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Google Stadia’s grave is barely cold and already parent company Alphabet are looking to take a stab at gaming once more. This time around its gaming ventures are focused on YouTube, with employee’s reportedly being invited to test out a new service dubbed Playables.
According to a recent WSJ report, YouTube Playables leaves all of the cloud streaming failures of the Stadia behind to focus on smaller, bite-sized titles for users to enjoy on desktop and mobile devices. “Bite-sized” being key to what to expect, as it would seem the titles on offer could be tied in to a lesser known Google project, GameSnacks.
YouTube treads NewGrounds (dot com)
GameSnacks is currently Google’s home for casual, bite-sized gaming, think of it as a bit of a small-scale NewGrounds or more accurately, the reanimated, shambling corpse of PopCap – offering all of the app store games you’ve grown to love, then hate, then uninstall and forget about entirely. Of course, that’s a lie, because GameSnacks doesn’t even make that much effort.
Instead of having some lighthearted fun in classic titles like Farmville, Candy Crush Saga, and Fruit Ninja you’ll be playing their dime-store, discount, Macromedia Flash-like, shovelware alternatives like Comfy Farm, Candy Bubble, and Cake Slice Ninja. Titles so poorly remade and cheaply ripped off from the originals I’m not even going to legitimize them with italics.
Barely Playables
The WSJ report indicates that one of the games currently being tested for YouTube Playables is Stack Bounce, another title from the GameSnacks library and proud owner of a 1.3 star rating on the Google Play store.
Stack Bounce is the type of game that’s showcased in those annoying 30 second videos of somebody with an IQ deficiency failing miserably at it when a game you actually want to engage with forces you to take an ad break.
It’s a low poly, masochistic adventure in tap-and-hold block breaking, designed to turn you into a mindless screen-prodding drone while racking up ad revenue for its creators. Which, funnily enough, is exactly what Google is hoping for.
Why is YouTube doing this? Well, according to the WSJ, Google is hoping to pursue new avenues of growth in the face of its current decline in advertising spending. I’m no linguistic expert, but I think that may be skin-suited lizard person talk for “Ads, ads, ads! Money, money, money!”
Outlook
When talking to WSJ, a company spokesperson said that “Gaming has long been a focus at YouTube.” I can’t help but think that if it was a serious focus then turfing app store clones onto the platform and unironically calling them “Playables” would have been laughed out of the meeting room the moment it fell from between out of touch lips.
I’ve never earnestly thought about YouTube as a platform for gaming, but now that I have I can already envision far better uses. Imagine taking part in a live stream where you can quickly jump into a game of Blitz Chess with GM and YouTuber Hikaru Nakamura, imagine comment section disputes being settled over a Quake III Arena duel, or an open invitational QWOP tournament hosted by Ricky Berwick.
The possibilities are endless, which makes it all the more frustrating that this is seemingly the best Google and YouTube could come up with. Somewhere out there in the multiverse exists a world in which YouTube Playables is a success story. It’s just unlikely to be this one.
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