Google Sets Its Sights On Gaming, Hires Noah Falstein As Chief Game Designer

MojoKid writes "Google has its hands in every other aspect of the tech industry, so why not gaming, too? It appears as though the company is eyeing a run at the gaming market by hiring Noah Falstein as its 'Chief Game Designer.' Falstein's LinkedIn profile has been updated to reflect his new title, which is the latest in a long career. He started out in 1980 and put in time at (the recently-defunct) Lucasfilm Games as well as 3DO and Dreamworks Interactive."

Comments

Re:African American Jigaboos!

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Perhaps you were looking for this:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0274518/

Emulators aren't very satisfying on my Nexus 7

[tepples]

The market that Google operates (Google Play Store) is primarily associated with devices that ship with a touch screen. Like a PC mouse, a touch screen is great for point-and-click games. But not all games are point-and-click. How, for example, would a platformer be played with the touch screen of an Android phone or tablet? Emulators aren't very satisfying on my Nexus 7 because a flat sheet of glass lacks any tactile feedback as to where the thumbs are relative to the on-screen buttons. How many people are willing to buy an OTG cable and connect a USB controller to an Android tablet?

Re:Emulators aren't very satisfying on my Nexus 7

[Nyder]

...Emulators aren't very satisfying on my Nexus 7 because a flat sheet of glass lacks any tactile feedback as to where the thumbs are relative to the on-screen buttons....

Dude, it's a fucking phone, of course it's not good for emulators. My sink isn't good for taking a bath, but can get me clean if needed.

You want a device that is good for emulators? There a a ton of cheap android devices for that: http://dingoo-scene.blogspot.com/ You can find reviews of various ones there.

As much as you want to have 1 device to rule them all, it's not going to happen anytime soon.

Re:Emulators aren't very satisfying on my Nexus 7

[gl4ss]

touch screen platformer.. needs different control scheme than virtual buttons, like dragging.

however, there's plenty of android devices with buttons. on the other hand, this chief games developer has mainly been successful with point and click games.

Re:Emulators aren't very satisfying on my Nexus 7

[drinkypoo]

The Sony Ericsson XPeria Play is for you. A gampad in the phone. For some reason it wasn't very popular in the US, but it seemed fine to me.

I own an Xperia Play. I bought it used for $40 needing a new screen protector ($1) and a new back ($10). It's a cool little gaming phone, but you can't run anything later than gingerbread on it. I mean, you can, but it doesn't work for shit. Notably, the touchpads (analog joystick substitutes) don't work properly without significant hacking. The emulator that comes with it won't run favorites like Wipeout XL nor support multi-disc games though it is supposed to, so you have to pay for FPSe if you want to run the best games. Lots of the games which are supposed to be Xperia Play exclusives don't work, either. Galaxy on Fire 2 always crashes and they are abandoning the Xperia Play version to work on the HD version which is supposed to work on the play. Nova 3 1.0.2 is the last version with touchpad support but there's problems with vehicles until 1.0.4. Neither of these are emulated games but it drives home the point that this is a dead platform.

If Sony had not abandoned the phone before releasing ICS as they had promised, then we'd probably have proper touchpad support. But they did, so we don't. So nobody should be looking to buy a Play today. If they are, they should drop me a line. I'd trade for a phone which is otherwise better, like having two cores and 1GB RAM. The slide-out controller is wicked cool if you want to play games on your phone. The display is totally daylight viewable, at least until your protector gets scratched up.

Re:Emulators aren't very satisfying on my Nexus 7

[tepples]

You want a device that is good for emulators? There a a ton of cheap android devices for that

Which APK store do devices from companies like JXD typically come with? Is it Google Play or someone else?

Re:Emulators aren't very satisfying on my Nexus 7

[Archenoth]

This is one of the reasons I kept my old Samsung Galaxy Spica... It has a D-Pad and relatively well-placed buttons. This means that emulators are actually pretty usable. For example, I've managed to complete Metroid: Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission, which is something I am nearly positive that I could not do on a touchscreen-only phone.

Re:Emulators aren't very satisfying on my Nexus 7

[tepples]

Other than a tiny minority of hardcore geeks, how many end users are willing to buy a device sight unseen and flash something like CM on it? It's just a guess based on the impression I get from other users' comments, but I imagine that most are unwilling to go to such trouble and will instead buy a PlayStation Vita or Nintendo 3DS and just accept the lack of indie games as a fact of life.

Re:Emulators aren't very satisfying on my Nexus 7

[tepples]

What does PlayStation or Nintendo have to do with this? That's quite the non-sequitur.

I was referring mostly to games that are stuck in that middle ground where the project is too big to just release it entirely without charge, but the developer isn't a big enough company to qualify for a console developer license.

How much do you want to bet.....

[phantomfive]

How much do you want to bet that when Apple collapses, all their engineers will go over to Google?

(Yes, I know that is the flamebait of the year, but Google does have a tendency to go for the big-name programmers).

Re:How much do you want to bet.....

[Anubis IV]

Sure, they do, but your idea is built on a faulty premise, and I'm not just talking about the idea of Apple collapsing sometime soon. You seem to think that Apple needs to collapse before those developers will be freed up. That's not true at all. What we've seen is that Apple suffers an exodus of lower-level talent with each revolutionary sort of product it releases. For instance, when the iPhone was released, a number of their best developers and designers left for Palm to work on WebOS and the Pre, since that's where something new was being done and the challenge was.

Notably, however, you don't seem to hear about many of them ending up at Google. I'm guessing it's because when it comes to Android vs. iOS, the differences between them are not compelling enough to pull the talent away from one company and towards the other. Instead, a number of them are going on to found startups and work with smaller companies on innovative products that are a bit smaller in scale.

Re:How much do you want to bet.....

[phantomfive]

I'm guessing it's because when it comes to Android vs. iOS, the differences between them are not compelling enough to pull the talent away from one company and towards the other.

Having worked with both the Android and iPhone source code, I can tell you, if I worked at Apple, I would never leave to work on Android, either.

Re:hire a guy whos companies flopped

[phantomfive]

Being able to run a company and being able to program are two different skills, completely orthogonal.

Someone who's been around that long has probably picked up some skill, though.

I miss the good old days.

[UltraZelda64]

Gaming used to be something much smaller that gamers could really take pride in being a part of. Just Nintendo and Sega for the most part and some highly dedicated hardcore gamers. Games were actually awesome back then, until the industry went on a slow, continuing decline once Sony came in and made it mainstream. As a Nintendo fan I had a couple extra generations of truly great gaming, but these days even they almost seem to be drying up overall. And now games are so big, they're becoming more and more like typical horror movies: cheap thrills, no substance, shitty games. Meanwhile, it seems that every fucking company in existence wants to cash in on the gaming industry's success by producing more of the same old garbage, eliminating *real* gaming hardware for multi-purpose multimedia products that don't do anything well.

I had such high hopes over the years. It's a shame everything took a turn for the worst. Well, at least Nintendo still seems to be closest to their original goal--but too bad they're starting to veer off course due to pressure from their kitchen-sink competitors and retarded demands from the masses.

Re:I miss the good old days.

[flayzernax]

Gaming is here to stay, and its definitely been branded and marketed as a "lifestyle choice" whatever the fuck you want to make of that, by all means.

But there are still dedicated gaming hobbyists you just have to circulate in the right communities on line and you will find them. Look towards the modding communities. Especially those that rise up around indie games or flexible simulations like Civilization.

I think these small communities have actually benefited more then the negative points you are demonstrating.

Re:I miss the good old days.

[UltraZelda64]

You can say that about many things, the internet, cars, farming.

True... true. I'm not heavily into cars, but I don't like the way they're starting to add so much electronic junk to add spying, pointless features, and dumb down vehicles for even more immature people. Same with farming; I'm not a farmer, but I don't like the way they're going with GMOs.

You can have one of two attitudes: the bitter "good old days" attitude, or take pride that you were part of something's beginning that later became mainstream and now that it's all grown up it's time to move on to next avant-garde thing.

In that case I'm sort of in the middle. I'm glad I was there, but at the same time I wish there would be at least some company to return to it, if only for the choice, without having to buy into the new crap. Too bad these days their product has some kind of poor digital audio and "HD" video playback with DRM, they would never survive today.

Re:I miss the good old days.

[Moridineas]

So basically, what you're saying is--you don't like change. You're a conservative :)

Re:I miss the good old days.

[UltraZelda64]

I suspect it's certain types of changes that he doesn't like, and I think that applies to... just about everyone.

Exactly. Not all changes are bad. But these days, there are more and more of them are, and they're in... well, just about everything. A few unwanted changes may just be an annoyance at worst, but lately we're being bombarded by them, from all angles, everywhere.

Re:I miss the good old days.

[PopeRatzo]

I love modern poetry.

Re:I miss the good old days.

[Anubis IV]

I know what you mean. Gaming was so great for a number of years, and then this upstart company called Nintendo came in with their Mario and Donkey Kong and ruined things after the blessed time we had with Atari.

Oh, sorry, are we only being nostalgic about your childhood?

Actually, truth be told, Nintendo was the video game company of my childhood too (NES was the first console I ever played), but I think it's a little silly how nostalgia tints everything for us, since I'm guessing that people that grew up in the Playstation era feel much the same as you do, and likewise with people who grew up in the Xbox era. Yes, there are things to miss about prior generations of games, both in terms of the design of the games and the nature of the community, but there are plenty of decent games coming out today as well, and there are pockets of the community that still cater to folks who appreciate good games from yesteryear. The problem is that the good games coming out these days are simply harder to find since the amount of chaff has increased significantly, and the parts of the community that are actually awesome tend to be a bit reclusive so as not to ruin things.

Re:I miss the good old days.

[Nemyst]

Now get your sodding rose tinted glasses off and look properly. Old games were simplistic, they had almost no depth of gameplay and while they had refined that gameplay very, very well, they're in no way objectively better (or worse) than newer games. If all you do is whine that the next Call of Duty isn't your cup of tea and games were "so much better back in my day", then it's your problem entirely.

For each Call of Duty, there's a gem of a game to be found. FTL. Minecraft. VVVVVV. Terraria. Don't Starve. Stardrive. AI War. Torchlight. World of Goo. Mark of the Ninja. Magicka. SpaceChem. Frozen Synapse. Heck, even AAA games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Far Cry 3 or Company of Heroes. Figure out what you like and play it, instead of just complaining about it on the internet.

Re:I miss the good old days.

[tlhIngan]

I know what you mean. Gaming was so great for a number of years, and then this upstart company called Nintendo came in with their Mario and Donkey Kong and ruined things after the blessed time we had with Atari.

Actually, until the NES came out, gaming was DEAD.

You may have forgotten about the video game crash of the 80s where after the Atari 2600 came out, everyone and their dog was creating games for it, leading to a huge massive glut of really crappy games that everyone got tired of buying and effectively killed video games.

In fact, it was Nintendo that effectively revived it - except to prevent unlicensed third parties from producing crappy games they added DRM (the NES-001 chip) and made everyone who wanted to release a NES game go through a licensing and approval process.

And this is how we ended up with consoles where you have to pay license fees and stuff. Or how Apple decided they wanted to approve all apps for the Mac App Store and iOS App Store.

Re:I miss the good old days.

[bfandreas]

I'm weary of AAA games. They mostly are overproduced, overpriced and unfocused. For some weird reason the simpler games we used to play in the 90ies would be considered casual games nowadays. There was nothing casual trying to complete all levels in Lemming(or Populous...if you were mad).

Now I prefer mostly indie titles to the latest and greatest hype. In my opinion Orks Must Die is better than the later Assassins Creeds. Bastion is better than Arkham City(tho not Asylum...that would be heresy). Warlock: Master of the Arcane is better than HoMM6 especially after all the patches. If you play AAA for the story you just might as well watch a Let's Play on Youtube. What's it with all the game designers who want to be movie directors? That didn't work out too well for Chris Roberts.

The only AAA game I bought at release and that I was nearly entirely happy with was the new XCOM.

Re:I miss the good old days.

[bfandreas]

Now get your sodding rose tinted glasses off and look properly. Old games were simplistic, they had almost no depth of gameplay and while they had refined that gameplay very, very well, they're in no way objectively better (or worse) than newer games. If all you do is whine that the next Call of Duty isn't your cup of tea and games were "so much better back in my day", then it's your problem entirely. For each Call of Duty, there's a gem of a game to be found. FTL. Minecraft. VVVVVV. Terraria. Don't Starve. Stardrive. AI War. Torchlight. World of Goo. Mark of the Ninja. Magicka. SpaceChem. Frozen Synapse. Heck, even AAA games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Far Cry 3 or Company of Heroes. Figure out what you like and play it, instead of just complaining about it on the internet.

The games of the 90ies were simpler but that doesn't mean they had no depth. Take for instance something like Lemmings. You had(if memory serves right) 10 different types of Lemmings and you had to use them to get them from A to B. Doesn't get simpler than that. Yet the gameplay had a lot of depth because there usually were a couple of ways to beat a level.

On the other hand you have games like the later Assassins Creed, Arkham City, LA Noire...
These games do not have more depth than the simpler ones. They have more activities. It's like they wanted to build a theme park for their gamers. Have a tower defense minigame in your murder simulator. Have badly done car chases in your point&click adventure. Have a Superman64 inspired fly-through-hoops thing in your action brawler. I don't see where they offer more depth. Rather more width, so to speak. And in some cases the multitude of activities do work and in other cases you can simply ignore them.

I've seen the tower defense thing in AssCred3 only once and decided against having anything to do with it. At first I LOVED the idea of training assassins and sending them all over the place for missions. But it was completely uninteractive. Pick one guy, assign him to a mission, game rolls the dice and tells you of the outcome. Basically they integrated a badly done version of Risk into the game. This doesn't create depth. And in many cases it takes it away.

How often have you seen a mission in a game that has to be played EXACTLY like the designers wanted you to? Mostly those are stealth missions. Be discovered and return to the last checkpoint. The option of simply going in guns blazing simply doesn't exist even tho you did it in the rest of the game. There is one strategy(ie stealth) because we told you so. That's the opposite of depth. And I didn't even go for the low hanging fruit of turret sections.

Or the current state of 1st person manshooters. Aw, what the heck. Too many of these seem to have cutscenes that are interupted by pesky gameplay. They will actually shoot you for not triggering a cutscene. But let's not go there. Let's take a look at regenerating health. In Doom1 if you lost a lot of health and armor in one level you might be very well borked in the next level. You had to plan ahead. There was a strategic element to this. It arguably had more depth than most modern FPS.

I see you mentioned Deus Ex. That was a GREAT game. Good writing. Interesting mechanics. You had conversation bosses. You could battle enemies with words. Yet they did something that reduced depth. You couldn't go fully charismatic to talk everybody down. You couldn't go full stealth to take them down one by one. You couldn't go full hacker and use their defenses against them. If you didn't go heavily on the combat skills you were borked. There were a couple of things you had to take because otherwise you would be screwed in the boss battles. These limited your choice of approach and arguably limited the depth of the gameplay.

World of Goo is the premiere snot stacking simulator. It has only that mechanic and it executes that brilliantly. Simplistic? Not past the tutorial levels.

tl;dr:

Depth is not the same as complexity. Depth does not automatically increase with the number of gameplay mechanics. Having only one gameplay mechanic and have that executed properly. Don't dress people down when they have a point.

Re:I miss the good old days.

[Twinbee]

Whilst I generally think the same as you, one game recently has given me hope - "Sonic and all-stars racing transformed". I loved mario kart on the SNES, and this game is indeed better than that - everyone one at Amazon rates it highly for the PS3/PC etc. I even get it to run at 60fps on my rather old PC.

Re:I miss the good old days.

[Anubis IV]

I didn't forget, just for the record. It was simply a detail I decided to gloss over since it wasn't important to the point I was making.

Re:I miss the good old days.

[almitydave]

I imagine Patton Oswalt performing a dramatic reading.

Re:hire a guy whos companies flopped

[phantomfive]

Orthogonal means (roughly) perpendicular in a multidimensional space. If you have two orthogonal lines, they meet at a single point. If one of those lines represents business skill, and the other line represents programming skill, it means they hardly have any overlap. A person can be completely good at one skill, and completely bad at the other, or vice versa.

The word means exactly what I think it does.

Re:hire a guy whos companies flopped

[Theleton]

Yes it does.

Re:hire a guy whos companies flopped

[femtobyte]

What amazing telepathic skills you've got there, to know that the poster is *thinking* the wrong thing despite an apparently sensible use of the word "orthogonal." Can you tell what number I'm thinking of now, too?

Re:Knowing Google

[icebraining]

That's not an ad hominem, that's a plain insult.

Re:Ingress

[Mitsoid]

Indeed, Ingress is a nice little game being done by some part of Google (still not sure the exact relationship.. think it's a subsidiary)

mobile gaming?

[PopeRatzo]

It would be great if there were finally some really good games on tablets.

  I mean, there are tons of games available for my wife's iPad or my Nexus 7, but I haven't seen any that were very exciting.

Have I missed the great Android or iOS games? The hardware seems ready, but the game designers seem like they have not been up to the task. And even if they get a halfway decent game, they spoil it with advertisements or micro-transactions. If a game were really good, I'd pay a price comparable to a AAA PC or console game.

Re:mobile gaming?

[PopeRatzo]

I believe tables may be good for some strategy games.

I wish you'd have mentioned some names. I can't find decent strategy games for mobile.

Googling "best games for Android" doesn't give me very useful results.

Re:3DO?

[cbhacking]

[Heroes Of] Might And Magic series, at least the earlier set of them, were pretty big. A-list, perhaps not (although it depends what you go for; a serious first-person shooter gamer will have no reason to know this company, but to a turn-based strategy gamer they were a pretty big deal) but very successful for a time, and (IMO the more important point) developer of a number of games that are still popular now, over a decade later.

Lucasfilm is pretty obviously a big deal, even if not around anymore; the produced a number of very popular games.

Besides, I'd really rather have somebody who made good games than somebody who made big money. Whever the hell keeps churning out the Madden series? Waste of developer resources.

Re:And in breaking news...

[cbhacking]

Funny and concerning, all at once. If some really good games *do* come of this, I don't want them to end up dropped on the floor unplayable as soon as Google decides they don't care anymore or aren't making enough money at it.

Rose colored glasses

[rsilvergun]

You're comparing 20 years of the best of gaming to 3 to 5 years of everything. Look back at not just the crap, but the mediocre. Take out the garbage from the last 5 years and you've got some amazing stuff. La-Mulana, Shogun Total War, Sonic Generations. And there's just no comparing old school racing games to modern stuff like Need for Speed and Burn out. I literally can't go back to playing 16 bit or even 32 bit racers Post Burnout 3.

Re:Rose colored glasses

[UltraZelda64]

Meh... Need For Speed and Burnout? Burnout is a pretty decent series and there are a few good NFS games, but IMO nothing these days beats Forza and PGR (RIP Bizarre Creations). Tokyo Xtreme Racer for Dreamcast was also excellent. And I can easily go back and play games as far back as Pole Position and Pole Position II and have quite a bit of fun. But racing is really one of the very few types of games that hasn't generally started sucking IMO; it's hard to screw up a racing game, although it has been done many times before.

I think I gave up on 3D Sonic games after the first Sonic Adventure, because to put it simply... all of them after the first Sonic Adventure downright blew. The 2D Sonic games were a different story, they tended to be great... too bad those all made it to Game Boy, Nindendo DS, etc. I can't stand portable game systems, and never could get fully into any of them because of that.

I should emphasize that it's not just the games themselves that I'm not too crazy about these days, but the systems. Like I hinted at, I prefer a dedicated machine that was designed to be the best damn video game system ever. Those days are long gone, as even Nintendo is beginning to cater to the ignorant masses.

Re:3DO?

[flimflammer]

Lucasfilm had some really good games back then.

Finally!

[tonfagun]

Falstein hired again by a big company! I think in the past decade or so he only worked on smaller titles, like educational games, just like many of the designers that had their big moment in the late 80s to late 90s. It would be fanstastic if he got another shot at a "big" game. Probably not going to happen at Google, but one can dream.

For those who forgot why the guy is a genius: he made several good games, but his work on 'Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis', together with Hal Barwood, is a high point of video game story development and writing in my opinion. Companies like BioWare today that are known for designing "well written" games built on their work.

Then your a loner

[tuppe666]

Too many fucking 'social' requirements in games already.

Social gaming has always been big...ever since you could play Doom across a network (although many would claim Arcades were more social and first), and just because you want to game in isolation, most don't. It was interesting to see how although Microsoft had failed in so many years with the Xbox...Live has been an incredible earner, it even helped breath new life into Microsoft shares.

I'm looking for a few good games

[tepples]

touch screen platformer.. needs different control scheme than virtual buttons, like dragging.

Could you recommend a free or cheap Android game on Google Play that I could look to for best control practices in a touch screen platformer? I tried one of the Sonic games, but after I installed it on my Nexus 7 running Android 4.2.something, it crashed on run.

however, there's plenty of android devices with buttons.

I'm aware of Android devices from JXD that take design cues from other popular handhelds. But how many of these devices have Google Play?

Re:I'm looking for a few good games

[Black LED]

Take a look at Another World, NBA Jam and R-Type. I realise the latter two aren't platformers, but they are 2D side scrollers and have good touchscreen controls.

Can't Use Google

[tuppe666]

I can't find decent strategy games for mobile.

Googling "best games for Android" doesn't give me very useful results.

Then your being deliberately obtuse I just types your phrase "best games for Android" and unsurprisingly gave modern up-to-date lists of Android games, the first post is http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/04/18/51-best-and-4-wtf-new-android-games-from-the-last-2-weeks-4213-41813/ 51 Best (And 4 WTF) New Android Gameswhich unsurprisingly gibes everything from strategy to flight simulator to...hell they even have a point-and-click adventure on the list. Ironically you caould have tried everything on the list...for less price than one of your dated console games.

Re:Can't Use Google

[PopeRatzo]

Then your being deliberately obtuse I just types your phrase "best games for Android" and unsurprisingly gave modern up-to-date lists of Android games

I didn't say I couldn't find results. I said I couldn't get useful results.

The games on those lists that you cite are all pretty shitty or are halfway decent but fouled by micro-transactions. I'm looking for a really good game and I'm ready to pay prices comparable to AAA games for other platforms.

But I already said all that. If you know of a AAA game for mobile that does not have micro-transactions, now would be a good time to tell us the name.

True Sonic 3Ds stink

[rsilvergun]

but what about Ratchet and Clank or Sly Cooper? I'd argue those are the equal of even a Mario 64. Still, you can play the GBA Sonic games on a Gamecube with adapter (or the upcoming Retron 5). Sonic Colors & Generations on the Wii are really 2D games. Generations is fantastic. And if you just want 2D there's tonnes of great indies. Rayman Origins, Super Meat Boy, Dust Force, La-Mulana, Freedom Planet, etc, etc.

As for a dedicated machine, computers today are so powerful you're not sacrificing anything for the extra features (Netflix, browsers, Facebook, etc).

Re:True Sonic 3Ds stink

[UltraZelda64]

I couldn't really get into Ratchet & Clank or Sly Cooper, and I'd never put them up with Super Mario 64. I don't know what it is about the games released on Sony's systems, but very few of them seem to be my style--even if they're a genre I normally like. I own a PS2 to play a handful or PS1 games and a handful of PS2 games, that's it. The Silent Hill series and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night are all I really care for on the two systems, although there are several others that are pretty good. There were several platformers that were good on N64, GameCube, Xbox, etc. and even a few on Wii, but it seems--again--that fewer and fewer good ones are coming out with every new generation.

And I disagree that nothing's being sacrificed when a company decides to add every little thing they can to what once was a dedicated piece of hardware. All of that extra stuff requires additional money, which leads to a higher-priced product (which sacrifices your wallet--599 U.S. Dollars, anyone?), or requires the company to choose between, say, better type/speed of RAM or processor (good)... or DVD playback and DRM licenses (bad). The Wii is absolute crap for streaming videos online through its web browser, so why include it? It only looks good on paper (well, to people other than me--I have a computer and a phone that can do that and want my gaming machines simple).

The only "extra" thing I find acceptable is digital audio file playback, and only under the condition that it can be seamlessly be used as the in-game music for, say, racing and fighting games. Xbox and Xbox 360 definitely did that right. It's much better racing to music that you like than the same, often crappy, default music all the time.

Yay! Conflate Content with Services! We're Doomed!

[VortexCortex]

I wish google would just fuck right out of the content creation business if they're going to take such a big part in the search, ads, and development platforms, then the should stay the hell away from creating content for it. It's like they're taking a clue from the cable companies here. No. Stop. Focus on your core competency, be the platform -- I don't want to waste my time trying to compete with a company who owns the platform.

Now, if they're just going to focus on discoverability and ease of development to make it easier for gamers and game makers to meet up and get their game on, then that's fine. Soon as they have a vested interest in putting one game ahead of the other, I'm out. I'll release my products as bootable firmware / BIOS images before I let another greedy platform owner bend me over to make their own titles look better by comparison.

Reality Is Broken

[minstrelmike]

Reading all the earlier comments, I see most slashdaughters thinking of games as the stuff they grew up with. No extrapolation whatsoever.
Board games aren't even dead. They are a solid profitable industry (as are mainframe computers).
There are many other ways 'games' are being built. Unity developers spend as much time building models for training as they do for actual gaming.

There is an excellent book called Reality Is Broken about how gaming can be applied to all sorts of real life situations.
I suspect Google has read that book and is operating from that paradigm, not from a console one.

Re:Knowing Google

[Anonymous Coward]

What always online requirement? The one you pulled from your ass like all of that other BS in your post?

Really, you should at least TRY to know something about what you are talking about. The PS3 makes it super easy to backup data to external storage and to transfer data to another PS3. PS4 will offer the same or better.

google universe

[KingBenny]

tied to the us dollar at a 1/1 ratio ...
hyping it up by selling off the first zone for $100k before it's in game
then hyping it up two years after by having it sold for six times the price
the only game that pays you !
(o no that would be the second one then)
i'm actually curious, i hope it's not to make another version of angry birds

Incompatible with many devices and requires root

[tepples]

PS3 is bluetooth, you just connect it and it works.

According to the publisher's web site, many HTC and Samsung devices don't work with PlayStation 3 controllers. In fact, the publisher had to make a second application called Sixaxis Compatibility Checker just to let people make sure that their devices would work with Sixaxis Controller before spending $2.99. Furthermore, the Sixaxis Controller application requires rooting, which tends to require backing up the device, wiping it, and restoring data. How many people are willing to use compatibility with the Sixaxis Controller application as a selling point for one phone over another?