Google on games: “we’ve really only just started”

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http://media.edge-online.com/wp-content/uploads/edgeonline/2013/08/google_news.png (http://media.edge-online.com/wp-content/uploads/edgeonline/2013/08/google_news.png)“We recently shared that three in every four Android users were playing games, which adds up to a heck of a lot of gamers,” begins Greg Hartrell, lead product manager of Google Play’s game services, as he extols the virtues of the tech giant’s new app.Google Play Games is a new service which might be described as Google’s answer to Apple’s Game Center, in that it finds friends and adds achievements, leaderboards and online play to Android games. Google Plus integration makes it a more social platform than Game Center, though, and it also aims to offer a suite of services to game developers which attempt to solve problems like discoverabilty, piracy and fragmentation.If the current marketplace is just the beginning for Google in games, then it’s a decent start. With 70 million Android tablets sold to date and hundreds of millions of Android-powered mobile phones in the market already, Google is operating on an entirely different scale to traditional games platforms. Hartnell, a former studio head of Capcom-owned Beeline and lead product manager for Xbox Live and the 360 core platform, says the tech giant’s ultimate goal is to bring games to the masses through Android, while making play more social. But he’s not telling whether that includes launching a dedicated games console.You seem to be pushing Google Play Games and Nexus 7 hard right now – what’s the split between users playing on Android tablets compared to mobile?I don’t have those figures with me right now, but I think we do see that there’s some seventy million Android tablets sold to date and that, if the numbers hold, you’re going to see similar levels of engagement [going forward]. We see tablet gamers playing different style of games, so you can see a lot more of the immersive, long-session style of games being played more often on tablets versus quick session games like puzzlers or infinite racers being played on phones.Do you see these richer tablet games displacing a lot of time spent playing console games?I think ultimately the user experience that mobile and tablet are bringing, particularly for games, kind of stand on their own. I don’t know if we view it as console versus mobile, I think that when you take a look at the games that are there they bring great videogame experiences to the masses, and in that way we do believe that mobile and tablets are the future for videogames.http://media.edge-online.com/wp-content/uploads/edgeonline/2013/08/Android.jpg (http://media.edge-online.com/wp-content/uploads/edgeonline/2013/08/Android.jpg)Google Play Games is another sign that Google is dedicating more of its efforts to games – what’s your longterm goal in the market?When you take a look at mobile gaming as it stands today, it’s still a fairly solitary experience. It’s that picture of a child on a couch staring into a screen. Or, y’know, in videogames in general, we’ve gotten away with calling a guy sitting in his basement with a headset on as ‘social’. Ultimately I think the really interesting parts for us are going to be about bringing all of these other people together in a way that allows them to feel more like there’s a real, engaging social experience.What’s interesting about mobile is that people are playing lots of games but would never categorise themselves as gamers – do you think that’s an advantage you have over traditional games markets?Yeah, I think it’s a fascinating point, right? I think that’s a reflection of our platform reaching an audience that’s actually much grander than that traditional videogame audience. Three out of four Android users play games, but if you asked those three if they were gamers I don’t know whether they’d identify themselves as a gamer – I think they just think of themselves as having a lot of fun on a mobile device and it has integrated into their lifestyle in a really convenient and magical kind of way.So considering the number of mobile and tablets out there already dwarfs the number of consoles – doesn’t that make rumours of a Google console a little redundant?We don’t talk about rumours in general, but what I would say is that bringing people together can take a lot of different forms. I think tablets are great and have grown in a really significant way, and people have found that a really engaging experience for gaming. I think we’re going to continue to push the medium and how games will be played across screens, and we’re really satisfied with the mobile and tablet growth we’ve seen.

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