Stadia: "We're still alive, stop asking"

 This was a triumph

We all like to believe the best in ourselves. It's healthy, we are told, to smile in the mirror and say "everything's going to go great today" each and every morning in order to train yourself to expect the good things in life. It's unhealthy, these same people say, to dwell on failures and impending hardships, at least not when they are beyond our control and nothing we can do will prevent them. I recognise these general beliefs and do accept them, even if I practice their exact inverse myself, which could be defined by some as Cognitive Dissonance. You know what else could be defined as such? Performing all the telltale signs of wrapping up your failed venture whilst wagging your finger and saying that "Things are going great!" whenever challenged. Which is it? Are you championing on or succumbing to the inevitable waves of The Deep? Lie through your teeth to the public if that's what makes you happy, but for the love of god figure that out within yourself else you're going to be in real deep crap when the hangman's number gets called.

Just recently the conversation sparked by Google Stadia's Platform and Games Marketing Lead, Nate Ahern, seemed to perfectly replicate the 'this is fine' meme during an interview with 'is a real site even though it sounds like a parody' Gamesindustry.biz. (I think it's the 'dot biz', just sounds weird.) Nate rocked to the interview and lived up to his job title spectacularly by dispelling any and all concerns around Google Stadia's long term viability through labelling those dubious thoughts as the rhetoric of "nonbelievers". (Wait, he said that? He used the words "Nonbelievers"? Wow, and I thought the Reddit for Stadia just seemed like a cult.) Now we all know that this here is a man professionally employed to lie to people, making him an absolutely indispensable element to both this industry and society at large who's life absolutely has purpose and value. Nah, that's all a bunch of crap and so is his talking points, but seeing as how we've seen a little glimpse behind the curtain towards how Google communicates with it's Stadia teams, I'm willing to bet that the messaging we're hearing here mirrors that within closed doors. So with that assumption; How's Stadia feeling nowadays?

"We're well on our way to over 100 new games launching on Stadia in 2021" Ahern said, presumably followed by an expectant pause for imaginary clapping. 100? 100 my man? So that'll bring Stadia's library up to, what, 200? This is supposed to be the 'be all end all' of gaming solutions, powered with tech so advanced that it simply cannot be beat and is capable of running feasibly any single software you could ever choose to upload. You should be dripping with games off of your service, you should have games coming out of your eyeballs, but you're sitting at 100. Why? I'll tell you; it's because Google, fools that they are, don't care about the plethora of talented smaller games out there which form the backbone of the industry. All they want is the big titles with the fancy studio credits to back them up and they're willing to, as leaks have shown, pay through the nose for those games. The same money that went towards a Red Dead 2 port could have secured ports for a thousand indie titles for Stadia. You seeing the problem here?

He also had the gall to tout "We're continuing to make Stadia a great place to play games on devices you already own." Oh, he must be talking about the way in which Stadia, within the past month, added a search bar to it's storefront. After a year in service. Now comes the Searchbar. From the company owned by Google. (Great strides guys, great strides) Now I know all the jokes were already made at Stadia's expense, but in all fairness I suppose they didn't exactly need a search bar for the beginning of Stadia's life since those geniuses had the bright idea of launching a subscription games service with less than 20 games. But know they're sitting at slightly more games, it's kind of a necessity. Of course, anyone with user interface design experience would have highlighted this as the sort of accessibility feature which should have been baked in before launch, but Stadia's an industry trend setter, guys, they can't be troubling themselves with such trivialities like 'basic programming jobs'.

And here comes my favourite part "I'd tell any non-believers-" (oh oh, that's me!) "-to take notice of how we're continuing to put words into action, as we grow the Stadia Makers program and partner with AAA Studios like Capcom, EA, Square Enix, Ubisoft and others." Oh, do you mean how you're getting raked over the coals by those companies as they continue to use you like their own personal piggy banks? 10's of millions have gone to securing Stadia ports of old classic titles, just so that Stadia can turn around and say that they have it, seemingly oblivious to the reality that most people they're aiming for probably already own those games and would probably prefer to play them through the method that doesn't cost them in subscription fees and internet charge bills. Stadia sees itself as a equal to these storied game studios, but those studios just look back at Stadia like rich rubes easily taken for a ride. No one believes Stadia is going to be around long enough for these studios to regret their pointed mistreatment, so they're plundering it's coffers before it's gone and for once I can't blame the greedy rats. I'd do the same in their shoes.

As for the 'Stadia Makers Program', that's an initiative to get smaller creators to make their games to be day-one launches on Stadia, I assume with a leaning towards exclusivity, but from the frontpage they don't appear to say that's a requirement. If this is the program that Stadia is so proud of growing they might want to illustrate that through, I dunno, marketing? Branding? Maybe updating the official webpage because it still mentions Stadia as owning just over 30 games? I just think it's weird that this sort of effort is going towards new developers rather than reaching out to Indie developers that already have Hits out there. It's clear that Stadia want to seek old classic AAA's so why not classic indies? Where's Spelunkey, Binding of Isaac or Stardew Valley on Stadia? Where's Shovel Knight? Dead Cells? Minecra- oh wait, there's no way Microsoft would cut them that deal... (still for a modern platform to not have Minecraft is pretty sinful)

Here's the facts for Stadia's 'grand effort' in putting actions to words; they're failing. They've been failing since before day one. Promises of native 4k support for all games going broken, stable performance can still be illusive to this day without spotless internet and, most disappointingly of all, their first party efforts have been scuppered. What the heck are we supposed to think about the health of your platform when you shut down all your first party studios before they can put out a single game!? It's total madness to think about, but Stadia seem like they're getting ready to put all their stuff in boxes and throw it into the retirement closet whilst hosting their grand celebration tours to let the masses know everything is steaming on ahead. And as I mentioned it mirrors internal policies. Google Stadia game developers had their studio shut down abruptly and with no warning after being told how much of a good job they were doing; no one has a clue what's going on even in an internal level!

So I guess the question I have to pose to you today is thus; when Stadia's head of marketing assures us that Stadia is alive and well with a future in this industry: do we believe him? Regardless of the fact that he's hired to lie, that Stadia has floundered on it's face time after time, that is entirely misunderstands it's target audience, that it requires premium internet to even work right, do you believe this man's words? And of course, you must know that even if you say yes and believe this man would never lie about something so sacred and pure; that doesn't mean he's right. His head could be next on the chopping block and he wouldn't know until the guillotine landed, because Stadia is just a Trireme pushed out in the Aegean sea with a rough sketch of what Troy might look like and without any oars. ("Trust in Poseidon, he'll get us there fine!") If all of that is enough for you than congratulations, you have more faith than me, friend. Just hope that faith has enough electrons to keep servers running after the power company comes and cuts Stadia's lines.