Could Google Become a Game Publisher?

Forbes is running a story examining the possibility of Google becoming a games publisher. The launch of their Google Lively 3D world and the acquisition of in-game advertiser AdScape has analysts speculating on whether Google will use its enormous reach to tap into the lucrative games market. "Google also has several existing technologies that could be used to create games. Imagine a flight simulator that uses Google Earth as a backdrop or tracking a spy in a major city via Google Maps' street view. While there would still be significant work required to create a game using these tools, the underlying technology is already fundamentally finished."

Comments

Good Lord

[David Gerard]

For goodness' sake. They have your business data, your bank account details, your medical information, your DNA sequence and your personal preferences in pornography. Now they want your gamer chat?

"Gamer chat: the unspeakable in pursuit of the incomprehensible" - Oscar Wilde.
  "stfu n00b" - Mark Twain.

"LOL PWN3D G3T WOW GOLD ON EBAY.COM"

Google Games wouldn't be any good...

[amdpox]

...after all, they'd have to run in a browser, would be supported by ads, and would steal all your sensitive information. And money. And clothes.

Re:Google Games wouldn't be any good...

[eln]

they'd have to run in a browser

Only until GoogleOS is completed. GoogleOS will run on the new GooglePC hardware platform, which you can purchase at your friendly neighborhood GoogleMart with GoogleBucks, which will replace most major national currencies by 2025.

Of course, if you can't afford a new GooglePC right away, you can always get more GoogleBucks by installing AdSense to display context-sensitive ads on the forehead of your GoogleBody, which you can replace your regular body with free of charge (Google reserves the right to deep-scan your brain in order to more accurately target the advertisements displayed in your GoogleHouse in exchange for this valuable body replacement service).

If you have any issues with any of your Google products, you can receive help on the GoogleNet. If that doesn't help, you can arrange a return by sending the item postage paid through GooglePost back to the GooglePlex for repair or replacement.

By 2030, most major national governments will be replaced by the new GoogleGov (beta). Eventually, Google will work to replace various common words in most languages with "google" in order to continue the strengthening of the brand. This might initially google some minor googles, but in google most googles will google to the changes. After some google, life will google google google google google.

Google,
Google

Lively is pretty sleepy

[argent]

When Lively started up almost any search would have several "full" rooms at the top of the results. There were multiple overflow rooms for every possible topic. Now, even on the weekend, there's rarely more than half a dozen people in any of the rooms.

The google provided content has not changed in the past two months.

There have been no API or builder tools released.

It's going to need more than a Doubleshot to make it lively again.

Multiplatform

[djveer]

I almost hope so, that way we'd have a few more multi-platform games on the market.

Re:Multiplatform

[Naughty Bob]

Gotta stick my oar in here- Whenever the old 'will this game run on Linux' question is asked, a bunch of, er, people weigh in with a load of pro-microsoft ranting.

Fair enough, in that no serious PC gamer can really do without a Windows install somewhere on their drives.

But they should realise that competition can only improve their own experience, regardless of which platform they chose to actually play on.

I've played the same game, same settings, on both XP and via WINE, with higher FPS on the latter (though the other way around is more usual). Surely this should tell you something?...

Competition is good for everyone.

Re:Multiplatform

[somersault]

True in most cases, but then again, look at the port of the source engine to PS3. Valve did the Xbox 360 port themselves but left the PS3 one to EA, who royally screwed it up. Competition is usually good, but developers can only stretch themselves so far.. I'd rather the competition be to make the actual games themselves great, rather than resources being split between too many platforms.

Besides, the whole ethos of Linux itself promotes enough competition among the different components you can use for filesystem, graphics drivers and APIs, sound APIs, window managers, etc.. even if it became the dominant OS there would still be innovation taking place simply because people can mess about with it legally and without jumping through too many hoops.

Sure!

[Drakin020]

If it ever left Beta. :-D

Yes and No

[JaredOfEuropa]

A good game has a good concept, content, gameplay and eye candy. What Google has is just eye candy, and from a gamer's perspective it's not even very good eye candy.

They are not really any closer to being a game publisher than any other company, though they can throw a lot of cash at the problem to get there. If they want to publish games, I am sure they can make that happen. Whether they'll be succesfull games is anyone's guess.

Next up gSteam!

[faloi]

I could see Google doing some sort of distribution mechanism like Steam, only having bucketloads more cash to throw around to get publishers to adopt to them as a delivery mechanism.

Snow Crash

[darkvizier]

I wouldn't say games, per se. But I definitely see google having interest in creating an online simulated world, ala Second Life, or more ambitiously, Snow Crash. If they are the ones to make something like that a reality, they could see immense business growth and climb far above any 'competition'.

Already funding games via GSoC

[morrison]

Google is already a direct investor in games by funding open source gaming projects in the Google Summer of Code. Those participating this year included BZFlag, Battle for Wesnoth, Second Life (Linden Labs), Thousand Parsec, WorldForge, and ScummVM.

That roughly amounts to Google directly funding about 8 staff-years of development effort into open source gaming this year. Pretty damn cool if you ask me.

You can see some of the results from BZFlag's participation last year at http://my.bzflag.org/gsoc/BZGSoC2007.pdf

Re:Already funding games via GSoC

[morrison]

Oops, wrong link! The write-up of BZFlag's participation is at http://my.bzflag.org/gsoc/bzflag_gsoc2007_post_mortem.pdf (15.5MB PDF) Since I'm tossing out links, this one is a simple summary of the program: http://my.bzflag.org/gsoc/GSoC2007_Overview.pdf (1.7MB PDF)

Happened before....

[FishAdmin]

....doesn't anyone remember the Smurfs? Well, I smurfin' well remember those smurfy Smurfs! And if your memory's too smurfed up to smurf it, then you can just go smurf yourself, right up the smurfster! Smurf you, you smurfing smurfer!