What's Up With Netflix Games?
Finally, someone answers this hard-hitting question.
Hello, and welcome to the seven new subscribers since my last email, Why YOUR Videos Went Viral (#3). I’m sending this as I eat an impossibly expensive breakfast at the Brooklyn Diner in LaGuardia Terminal B. I’m heading down to Austin for the Moontower Comedy Festival, where we’ll be doing four nights of Stamptown (Weds-Sat, April 16-19), and a Jack Tucker: Comedy Standup Hour on Sun 4/20. If you’re planning on being down there, let me know! Hope to see you at a show. Then, we’re back in Brooklyn for back-to-back Stamptowns on 4/21 and 4/22 at the Bell House, after which I will quite possibly sleep until May.
So I was intending to watch the first episode of Kill Tony: Kill or Be Killed on Netflix, when I came across a feature I hadn’t encountered before:
Granted, I never watch Netflix on my laptop, I almost exclusively watch it on a TV.
But on the rare occasion I watch Netflix on my iPhone, I’ve noticed a series of Mobile Games appear as the first line of content you see underneath whatever has top billing:
It’s always a mix of iPod Touch classics, and new games I’ve never heard of. But all of them require downloading a separate app outside of Netflix in order to play.
Well, apparently the Games vertical has a big push on Desktop as well, and you can actually play them within Netflix, rather than having to navigate to external websites.
They’ve got 15 games available in Beta, including the afore-screenshotted Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit.
Other titles include Underwatermelon Fruit Merge (With Friends), Too Hot To Handle (Create Your Character), Reigns: Three Kingdoms, and Story Warriors - Fairy Tales.1
Here’s popular streamer Ludwig playing and ranking the games available on Desktop:
The one game not covered in Ludwig’s tier list? Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit.
So, in an act of procrastination under the guise of journalism, I played Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit for roughly 35 minutes before getting bored. I was expecting a “couchfeel” along the lines of Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing, but it felt a little too designed-for-a-nine year-old for this twenty-something. The gameplay is spoonfed and slow, and the second character you meet is an unalive, nonbinary streamer in a wheelchair:
But this begs a larger question:
Why is Netflix doing all this in the first place?
The answer, as always, involves the combination of data and $$.
But more generally, they want to own the “Second Screen”, too.
Right now, many people “two-screen” their TV watching. We tend to check Twitter while watching the game, or scroll Hinge while Love Is Blind plays in the background.
Netflix doesn’t love that.
Not only because you aren’t giving their programming your undivided attention, but because of all that sweet, sweet data being left on the tablet.2
The goal is knowing not only what you’re watching, but what you’re doing while you watch it, and then using all of that information to maximize your Time Spent on Netflix.
The attentive viewer may notice several of the games are directly inspired by Netflix IP.
The first game on the screenshot shown above is based on a Black Mirror episode. And Too Hot To Handle (Create Your Character), is based off their British reality dating show.
Not to pull the action figure before the movie here, but let’s zoom out for a second.
Netflix is subtly flattening the boundaries between their movies, shows, and games.
To them, it’s all more or less the same.
Trackable content to half-pay attention to, the data from which is used to serve you even more, trackable content to half-pay attention to.
Take a look at this quote in a recent Deadline article from their President of Games:
“At Netflix, we have a mission to entertain people,” Tascan said. “Right now, we’re at least entertaining around 700 million people. Games are a natural next step to support and deliver on that vision. Games can keep people engaged between seasons, and [we can] capture them in new ways.”
Capture, indeed.
Let’s be clear: none of this is happening because the people in Netflix’s C-suite woke up and decided games were of equal artistic merit to movie and television.
This is happening because they’re running out of new people to subscribe.
They’ve already added a lower-priced ad tier, and cracked down on password sharing.
Now, they’re exploring other sources of revenue and retention.
And unfortunately for the artistic purists, it’s a really smart idea on Netflix’s end.
Don’t get me wrong, I can taste the tablespoons of existential dread baked into this. Not because creating video games is an inherently bad practice, but because it feels a bit like turning a movie theater into a Dave and Busters.
A place where the goal is no longer, “to come to this place for magic”, but to occupy you. Bo Burnham’s “That Funny Feeling…” plays faintly in the back of my head as I read about the recently sunset “Stories” project of interactive games based on Emily in Paris, Outer Banks, and Love Is Blind, or how the Squid Game party royale mobile app became the number one action game on the App Store.
At the risk of pitching an idea that will make every artist reading this want to put a bullet into their head with a gun, why not full-send a dual-screen viewing option that mimics those TikTok videos where half the screen is someone playing Subway Surfers, and the other half is someone doing stand-up comedy? That way, your users can play their silly little game while watching their silly little show.
This allows you to eliminate any guesswork, own all the consumption data, and so when you make the Tony Hinchcliffe: American Wasteland RPG, you can track exactly which Roast your audience is watching while rallying a ragtag gang of Austin open mic-ers to rebuild the Comedy Mothership on the other half of the browser.
I digress…
It’s unbearably dystopian.
But if you’re pitching to these folks, a transferable, original idea – one that travels across formats, not just episodes – might have more potential than ever.
It seems like there is an unspoken competition between Netflix game developers of whose title can have the most subtitles and caveats.
Great to be here, what a crowd.