A little over a week ago, Netflix shut down its very own AAA gaming studio, Team Blue.
It did not put out a single game. In fact, no one really knew it existed.
The company had a massive talent team at hand: The Executive Producer of Overwatch Chacko Sonn, God of War Art Director Rafael Grassetti and Halo Creative Director Joseph Staten.
Netflix had a super league of veteran devs, but what about now? They are gone.
I’m sure the higher-ups at Netflix nodded their heads in unison at the introduction of this idea. If it worked for movies, why not gaming?
Redbox, for example, was the smarter way to watch and play –– for a point in time, at least.
The rental business officially shut down in July after its parent company, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, filed for bankruptcy in June after amassing $1 billion in debt. But in the late 2010s, Redbox was a popular business that slipped into a perfect era between post-Blockbuster and pre-Netflix streaming success.
Originally founded in 2003 as a McDonald’s experiment for store products, Redbox’s predecessor, Ticktok Easy Shop, was a flop. In 2004, former Netflix Co-Founding Executive, Mitch Lowe, flipped a McLean Deluxe into a Big Mac success.
Thus, Redbox was born. And if anyone remembers, it was a rental kiosk that dispensed Blu-Rays and DVDs at local convenience stores like Walmart and CVS Pharmacy. Once a $1-per-night cheapskate haven, Redbox allowed 10-year-old customers to take full advantage.
In 2011, Redbox launched video game rentals across the country. By 2015, games cost $3 a day. With my PlayStation 3 and pink saucer chair from Walmart tucked in the corner, I was set to spend $6 and 48 hours on a game I almost always beat.
Whenever we rented games or movies, my mom would say, “I should have invented Redbox.”
Thankfully, she didn’t. Streaming services like Netflix rendered Redbox obsolete. But the question was: Can Netflix compete in the gaming industry –– and on top of that, for the wrong reasons?
If it’s more money the company wants, more money is not what it will get.
Amazon, which also provides cloud services like Prime Video, tried its hand at gaming with Amazon Games. It produced decent role-playing games like “Lost Ark” and “New World: Aeturnum,” but it cut 180 employees from its games division alone.
While many RPG-enthusiasts enjoyed “Lost Ark,” many more agreed that a company that doesn’t care could be the downfall of a genuinely good game. For “New World,” higher-ups focused on metrics and data-driven numbers instead of human voices. They did not turn to the community, the fans who play the games, for insight on the kinds of gameplay offered.
As of June, Amazon will be shoving its shoulder into Netflix with a lineup of Triple-A games like “Tomb Raider” and “Lord of the Rings.” It’s hard to tell if these games will end up being any good, especially with a big corporation backing it from behind.
Still, for now, many companies cannot seem to crack the code to the video game industry, but I will also argue: Can we completely fault them for trying?
Even the gaming world has transitioned, in some capacity, to streaming services.
While Let’s Play YouTubers like Markiplier are still churning out video game content, many online creators have moved to streaming platforms like Twitch TV, or have dropped the schtick almost entirely. Let’s Plays –– especially those involving indie horror games –– were once the cornerstone of YouTube.
While many viewers have moved to streaming, I grew up watching Let’s Players and pulling flat disc cases out of Redbox kiosks.
A company like Netflix or Amazon could surely succeed in their video gaming endeavors, but it doesn’t look like they will anytime soon. In my eyes, if big corporations want an in to the gaming world, they’re going to have to care.
Even if they do snatch a few dollars from fans who just want good gaming –– money can’t buy nostalgia.
