[Applause] [Applause].
Speaker: Please welcome to the stage, the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai!
Sundar Puchai: Good morning, everyone.
It's great to be here.
Thank you all for joining us.
I suppose I should start out with a confession.
I'm actually not a big gamer, though I do play FIFA�19 quite a bit, and really enjoy
how immersive it is.
I also play ashes cricket quite a bit, and for those of you who are wondering what cricket
is, it's kind of like baseball, but better.
[Laughter] Another littleknown fact is that Google makes
arguably the mostplayed game on the internet today, it's the DINO chrome game, mostly played
when there's no internet connection.
Not going to talk to you about the high quality graphics and sophistication you all are used
to, but it does have a lot of players, and probably a lot more hours than I care to admit.
While I'm not a big gamer, I do have the privilege of working at a company and leading a company
full of people who love to solve hard computer science problems.
For many Googlers, their journey with computers started with games.
Games have inspired many generations of people to pursue carrier SYNTAX and through that
process this they build resourcefulness, creativity and collaboration, all qualities that are
key to solving hard problems, and within Google and alphabet, games play a big part in developing
our own technology.
The best example I can think of is how we are making progress on AI.
Deep minds uses self play to learn from scratch and master games like chess, Shoji and DO.
It's an important step to creating a flexible, generalpurpose system that can learn to solve
many foundational problems.
More recently, alpha star became the first AI to defeat a top professional player at
star craft 2, using a deep neural network trained directly from raw game data.
Increasingly, games are helping AIs learn to tackle real world challenges.
Even beyond deep mind, another great example we have is VAMO, where we use simulations
in gaming to test things that aren't actually possible or safe at scale in the real world.
In fact, it's driven more than five billion hours in simulations that vehicles won't normally
encounter, and we use it, we learn from it and actually improve the systems that we'll
be replaying in the real world.
Perhaps the biggest impact of gaming is how it pushes us to make big leaps in computing
a networking power high affinity graphics and the infrastructure that supports it all.
All of you are pushing computing and technology forward, and I find that really exciting.
At Google, we have always believed that technology should adapt to people, not the other way
around.
We've been building for some time.
For example, when we launched chrome a decade ago, we imagined, we envisioned that it could
be a modern platform for Web applications, and bring the power of Web to everyone, including
use cases that seemed impossible at that time, like highquality games.
Finally, we are making progress towards that goal.
In fact, over the past two years, we've been hard at work on game streaming technology.
And last fall, we launched our first public test with project stream.
As some of you guessed, a technical test wasn't the whole view of our ambition.
It was probably the worstkept secret in the industry.
Internally, we were actually testing our ability to stream high fidelity graphics over a low
agency network.
We learned that we could bring a AAA game to any device at the chrome browser and an
internet connection, using the best of Google to create a powerful game platform.
And when we say best of Google, it always starts with the cloud and networking infrastructure.
Our custom server hardware and data centers can bring more computing power to more people
on planet earth than anyone else.
Today, we are in 19 regions, and in over 200 countries and territories connected by hundreds
of thousands of miles of fiber optic cables.
The best of Google also includes our open platforms that allow us to reach billions
of people.
With Google, your games will be immediately discoverable by over two billion people on
a chrome browser, chrome books, chromecast, pixel devices, and we have plans to support
more browsers and platforms over time.
That's in addition to all the people playing and watching games across YouTube and Google
play.
And when we build these ecosystems, we always take the approach that we only succeed when
our partners do.
Collectively, our partners across Web, Google play and YouTube have earned more than $110
billion over the past four years alone, and we are committed to this approach here as
well.
So now we have focused on our next big effort, which is to build a game platform for everyone.
And when we say for everyone, we really mean it.
It's one of our most cherished values as a company, be it Android or chrome or AI, we
are dead serious about making technology accessible for everyone.
But if you think about games, there are a lot of barriers for users to play highend
games.
Beautiful graphics really need highend consoles or PCs, and games don't have instant access.
Think about the way the Web works.
You can easily share a link and it works seamlessly.
We want games to feel that way, too.
Instantly enjoyable with access for everyone.
I think we can change the game by bringing together the power and creativity of the entire
community, people who love to play games, people who love to watch games, and people
who love to build games.
That means all of you.
We are really excited to work with you.
We want to build a platform.
We want you to show us what's possible.
And together, I think we can create a new games experience powered by best of Google
and built for everyone.
Let's take a look.
Speaker: From the beginning of time, games have brought us together.
Players and spectators.
By the handful, the hundreds and the thousands.
We built stadiums, places to gather around every kind of spectacle.
Glory.
Tragedy.
Pageantry.
Community, rivalry.
And wonder.
Until every city, town and village had a place where anyone could play.
Thousands of years later, our games have changed, but our need to come together remains.
This new era of gaming needs a new place to gather.
One place, where anything you dream can be built.
Playgrounds for every imagination.
One place where you and everyone you know and everyone they know will all play together.
Speaker: Let's go!
Let's go!
Speaker: Let's go, squad!
Speaker: Let's go!
Speaker: One place that never stops evolving, Where everyone will play.
Where did he come from?
Speaker: And watch.
Speaker: Yes!
High five!
Speaker: And create.
From any screen.
At any time.
One place for all the ways we play.
This is Stadia.
Gather round.
[Applause] Sundar: Welcome to Stadia.
We are so excited by this.
To do this well, it's important that we have the right people working on this, experts
with deep history and heritage in games.
That starts with Phil Harrison, who joined us about a year ago.
He's a great leader and a great gamer, definitely someone who knows the difference between RPGs
and NPCs.
We're going to pass the mic over to Phil to show you what we've built.
Take it over, Phil.
Phil Harrison: Thank you, Sundar.
[Applause] Phil Harrison: Thank you, Sundar.
It's such a pleasure to be here today and thank you for joining us at GDC as we finally
get to share Google's vision for the future of games, where the worlds of watching and
playing games converge into a new generation game platform, purpose built for the 21st
century, powered by the best of Google.
Our vision for Stadia is simple.
One place for all the ways we play.
It's focused on gamers, inspired by developers, and amplified by YouTube creators.
Today, our industry captivates over two billion players from all around the world.
At the center of that community, its beating heart, are the game developers, the people
in this room that create the most incredible game experiences that delight players with
engrossing stories, characters and worlds through a dazzling display of technology,
artistry and magic.
Games are now the single biggest form of entertainment on the planet, one that connects a vast community
across geographies, cultures and language, and within that passionate community, there
is a universe of people who love playing games, and there is a universe of people who love
watching games, hundreds of millions of people watch gaming content every single day on YouTube.
But those two worlds are mostly disconnected, fragmented and often independent of each other.
Our vision is to bring those worlds closer together, to connect game developers with
players and YouTube creators in a way that only Google can, creating a richer and more
vibrant gaming community for everyone to enjoy.
Through the power of our data centers, the extraordinary reach and community of YouTube
and our investments in the fundamental technologies that are the foundations of the open internet,
we offer a truly unique opportunity to combine these worlds.
We will be handing that extraordinary power of the data center over to you, the game developers,
where playgrounds for every imagination can be created.
Our first public test of this came in October of last year with project stream, where we
streamed a AAA HD game at up to 1080 P and 60 frames per second over the internet from
Google data centers to a chrome browser.
We were humbled by the overwhelmingly positive response from players who were able to join
us on project stream.
A huge thank you to those of you who participated in project stream and for your vital feedback,
and also to the amazing people at Ubisoft for trusting us with the latest incarnation
of their incredible game franchise, assassin's creed.
Ubisoft has always been at the forefront of advancements in the games industry, and they
have an incredible track record of success and creativity.
And joining us here in the audience today, I'm delighted to welcome the CEO and cofounder
of Ubisoft, Yves Guillemot.
Thank you, Yves.
[Applause] I'd like to thank Yves and his team for partnering
with us and to producer Marc Alexi Cote and the entire Ubisoft Quebec studio for their
masterpiece creation, assassin's creed odyssey.
Thank you for bringing your game to our platform and congratulations for being the first game
played by the public on Stadia.
As many of you experienced with assassin's creed odyssey, we now have the ability to
take a sophisticated graphically intense AAA game and stream it to a chrome browser running
on a simple laptop without any sacrifice to the quality or vision of the game developer.
As successful as project stream was, our ambition is, of course, far beyond a single game.
As we developed our strategy for this new platform, we asked developers how we can help
solve some of the most critical challenges you face.
There were three very clear themes that resonated.
You told us you wanted to unleash your creativity without limits, get to the widest possible
scale, and make it easier for people to connect with your games.
We used these three themes to anchor our vision and build our platform architecture, and began
to share it with the leading publishers and developers in the world.
Now, let me show you how we have brought this vision to life.
Imagine you are watching games on YouTube and you discover the latest assassin's creed
odyssey trailer on Ubisoft's official channel on YouTube.
You will notice the play now button.
By simply clicking on that button, the player is brought directly into the game in a browser
in as quick as five seconds.
With no download [Applause] With no download, no patch, no update and
no install.
Stadia offers instant access to play.
Our platform vision for Stadia is to reduce the friction between getting excited about
a game and playing a game.
On Stadia, you just need to click on a YouTube video or link and you can be playing your
game instantly.
Compare that to today, where gamers are all too familiar with things like this.
With Stadia, this waiting game will be a thing of the past.
The power of instant access is magical, and has already transformed the music and movie
industries, and with Stadia it is now available at the highest level of gaming.
But wouldn't it be even more magical if that same game and that same instant experience
could be available across any screen type in your life.
A key benefit of our platform is that a single creative vision and a single code base can
now be enjoy instantly across any screen.
At launch, we'll support being able to play games across desktops, laptops, TV, tablets
and phones.
This new generation of gaming is not a box.
With Stadia, the data center is your platform.
There is no console that limits the developer's creative ideas, and no console that limits
where gamers can play, and we're about to show this to you now.
This is not a concept.
It's not a test.
This is really.
I'd like to bring my friend Khaled to the stage to show you this working.
[Applause] So imagine you've just discovered that game
for the first time.
You're running it on the chrome browser, and here it is on a pixel book running the chrome
OS.
There is basically no hardware acceleration on that laptop whatsoever and the game is
running directly from our data center.
It's then easy and instantaneous to move that same game experience from exactly that moment
on to the phone here on a pixel 3 XL.
[Cheers and Applause] Once again, no loss in quality and we can
go straight on to the desk top PC.
We actually went to buy the least powerful PC we could find here and we could enjoy the
same vision that the developer had, the same high quality 1080P stream at 60 frames per
second and the full game vision, regardless of the hardware that you're using.
And then it's once again seamless to go from running on our PC to running on a tablet.
In this case, once again, running the chrome OS on a pixel slate.
[Cheers and Applause]and then finally, we then move seamlessly to the TV.
And so this TV is accessed using this, which is a chromecast ultra HDMI streamer.
There is no console required to reach this experience.
[Cheers and Applause]thanks, Khaled.
Great presentation.
[Cheers and Applause]welcoming any and all players is fundamental to Stadia, where you
can try with your friends on devices you already own.
And as such, we are also enabling players to use your existing USB controller or mouse
and keyboard when playing Stadia on a laptop or PC.
By eliminating that friction, that barrier to entry, we will make it simple and easy
for players who want to try Stadia for the first time.
But, of course, we will have our own controller that is being uniquely designed to enhance
the experience for the Stadia player.
I'd like to introduce you to the newest member of the Google hardware family, the Stadia
controller.
[Cheers and Applause]this is your gateway to the best of Stadia.
It enables you to access the full Stadia experience, and there are many advantages to the Stadia
controller, and the first is that it will connect, through wifi, directly to the game
that is running in the Google data center.
The Stadia controller identifies which screen or device you want to play on and links it
with your game session running in the cloud, ensuring the highest possible performance
and the best experience for players.
In addition to the standard functions you'd expect to see on a modern game controller,
the Stadia controller features two very important new buttons.
The capture button is for sharing and saving your game experience back out to YouTube.
The gamer can choose to share their experiences starting with a click of this button, to themselves,
to their friends, or to the world.
They are in control.
And the second one is the Google assistant button.
Pressing this button allows players to immediately access the controller's builtin microphone
so they can get help from the assistant for special ingame features integrated by developers.
Our goal with Stadia is to help fuel developer creativity at every level.
And next, we'll take a look at the incredible computing power we have custom build into
our data centers that will further accelerate innovation.
I'd like to introduce my friend and colleague, the head of engineering for Stadia, Majd bakar.
Majd Bakar: Thanks so much, Phil.
Let's look at the realtime computing power we have put into our data centers that will
change how we view what a game platform can be.
In order to deliver an amazing experience for your games, we needed to bring powerful
computing closer to users.
We've built Stadia's architecture on top of the Google data center network, the same network
that has been delivering search results to your fingertips in milliseconds for more than
20 years.
The network consists of fiber optic links and subsea cables between hundreds of points
of presence and more than 7,500 edge node locations around the globe, all connected
with our network backbone.
Stadia is built on infrastructure that no one else has.
More edge nodes mean the compute resources are closer to players, which results in better
performance.
We took that proven model and infused it with customdesigned, purposebuilt gaming hardware,
creating the most powerful and connected gaming platform.
Each of Stadia's data center is composed of interconnected racks that deliver the highpowered,
graphics, memory and storage needed to run the most demanding games.
Only with Google can you apply the power and flexibility of data centers to game development.
This architecture is the foundation for this new generation of gaming.
We've been testing this technology privately within Google for years, for our initial public
test with project stream in 2018, we delivered up to 1080P, 60 frames per second with stereo
audio.
When Stadia launches, we will have increased performance significantly to support resolutions
up to 4k at 60 frames per second.
[Cheers and Applause]with HDR and surround sound.
And in the future, we'll be able to stream games in up to 8k resolution.
[Applause] We know there are not that many homes or TVs
in the world that have 8k today, but we also know the widespread adoption of 8k is inevitable.
We have built our platform to scale up with the highestperforming networks to deliver
the visual quality demanded by future generation of gamers and game developers.
What's even more exciting is that in addition to the stream you get as a player, there is
a second simultaneous stream at 4k, 60 frames per second that you can choose to share directly
to YouTube from the Stadia data center, meaning your gaming memories will be saved at the
highest possible quality.
Stadia is not constrained by the limitation of traditional console systems.
Instead, we have built a truly flexible, scalable and modern platform that allows us to push
performance beyond what was previously considered possible.
This architecture gives us even more flexibility to scale.
And thanks to fast transfer speeds between the Stadia instances in our data center, our
platform can connect instances together to dynamically expand the capabilities, along
with the need of your games.
As a developer, you're used to being forced to tone down your creative ambition that are
limited by the hardware.
But our vision with Stadia is that the processing resources available will scale up to match
your imagination.
In this new generation, the data center is your platform.
We've partnered with our friends at AMD to build a custom GPU.
I'd like to personally thank Dr.�Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO, who is here with us
today.
Lisa and her team helped us design a chip to bring you more than 10 teraflops of power,
which we've coupled with a custom intel�CPU to make up a single Stadia instance.
And here's how the graphical power of Stadia compares to the top two consoles in the market.
You can see [Applause] Thank you.
You can see that a single Stadia instance is a big step forward.
10.7 teraflops is more powerful than the top two consoles of the previous generation combined.
[Applause] Stadia will be using the Linux operating system and the open graphics API,
Vulkan.
And when it comes to game engines, we're excited to announce that we have partnered with unreal,
who will be fully supporting the Stadia platform.
We are also partnering with unity to bring full support for the two most popular and
familiar game engines to our development community.
And we're empowering developers with an amazing array of familiar middleware that you already
use to power your game development, including the most popular physics engine, Havok.
And here is a list of our partners now.
And of course, this list will continue to grow over time.
With this suite of tools, game development can evolve as quickly as the imagination of
content creators.
To achieve that, we are providing multiple ways to make games for Stadia.
You can develop on our cloud, your cloud, and at your desk.
Our goal is to make Stadia the most flexible development environment ever put together,
and that power is, of course, used to create the best content.
Our first guest is from a company known for creating the most sophisticated and impressive
gaming experiences in the industry that always demand the most of every system they run on.
We had the chance to give our friends at ID early access to our tools and technology.
It's my absolute pleasure to welcome to the stage executive producer from ID, Marty Stratton.
[Applause] Marty Stratton: Hi, everyone.
Thanks so much for having us here, Phil and Majd.
I'm honored to be part of a team at ID that has spent more than 25 years on the bleeding
edge of technical innovation.
When we first met with Google about game streaming, frankly we were skeptical, about how it would
work, and in particular, how it could work with a game like doom.
However, we recognized not just your ability and resources to make game streaming a reality,
but more importantly, the passion to support a game as fast, fluid and uncompromising as
doom.
After all, if you're going to prove to the world that you can stream games from the cloud,
what better proof than doom?
And, if you're going to prove to a developer that you're serious about building a robust
platform, what better team than ID, where we push every platform to its limit.
In fact, back in 2016, doom was the first AAA game released on Vulkan.
And because Stadia is built on that same Vulkan API, it didn't take us more than a few weeks
to get our upcoming sequel, doom eternal, looking and playing great on Stadia.
Built on the fun and sense of power players expect from the series, doom eternal is a
pure and unfiltered action FPS experience.
You play as an unstoppable hero sent to destroy hell's fiercest demons across an expanding
universe of unbelievable locations.
We couldn't be happier to be bringing doom eternal to Stadia and are thrilled to announce
that the game will be capable of running at true 4k resolution with HDR color at an unrelenting
60 frames per second.
[Cheers and Applause]we actually can't wait to show you more of doom eternal very soon,
in fact.
We have the full game running on Stadia live from Google data centers, and you can see
it today at our developer session.
It starts at 12:30 over in west hall.
You won't want to miss it.
Thank you to Google and Stadia team for giving us this opportunity to share a bit about doom
eternal.
Thanks so much.
[Applause] Phil Harrison: Thanks so much, Marty.
It's a privilege to work with ID and your incredible engineers and creators.
For anyone who knows the franchise, you know doom eternal will look and play amazingly
well on our platform.
It was important for us to partner with a developer like ID so that we could prove not
just to ourselves, but to the entire industry, that our platform is capable of supporting
the most demanding titles.
And doom will be running on a single Stadia GPU.
The fundamental benefit of our cloud native infrastructure is that developers will be
able to take advantage of hardware and power in ways never before possible, and that includes
taking advantage of the power of multiple GPUs at once.
We've asked our friends at UL benchmarks, makers of 3D mark, to put Stadia to the test.
In this video you can see some comparison points showing the difference between our
single GPU and multiple GPUs.
What you see here on the left of the line is running on a single 10.7 teraflop GPU.
And on the right of the line, you can see the same content running on Stadia using multiple
GPUs.
In this demo, we're highlighting realtime fluid defamation.
Accurate water simulation is one of the most computed effects of the games and it's a powerful
example of what Stadia is capable of and I'm so excited to see where game developers go
with this kind of performance.
When we designed Stadia, our goal was to solve many of the pain points that we've heard about
from developers, particularly those related to multiplayer.
In traditional platforms, the client and server are connected by the unpredictable internet,
and therefore the multiplayer experience is limited by the client with the slowest or
poorest quality connection.
But with Stadia, that game, client and server both remain on Google's networking backbone,
resulting in predictable low latency, reliable connectivity and data security since no traffic
gets exposed to the public internet.
Developers who use Google's data centers can create a predictable multiplayer experience
that scales to an order of magnitude greater than anything enjoyed by gamers today.
What that means is a synchronized state across a very high volume of players, where innovations
like distributed physics can be built into your games, where battle royale games could
go from hundreds of players today to thousands of players tomorrow.
And, yes, no cheating and no hacking.
Google has always believed that the world is a better place when we are able to connect
without barriers.
And as a new generation game platform, Stadia will, of course, embrace full crossplatform
play.
[Applause] Developers will have the ability to enable
crossplatform multiplayer for all players, and even bring game saves and progression
across as well.
I'd now like to introduce a member of Stadia's R�&�D team who are pushing the envelope,
bringing the best of Google to game developers.
Please welcome to the stage our lead designer for research and development at Stadia, Erin
HoffmanJohn.
[Applause] Erin HoffmanJohn: Thank you, Phil.
One of our team's favorite comments about project stream was a tweet that described
Stadia's technology as the work of wizards, and we are incredibly fortunate to work with
wizards every day bending their magic toward games.
I'd like to take you through a few technologies and features that we've been working on that
are going to enhance the game development process for developers big and small.
The first one is focused on multiplayer.
Stadia not only provides highperforming multiplayer experiences from player to player, but also
allows developers to create new, gorgeous gaming environments.
Our friends at tangent games have been working with us on a technical proof of concept that
you can see here behind me.
They spent a few short weeks creating this beautiful multiplayer world with a persistent
massively destructible environment.
It is a raw demonstration of scale and power using the best of Stadia technology where
every piece of the environment in this multiplayer world is destructible using realtime rigid
body physics.
Using Google's unique infrastructure, developers can create games built to house hundreds of
players with low latency and perfect synchronization.
This demo will be available on the show floor if you want to check it out this week.
As we were building the platform, we collaborated with individual developers, but we also thought
about trends in game development.
When we thought about our most treasured gaming memories, something kept coming back, something
that we had lost.
When modern games start to push the boundaries of current hardware, rendering two or more
scenes simultaneously becomes too resource intensive, and so split screen couch coop
has been fading from gaming.
But when all of your clients are in the cloud, couch multiplayer has new life again through
Stadia in what we're calling stream connect.
In the past, the resources required to execute split screen coop have required developers
to sacrifice more of their creative goals.
With stream connect, we're making it possible to realize split screen multiplayer without
any performance penalty.
Behind me you'll see a technology proof of concept that we built at Google.
It's called the night forest, a coop demo with asymmetric player roles.
Here we have two players, one hunter on the ground and a supporting aerial player, set
up in a standard split screen view.
Each of these screens is powered by a separate Stadia instance.
But what would happen to squadbased games if developers could allow players to call
up the views of their teammates on demand or utilize any polygonal surface as a receiver
for another player's video stream.
Stream connect makes this possible with extremely little effort on the part of the developer,
bringing dynamic, squadbased gaming into easy reach even for very small teams.
We've shown you three views but we can keep going.
We can keep adding streams and shape how they're shown to the player, giving a designer not
one but many cameras into a scene.
Now imagine if you could go beyond seeing into players' worlds.
What if you could interact with them.
Here we have our streams configured into a command center where a fourth player can coordinate
the movements of our drone, scientist and hunter characters.
Now that coordinator is reaching into the world and placing a beacon to call attention
to a particular location, seen instantly by the other players.
Stream connect is just one of the ways Google is working to support developers in creating
more immersive and creative experiences, whether bringing back effortless couchbased coop or
inventing entirely new multiplayer games.
Our next technology demo focuses on the power of the Google cloud and machine learning and
how they can have an impact on accelerating developer creativity.
Every developer feels the burn in preproduction to get to a game's magic sooner.
We think Google's machinelearning technology might have some answers.
Here to talk about it is a developer known for creating some amazing stylish and celebrated
independent games, including dead light, RIME and the invisible hours.
Please welcome chairwoman of Tequila works, Luz Sancho.
[Applause] Luz Sancho: Thank you, Erin.
I am very excited to be here for the unveiling of the Stadia platform.
There are so many different benefits that Stadia delivers to all developers, big and
small, and particularly for a studio like ours.
At Tequila works, we are very proud of the art styles of our games.
It's something we spend a lot of time perfecting.
Our development cycles typically last 24 months, and as you can imagine, a large part of that
time is dedicated to defining the art and style of the game.
We are particularly proud of RIME.
Its visual identity created a lasting impression with our players, but it took us a long time
to get to that final style.
That's why we were so excited to hear from Google about one of the tools they are making
available, an amazing tool that will dramatically influence and ease this process.
With style transfer ML, Google is applying the science of machine learning to art visualization.
Erin HoffmanJohn: Style transfer is a machine learning technology that runs on the video
frame created by the game.
All of this happens in real time on a Stadia instance.
We built this demo to show you what it can do.
We start with a gray box world and take any image we want, in this case Kandinsky's yellow,
red, blue and the model does the rest.
Throw it starry night and you have another style.
Give it scratch art, and you get this.
We're doing our part to empower the artist inside of every developer.
The R�&�D team iterated through hundreds of art styles testing this technology, and
one of our favorites came from an old friend.
What excites us and some of our partners so far is how many playable art styles we can
create just by feeding it more and more images.
It inspires and empowers our artists to get the visions in their heads into interactive
environments in a whole new way, and this is just the beginning.
Luz Sancho: We are using a style transfer made in our studio today and we are blown
away by the impact it's having on our latest creations.
You will see it.
This could really change everything.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
[Applause] Erin HoffmanJohn: Thank you, Luz.
With style transfer, our goal is to help developers find the magic of their games quicker.
You can check out style transfer during the show this week.
We can't wait to hear your feedback.
Creators inspire us to bring the best of Google to games, and creators are at the heart of
Stadia.
It isn't just what they create, but how those moments are experienced by players, moments
that resonate for generations to come.
The last feature we want to introduce today is another special experience made possible
by the cloud.
It's called state share.
And here to talk about it from Q games is Dylan Cuthbert.
[Applause] Dylan Cuthbert: Hey, everyone.
It's great to be here with all of you today.
As a veteran game developer, I love how creators on YouTube have brought our games to life.
But I've always wished those experiences could be more social, and even more fun.
I'm extremely excited by what I've learned from Google about bringing new ways to share
a game's replayable moments.
With a new technology called state share, developers can let a player instantly share
a playable moment from a game.
This could include the world state, the player's position, items they're carrying, anything
the developer wants to pack into a shareable moment.
The game's state can be encoded into a link that tells Stadia where to pick up the game.
This could be sent to one player, or it could be shared with thousands at the same time
on YouTube, through Email, apps, messaging or wherever links can go.
To me, this totally changes how I think about the experiences for players.
I can create moments specifically for this kind of sharing, challenges to beat my incredible
speed runs or chances for other players to also experience those same tough boss battles.
I can build as many shareable moments as I want and let the internet turn my whole game
into an infinitely replayable treasure hunt.
I was so intrigued with the possibilities of state share that I designed a brand new
game around it and it's the biggest title ever for Qgames.
Right now, it's still under wraps, but I can't wait to reveal more about this game later
this year.
Thank you very much.
[Applause] Erin HoffmanJohn: Thanks, Dylan.
State share is one more way that Stadia is working to empower developers with entirely
new tools that embrace a player's desire to discover, share and build a community.
We are extremely excited by the reception it's gotten from our early partners so far.
And with that, I'd like to introduce the head of gaming at YouTube to tell you what Stadia
means for content creators.
Please welcome Ryan Wyatt.
[Applause] Ryan Wyatt: Thanks, Erin.
I'm very excited to be here at the unveiling of Stadia.
As you've heard, Stadia's about delivering the best developer experience so that the
best games can be made, but we're also committed to making sure that we have the best creator
experience so that the entire community gets stronger together.
YouTube is where people come to watch gaming.
More than 200 million gamers come to YouTube every single day to engage with their favorite
games and creators.
And they come because of the community of gaming creators and viewers who have turned
YouTube into the gaming platform that it is today.
We're always looking for ways to strengthen the connection between creators and viewers,
and Stadia is designed to bring them together like never before.
Gaming has always been the backbone of YouTube since the platform first was founded in 2005.
And one thing YouTube gaming creators want is to engage with their fans.
That will always be the most important thing to them.
That's why over 50 billion hours of gaming content was watched on YouTube last year alone.
And to just give you an idea of how much 50 billion hours is, you could walk to Pluto
and back more than a dozen times.
Stadia's focused on empowering both creators and viewers to achieve new heights by breaking
barriers of content capture and creating unique ways to engage with and grow a creator's audience.
Established creators will have new ways to engage and monetize on YouTube with Stadia
features, and with aspiring creators, we're going to break down the barrier of entry in
capturing content by giving you the ability to highlight, live stream and capture directly
from Stadia.
We've already seen the idea of any YouTube link being a direct access point into the
game, and that is a huge opportunity for both big and small creators.
We're empowering creators to forge deeper connections with their audience, and one of
those ways will be to make it easier to actually game with them.
Often when you're watching a stream, you find yourself wishing you could be in there playing
alongside with your favorite creators.
On traditional platforms, you would have to fire up your console or your PC and just hope
that you get matched up with them.
However, with Stadia, and a new feature called crowd play, you'll be able to simply click
a button displayed right in the stream and jump in and play with YouTube creators that
you're watching.
Take a look at the video behind me.
It's a live stream of NBA 2K.
The person watching can simply click the link and be placed into the lobby for the next
game.
If you think about it, crowd play can act like an allnew lobby system for games, and
with Stadia, YouTube becomes the ultimate discovery and engagement tool for content
and, of course, YouTube creators will have full management capabilities over this feature.
To all the game developers, publishers and the millions of YouTube content creators out
there, soon we'll have more information to share on these engagement tools and how we'll
be working with you to connect with and build your communities.
I'd now like to introduce a friend of mine to the stage.
He has over 11 million subscribers to his channel the game theorists and he and his
wife Stephanie have often been advocates for the YouTube community.
So we were delighted to talk to them.
Please welcome to the stage, my friend, matpat.
[Applause] MatPat: Thanks, Ryan.
It's an incredibility honor to be here today.
Now, for us creators, our audience is our lifeblood, whether we're breaking down the
reallife science of the fictional world of fallout, or diving into the theories behind
bendy and the ink machine or simply screaming game play on our live stream channel GT live,
we're always looking for new ways to connect and engage with our audience, which is why,
when I first met with the Stadia team, I was floored by the impact that it can have for
not just gamers, but also creators.
Stadia not only empowers me to easily create and share my work, but it also unlocks completely
new ways for me to build a stronger bond with my audience.
Crowd play, for example, gives our audiences the chance to instantly jump into a game with
us and then the creator can feature them live on the stream in real time.
Another feature that I'm incredibly excited about is state share.
Here, the possibilities are literally endless.
Live streaming horror games, for instance, has been one of the most popular formats for
live streaming on YouTube since its inception.
But now with state share, you can actually take this to the next level by letting the
people who were just watching you replicate the exact same scenario you just played through
in game, like that impossible moment when you're out of med kits and you suddenly have
a zombie breathing down your neck.
Imagine the endless variations that creators can layer on top of all their favorite games
by specifically designing challenges oriented to their unique audience.
For creators, you suddenly become a game maker yourself, creating challenges through state
share allows us to continue creating content for all your favorite games long after the
game itself has been completed.
And, on the other hand, the audience now can reconnect with all their favorite games in
completely new, exciting and fresh ways.
But, of course, also as a gamer, I'm looking forward to tremendously all the new possibilities
of game play that Stadia opens up and that can be built only for Stadia.
I mean, think about this.
A thousandplayer battle royale matches, incredible your graphical possibilities, and, of course,
all of this is available across any screen.
Literally, I could just pick up my phone and start playing exactly where I left off on
my laptop even while sitting in an audience of a keynote like this one.
I hope you're not playing right now.
A lot of exciting stuff happening on stage.
But you could do it.
Stadia just truly unlocks new opportunities to create, share and engage across YouTube.
I am personally thrilled about what Stadia brings to the table, how it United States
technology and entertainment and completely new ways that we have never seen before and
in ways that can only be possible through the combined power of Google and YouTube.
So I thank the Stadia team for having me in here today.
I can't wait to see what else you guys have in store and I'll see the rest of you on the
floors of GDC.
[Applause] Phil Harrison: Thanks, Ryan and mat pat.
Connecting players and creators to their favorite games is core to our vision.
We've shown you how YouTube and Stadia offer the ability for gamers to connect with content
creators and game developers in extraordinary ways.
There is another Stadia integration with YouTube that we're really excited about, designers
love creating challenge, but as games reach more and more people, the design problem of
creating a perfect challenge gets more and more difficult.
When a player is stuck on a level or puzzle and desperately wants that next beat in the
story or the breathtaking views in the next level, what do they do?
Today, they have to leave the game, fire up YouTube, find the right video, scrub to the
right part of that video and watch how it's done.
With Stadia, that help will be just a button press away.
Take this example from our friends at crystal dynamics.
When the player gets stuck on a level, like me, instead of grabbing a laptop or a phone,
they just need to push the button on the Stadia controller to get help from the Google assistant.
No distractions.
No need to take your eyes off the game, and no secondary devices needed.
[Applause] it's another deep way in which we're connecting players with the games they
love.
Stadia is about removing barriers for players to get to their favorite content and moments.
With Stadia, any link can be an access point to the game.
So for a developer, the entire internet can become your store, whether it's from our Stadia
store, text messages, reddit, Facebook, twitter, discord, Google search results, YouTube videos,
G mail or from the Google play store, gamers are going to be able to find, discover and
enjoy your games anywhere they are, and easily share them with their friends.
It's a truly revolutionary way to discover your games.
Stadia will be home to a variety of games, and we're happy to say that we will offer
comprehensive parental controls for all content.
We've already shipped development hardware to more than 100 studios around the world
and more than 1,000 creators and engineers are hard at work bringing their games to our
platform.
In addition to partnering with developers big and small, I'm also thrilled to announce
that today, we are forming Stadia games and entertainment, which will build experiences
designed exclusively for Stadia as Google's own first party game studio.
[Applause] and we've recently been joined by one of the industry's most successful executive
producers to lead that organization.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the new head of Stadia games and entertainment, jade
Raymond.
[Cheers and Applause] Jade Raymond: Thank you, Phil.
If you, everyone.
I am so honored to be here at the unveiling of Stadia.
In my career, I've been lucky enough to work with some of the most talented and passionate
developers in the world.
Passion is at the root of all great games, and it's what motivated me to join Google.
What I love about games is that we continue to redefine what a game is.
When I was 12, I saw the holodeck on an episode of star trek, and even though the games I
played at the time were side scrolling, pixelbased kind of games like mega man, it was obvious
to me that one day games would take place in fully immersive worlds.
Today, you have seen so incredible tech, and hopefully, like me, you now believe that we
are on the brink of a huge revolution in gaming, one that will unlock a whole new level of
creativity for developers.
There are no limits to the human imagination.
And now that the data center is your platform, the processing power is limitless as well.
I'm excited to announce that as the head of Stadia games and entertainment, I will not
only be bringing first party game studios to reimagine the new generation of games.
Our team will also be working with external developers to make all of the bleeding edge
Google technology you have seen here today available to partner studios, big and small.
We are committed [Applause] To going down the bold path, learning what
is working best and sharing key tools and tech so that we can take games to the next
level together.
The way I see it, there has never been a more exciting time to be a developer, and Stadia
will be a driving force, defining the future of games and entertainment.
Thank you.
[Applause] Phil Harrison: Thank you, jade, and a very
warm welcome to Google.
With Stadia, our goal is to combine the world of people who play games and the world of
people who watch games into one global community powered by the best of Google.
We've shared a lot today.
With Stadia, you'll be able to build your games backed by Google technology like Google
assistant, ML and sensorflow.
You will be able to deliver your games to more gamers across the globe through chrome,
chromecast and pixel, and you'll be able to connect with the biggest community of gamers
and YouTube content creators.
So how do you get involved?
For developers who want to create content for Stadia, we welcome you to go to Stadia.dev
where you can apply to get access to development tools.
If you want to partner with our team at Google to help bring your game to market, we have
Stadia partners, a program designed to give you the resources your team needs to make
something great.
And for players who want to be the first to learn more, you can go to Stadia.com and follow
us on these social channels.
So when will players be able to experience Stadia?
I'm thrilled to announce that Stadia is launching this year, 2019.
[Cheers and Applause]we will launch first in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and most of
Europe.
It's been my privilege today to introduce Stadia on behalf of the thousands of Googlers
who have worked tirelessly to bring this vision to life.
This is the first step in the journey, and we'll be connecting with you again in the
summer to share more details on the games you'll get to play at launch and beyond.
Thank you very much for gathering around with all of us today.
With Stadia, we can all dream bigger, and together, build a playground for every imagination.
Thank you.
[Cheers and Applause]