there's a lot of companies are like oh yeah we can do this remote thing like you know permanently even after equip is over they might just do that permanently that sounds great man i hope so um i think at the very least we're starting to see uh people giving options um we know the stadia team for a fact can't do it it didn't work for them

i am curious to what they were working on assassin's creed clone or something splits your cell clone i don't know if it matters honestly but um i don't know if it matters i think it matters a bit where what went wrong like hopefully jason gets into there you know he's like frothing at the mouth right now he's like well you know he's emailing all sorts of people all sorts of those people and that's what happened this is juicy this is great i don't think any it's anything more than business a lot of money it cost a lot of lots of money the users weren't where they wanted it to be and they were just like we cannot pour more money into this how can we actually make it sustainable somebody ran some some other numbers and was like if we could make it into this we could charge this and we could make this why do this why be the content maker

i think they just blew it man they blew it right at launch i think that was yeah yeah definitely and that was purely on the pr marketing team like they should have talked to the game dev team they'd be like hey is this ready i think they rolled i think they rolled into the industry with stadia like here we are with stadia they just thought they could just do something without you know without really coming with a really well prepared plan on how to how to market it how to make content for it uh how to promote it they should have hired the trailer guy dude he got it right dude he showed all the cool things and it should have been like steve jobs [ __ ] do it and then leaves the room right they started they started showing the cool things like from september of last year right but at the end of the day making video games is hard and making video games takes a long time and you have to give it time to grow and and

and build the culture and hire the people you're also hiring at the same time right and so it's just going to slow down your classic classic problems yeah yeah man like you know you can't make a game in like months you know it takes six years especially at the quality and scale that it would have to be in order for it to be something well when is jade gonna when is jade is gonna gonna learn man it seems like these growth moments uh is following her because what was her last thing was it i'll just say no i was saying i wasn't ubisoft right i don't know anything about anything i don't know of course but i do know that like you wouldn't be there hiring people and making a video game if you knew right around the corner the axe was about to drop you know what i mean yeah uh like you know you're just like last you knew they said yeah sure

take two years three years whatever however length it was yeah sure go ahead do that and then one day somebody was like nah right and i'm sure they were as surprised as anybody else what i mean why now that the uh the the context or content of stadiu is dead right uh rip i'm just gonna stamp it with now we're never gonna hear from studio again even though they're saying that they're keeping your hardware friends there but it's basically just keeping the body warm in the morg right that's all that's happening right now i do want to say the spirit is moving towards the amazon guys right so again the ammo is going i don't think if they if they haven't quit by now they're not quitting right so what do you think the amazon guys can learn from this like what what are

your hopes with amazon like what can they do to turn the ship around to kind of carry the torch forward of a tech company right outside of facebook um that can actually get into this part and be a force uh against sony and microsoft and intel they're just throwing the money around though what they gotta do is just get out of the creator's way they gotta let the greatest great form of proper culture in the studio that it's about and not use lumberyard anymore right quality video games i'm watching if it means not using lumberyard should so be it you know what i mean right but like just lumpy guard is killing this company i'm reading this quote it's like oh jeez i wonder what where was lumber yard before amazon oh yeah they killed that other company the crytek here's the thing like i i try not to blame engines on things of course because like at the end of the day um

i've i've worked on that i've worked on great engines made bad games that i've worked on terrible engines that made great games right and so it's really about the creators and the content creators and and having them do their thing right i would say that if you're if your content creators are frustrated with the tools they're using right like that help that hurts the morale that hurts the culture that hurts the how much they want to work you know what it means oh my god check this out i i didn't i got to read this old article chrismer hartman our boy all right 2018 i remember that no comment i comment i comment spent two decades at take two and you know blockbusters bioshock and mafia and the x-com declassified this is us like not want to be next to that turd i only played with that turret a bit uh you left way earlier than i did uh i wonder what they're talking about oh man

yeah like i think you should you should read that you should read that whole article right now i'm gonna read the whole thing uh so technology issues internal fighting issues yeah it's just like you you have something running the whole thing that's not really from the gaming industry no real game people running the show so and then getting in the way that's that's the other part you have to let the creators create you know what i mean what's sad about amazon and respectful in a way is that twitch is unriggable because none of their games seem to seem to ever make it the top ten uh which is really honorable if i really think it was like oh wow because naturally i think well like they're two games that they release right like i mean of course they're not gonna make it to the top ten right well to me i feel like naturally if you're in the mafia of a platform

that is all about popularity right like there's a there's an inclination to make it the front page and get all your advertising you can to kind of hype it up not everybody's name is brandon family so i respect by the rules hey i respect this stubborn meal uh who's can't seem to and is not cheating their way they're not cheating their way down to the front pitch of their own website right so i it's very respectful uh they're they're if anything they are learning game development the right way which is to do everything wrong by the book of how not to run a game studio like they're doing it by the book like it's only eight years but every problem i heard from them is pretty much every experience that i've had that's that's been a bad experience right uh i'm curious i'm curious to see how the the new ones like the what's it called new world i'm curious to see

if and when it comes out like how how good it is i'm actually really curious my verdict is uh it's gonna be trash i mean i mean that's a very that's a very safe verdict person it's very safe it's not even prophetic right it's more like uh it's crap so [Laughter] there's nothing and a lot of it i think it's their name man a lot of it is their title if your title is not exciting it makes me there's nothing about it that makes me curious the crucible dude to me the crucible represents the story i read in middle school that i barely paid attention to right so throw it out the window i like the movie what crucible means like it kind of fits the type of game it was but yeah all right now see you're trying to be too smart on us dumb gamers you gotta name it something that we all know a brute low voice uh shooter guy

or something something that we can all we can relate to and oh my god expect it but the names of the new world crucible are they writing like to me it just sounds like a failed story writer who is really into making his skips and didn't make it in hollywood and now he's doing games right it's like dude chill get to the fun and go with something simple fall guys like just analyze what's been working uh and and go with that it's it's it's crazy but i am um just to end with this right they do have all the right tools where in this very much same way like google is trying to muscle in with so far they have eight years of experience i don't think it's all two ways they probably learned a lot from it if they can spend eight more

i think they're going to crack that nut and then it's very you know we've had friends that gone through amazon game studios and i don't see myself being an impossibility to work with amazon amazon game studios right because they have the funds to keep things going and there's a respect to that right they just need the right people all of it all it is it's right people so if you have the money well the right people the right culture you know and the right and you have to you know you have to breed you have to breed that culture you know and you have to like maintain it and cultivate it and let it grow you know what i mean well i think by now they probably recognize some bad apples and that uh they can't just kick the grunts out to the curb anymore and so i it's only a matter of time we've been through studios that had the most stubborn way of keeping people and uh eventually that that has a time limit man from what i've seen from what i've heard

and then you know if they steal extra money to kind of bring in a new crew uh i see amazon kind of carrying on the torch uh what stadia was aspiring to right i wouldn't be surprised if jade raymond somehow goes to amazon next like what other studios are left uh was was it ea before right it was ea before ubisoft before yeah it's either let's make a bet right it's either going to be amazon or 2k i would i would also say uh own own studio oh from scratch that is getting popular right now [Music] remote first uh yeah pitch studios but i don't know if i i if i had that kind of resume i'll still go big because i'm you can still cash in with amazon

like it's about cashing in right but like at the end of the day man like if it's about new experiences and really pushing something unique and special maybe it starts small and then maybe you go big once you know you have something because i go into some of these big boys out the gate the clock starts running expectations are huge yeah yeah clock starts running immediately you know what i mean um like i don't know yeah but the cash registers starts dinging right away i don't know if i was in that position and i've just seen how the game is run i'm just gonna try to cash grab what i can in the minutes that i have and i mean that's what these ceos do right uh they ruin a company but like down the block you know they another multi-billion dollar company wants to hire him right away that means they just switch companies switch teams for a little while [Music]

and perhaps they'll turn it around but [Music] i i respect the players of that game of being able to use reputation and then still earn the dollars and don't have to deliver anything there's a certain respect to that yeah but that's part of it definitely say this quesadilla it seems like it's more like uh one of those carpets carpets being pulled out from under somebody more so i would think yeah over a steaming pile of poo the whole time i just sent from day one man i just knew i just felt like google was not the place to ever spend that much time to figure it out because it's like uh it's like spacex right that's not like two three year thing that's a ten year two decade type of goal right and games i feel is very similar in that you got to be in it for 10 20 years and amazon is they somehow have that mentality i don't know

what what's what's going like you would think bezos would be the one who like cuts you off let me just reel it i think if new world comes out and it's not a success i think that's i think that's around you that's it all right let's call it man we'll see we'll see i love these round tables to be prophetic because we do people people who just listens in they listen all the way back from the beginning and it's funny that i get people kind of emailing me and telling me like wow you've been calling this [ __ ] from two years ago so let's go ahead and put this out there dude yeah i don't think so i don't think if crucible or new world if they completely failed the amazon game studios crucible's already cancelled right or it's already wrapped but it's new world is the thing that they're working on and like if it's doesn't if it's not successful like i don't see how they continue but we'll see we'll see let's see how how um how willing this new ceo

is uh for him to kind of call out the game division and as a focus dude i think there's something up with that that he sees value and he's gonna stick to that you don't make statements like that and then next year shut it down and because that shows you a failure on his part dude as a ceo it's like hey you say you're going to focus on this and you're going to shut it down i mean like it's easy to say that now and then when you see the financial numbers come through you're like yeah i was wrong i'm amazon [ __ ] [Laughter] they have my all the money in the world eight years eight years and nothing to show it they're still gone dude that's enough to tell me it's like wow they're in it deep uh we'll see we'll see godspeed for them yeah well i want to thank you ray for this late night uh i knew right away when i saw that articles i can't wait to talk to ray about this in a good and bad way of course you know

sympathies and empathy for for for all those that are affected you guys are talented and ain't ain't none of this about you yeah crazy you know it's crazy you didn't start with that though you just started hate right away google i hate google for shutting down studios or shutting down projects you know especially it's showing promise and i just knew it was bad news because i knew that this day would come where three years down the line is it has it been three years i don't know people are going to be out of jobs i don't know it's been three years it feels short feels like pretty quick it's honestly not enough time to make anything it's not it's not no it's sad well that's google for you it's like why am i able to scan on my google maps but i can't walk around your 3d realized fully world i don't understand

i can go point at the point b right here every two seconds anyways it's terrible all right well i want to thank you for for tuning in have a good night man uh and for all those thank you for for listening as always hit us up in discord express your opinions comment on the youtube we always like to argue or agree with you again everything is opinion of our own uh we don't hate jade uh we love the ubisoft guys and google stadium hey you know if you are looking for developers you have two capable ones that wouldn't be mine to hollering we're just saying this out of fun uh and hopefully everyone is good and well thank you all have a good night peace [Music]

[Music] you