To get players, we're looking at influencer partnerships. That's where the indie community tends to be. To get games, it is a bit tougher. Individual outreach, partnership with large publishers, partner with gaming conventions... nothing's off the table. Still got to figure it out!
Apart from the occasional hiccup, quality is fine. I am sure that if you did a side by side comparison it would be obvious, but I can honestly say I don't notice 99% of the time. Once you are in a game and playing, it is totally fine.
In the same way that when you are watching something on netflix or amazon or disney etc, when you are really into the movie or show no one ever stops watching and thinks "gee I just cannot watch this - it is not Blu-ray quality!".
Just like with netflix et al, game streaming is amazing - pull out a thin and light laptop, browse through a large catalog of games and just pick something and play immediately. The "legacy" approach is wait until you can physically go to your gaming PC or laptop (because you need the hardware), wait for it to boot, wait for the inevitable updates to download for Windows and Steam and Graphics drivers, browse through your game catalog, wait to download the 20-30gb install, wait for the VC redistributable to install, then wait for the game itself installs etc. It sucks - you waste so much time. With a Chromebook and geforce now (rest in peace stadia) I can literally go from a closed-laptop to in-game in about one minute, and I can do that anywhere too. This is the future. I have loads of games on steam that I have never even played - if I could just play them immediately with a single click you can bet I would have at least given them a go.
I personally have very limited spare time, so I would (and do/did for geforce now and stadia) pay extra for the convenience of stream so when I get a spare 30 mins I can play a game in that time, not spend it only getting halfway through a game download in steam. Just like I pay for the convenience of netflix et al rather than buying dvds/Blu-rays and having to watch everything on my TV.
the constraints of canva hehe. Good that you like the idea, streaming is interesting but as said in other replies, its presents a much tougher business model. Hopefully one day!
Sure. To start with, a large selection of games for a flat monthly fee has the psychological effect of making players less patient because they have so many other options. When a game presents unusual mechanics, creates unexpected challenges, employs steep difficulty curves, deep completion campaigns, or even suffers from minor flaws or design issues, players are much more willing to simply leave the game behind rather than push through and actually experience the game as it was intended by the designers. This is especially true in an environment where new games are being added all the time. Yes, some games are removed over time as well, but that does little to mitigate the aggregate sum of the catalog acting as a cloying distraction that begs the player to just move on to the next thing. The inevitable result is a binging culture which gradually erodes the perceived value of games.
That's all without considering the economic incentive for a customer to play many games to get value out of the subscription, and the second order effects of a game's perceived value compared to an entire catalog of games for the same price - why gamble 8 bucks on this random indie game when I have 1000 other free options I've never tried. The result of this psychology on the market is that game producers will become gradually incentivized to optimize on quantity over quality - we've seen this pattern play out over and over again with the various streaming services. Yeah, you need one or two blockbusters to headline your platform, but consumers broadly perceive most of the subscription streaming services as shoveling trash peppered with a few occasional gems.
I know that's harsh, nothing personal, I dislike gamepass for the same reasons. Just to be clear, I'm not saying it's a bad business model, it might even be an inevitable one, I just think it creates a lot of negative externalities for gaming.
I feel like a Mac first sub would be too limited in market, something like 95% of the players on Steam use windows as an OS. Shame to hear that though, I think we'd probably have to win you as a consumer some other way maybe... competing for content is likely not the solution when going up against Microsoft and Epic.
Interesting, most of the devs we talk to are pretty concerned about not having DRM. Same goes for implementation, they want the least amount of work possible.
You're right about penalizing smaller titles though, we're trying to figure that out at the moment. Pay per install is interesting, thanks for the suggestion!
