Video games has seen an exponential rise in popularity and investment over the last few decades. What began as an experiment to bring interaction to a computer screen has lead to a billion dollar industry worldwide. In response, many companies have popped up or joined the industry to make games for gamers to enjoy, with the effect of creating communities centered around specific game console platforms. The term “console wars” is rooted since around the start of the millenium, and refers to the fact that in recent years, the gaming industry is segregated into communities of players who stick to a particular console. However Google is aiming to break that apart. Google Stadia is an effort redefine these communities as rather than dense clusters bridged together by players that operate on more than one console or specific games offering crossplay, to a routing of players to a more small-world community.
Google Stadia is a service, that takes a gaming console, hardware medium to play video games on, and puts it on the cloud. One can simply use a Chrome browser or the Chromecast service that Google offers. According to Phil Harrison, Vice-CEO of the company, stated that gamers could expect to play games regardless of console platform as well have the ability to have crossplay. Crossplay refers to a player playing with other people for a particular game, where they may not necessarily be both using the same console.
An idea essentially is formed about how the networks are formed. The major three companies, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have a big community of gamers that play games from them, forming big clusters. Unless a game offered crossplay or if a player owned more than one console, these communities were highly centered to whatever platform of choice. There is a rivalry going on between all three, forming a negatively balanced relation for a majority of the video gaming history.
Google Stadia aims to bridge that gap. Similarly to how in the building of small-world models, especially Kleinberg’s model, discussed in class, Stadia aims to provide a convenient path for players to connect via a new platform that doesn’t require one to choose a side and no matter how rooted into the current communities they are. This however is still all hypothetical. It remains to be seen if one service can finally bridge the dissenting split of players.