Mobile Games
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Working at Next Games as a Game Lead since November 2022. Prior to that, held positions at Electronic Arts as a Senior Creative Director, and as a Creative Director. Before joining Electronic Arts, Petri worked at Digital Chocolate as an Executive Producer, Design Director and Game Designer.
Aalto’s Devlog #5 / 23rd October 2023
Game Design: Narrative
About the Lectures
The last lecture of this course was given by Petri Ikonen on the topic of mobile games. He shared good insights on the mobile game development process, explaining design decisions made during his trajectory in renamed companies like EA and Digital Chocolate and in the development of games like Simcity Buildit. He also discussed ideas about teamwork and team dynamics. In his actual role as Game Lead on Next Games, he is responsible for developing games for an upcoming type of monetization model, which is the subscription-based system led by Netflix.
Sources:
In 2022, Netflix announced the acquisition of the Finnish game company ‘Next Games’, in the context of their push into the video game industry. One of the questions that hovered over my mind during the lecture was the strategy behind Netflix gaming ventures. In particular, the fact that they offer free mobile games to their users but almost none of their users seem to know this feature. Netflix has been very discrete about communicating their gaming services, I have only heard of it in specialized media and video game press articles. I asked Petri Ikonen about this and he replied that this was an intentional decision from Netflix’s side, and there are plenty of surprises coming soon.
After the lecture, I decided to dive deeper into the different moves that Netflix is making in the game industry following the recent news on this topic. I discovered that their catalogue keeps growing and they have been testing cloud gaming technologies on TV devices. It is remarkable that even after two years of announcing their gaming efforts, they are still experimenting with games. They are definitely taking this topic seriously, and they are implementing really interesting technologies in the context of their own monetization method.
Personally, I am particularly interested in the subscription method applied to games. Services like Xbox’s Game Pass and PlayStation Plus offer a wide catalogue of games and it is very convenient for both users and developers. Additionally, I believe that cloud gaming is still a very underrated technology and it can be an important factor in the future of the game’s industry. In this sense, Netflix is taking both -suscription monetization and cloud gaming- very seriously with recent tests in the UK and Canada. Netflix is currently testing a cloud gaming service, which allows players to stream games directly from Netflix’s servers rather than having them downloaded onto their devices. This essentially eliminates the need for any hardware, and with Netflix’s wide user base, it could mean an incredible leap for cloud gaming.
In addition, considering how Netflix revolutionized the movie and TV industry with its subscription-based model, they could do the same for the gaming industry. Combining Netflix’s history with subscriptions and the upcoming cloud gaming tech might result in a game-changer movement, like the one that mobile free-to-play games started in 2010. This could open a whole new market segment of casual players that only need a TV to access these game catalogues.
Finally, I believe that there might be an interesting future for cloud gaming if their problems are sorted out. On the one hand, there are disastrous examples like Google’s Stadia, who discontinued their services at the beginning of this year. On the other hand, however, there are also positive examples like Nvidia GeForce Now which has successfully expanded the cloud gaming experience and keeps adding features to its service. In conclusion, Netflix could become a key actor, expanding the reach of cloud-gaming to casual gamers and even non-gamers if their efforts are successful.
Netflix’s catalogue keeps growing every month
More from Aalto’s Devlog:
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Untitled Penguin Game (1/3)
Period 2 - Game Project I
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Airplane control and procedural map in Unity with C#
Period 1 - Software Studies for Game Designers
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Game Jam: Mamapato
Period 0 - Introductory Game Jam