Netflix Emerges As Video Game Publisher
Two years ago they launched the first experiment. Now the company is getting serious about games.
Netflix is not just a well-established video streaming service. Not anymore. “Two years after the first Netflix experiment with games, the streaming platform became a serious emerging videogames publisher,” writes Ash Parrish, who covers video game business, culture, and communities in the online tech magazine The Verge.
An example of Parrish’s theory: Night School was one of the first studios Netflix acquired for its gaming platform. Thanks to the studio’s success with Oxenfree, the acquisition was the initial sign that Netflix was genuinely committed to its gaming venture. Night School just released the sequel to Oxenfree, Oxenfree II: Lost Signals. Thanks to the joint venture with Netflix, “We were able to localize the game into 30 languages,” said Night School game Director Bryant Cannon.
Collaboration, not taking over, is a throughline in Netflix’s gaming philosophy. Another example: Ripstone Games is a UK-based developer and maker of the recently released The Queen’s Gambit Chess, which transforms the wildly popular chess show into an interactive chess-teaching experience. Ripstone went to Netflix and proposed a deal:
“Back in October 2020, when The Queen’s Gambit was released, the world fell in love with it,” said Jamie Brayshaw, head of marketing and business development at Ripstone. “The number of people playing chess online skyrocketed, so we offered to create a brand-new game for The Queen’s Gambit. Netflix said yes, and the rest is history. The unique thing about partnering with them is that they’re all about learning,” Brayshaw said.
Learning and leaving collaborators free to create: “Netflix’s gaming philosophy resembles a kind of patronage system,” writes Ash Parrish in The Verge article. “Netflix supplies its studios with resources, and they’re free to pursue whatever artistic avenue they want.”
Netflix’s gaming mentality is wide open, indeed. While exploring a cloud gaming service, the company recently posted job listings for a game director, art director, and technical director at its newly announced Los Angeles games studio, alongside roles like producer and engineer, for a project described as “a brand-new AAA PC game.”
Source: The Verge
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Two years ago they launched the first experiment. Now the company is getting serious about games.
Netflix is not just a well-established video streaming service. Not anymore. “Two years after the first Netflix experiment with games, the streaming platform became a serious emerging videogames publisher,” writes Ash Parrish, who covers video game business, culture, and communities in the online tech magazine The Verge.
An example of Parrish’s theory: Night School was one of the first studios Netflix acquired for its gaming platform. Thanks to the studio’s success with Oxenfree, the acquisition was the initial sign that Netflix was genuinely committed to its gaming venture. Night School just released the sequel to Oxenfree, Oxenfree II: Lost Signals. Thanks to the joint venture with Netflix, “We were able to localize the game into 30 languages,” said Night School game Director Bryant Cannon.
Collaboration, not taking over, is a throughline in Netflix’s gaming philosophy. Another example: Ripstone Games is a UK-based developer and maker of the recently released The Queen’s Gambit Chess, which transforms the wildly popular chess show into an interactive chess-teaching experience. Ripstone went to Netflix and proposed a deal:
“Back in October 2020, when The Queen’s Gambit was released, the world fell in love with it,” said Jamie Brayshaw, head of marketing and business development at Ripstone. “The number of people playing chess online skyrocketed, so we offered to create a brand-new game for The Queen’s Gambit. Netflix said yes, and the rest is history. The unique thing about partnering with them is that they’re all about learning,” Brayshaw said.
Learning and leaving collaborators free to create: “Netflix’s gaming philosophy resembles a kind of patronage system,” writes Ash Parrish in The Verge article. “Netflix supplies its studios with resources, and they’re free to pursue whatever artistic avenue they want.”
Netflix’s gaming mentality is wide open, indeed. While exploring a cloud gaming service, the company recently posted job listings for a game director, art director, and technical director at its newly announced Los Angeles games studio, alongside roles like producer and engineer, for a project described as “a brand-new AAA PC game.”
Source: The Verge