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KIRK LAKES: Hi.
Nice to be speaking with you all.
Really happy to be here, although it does remind me
how nice it is to be able to go to conventions in person,
meet with developers, see new games,
talk to folks I haven't seen in a while, learn new things.
But it's just not the world we're living in right now.
So I do appreciate speaking with you
all like this, properly socially distanced from my home here
in California.
But excited to talk to you today about our Stadia Makers
program, some of the support that we
do for developers as part of the program, some
of the requirements in how we look at content that might
potentially be a good fit.
But before I get into that, I'd like
to quickly introduce myself.
So my name's Kirk Lakes.
I've been in the industry well over 10 years now,
working in roles across marketing, business
development, publisher and developer relations,
predominantly with platform holders.
And now in my current role at Google,
I work on Stadia Games' business development,
so helping publishers and developers
bring their games to Stadia, and specifically work
with our Stadia Makers team overseeing that game portfolio
and helping bring in new partners.
One of the reasons I originally got into this industry
to begin with is I really wanted to help the game creators find
as large an audience as possible for their games.
It's one of the reasons I was so excited to join the Stadia
team.
I mean, our goals are so closely aligned.
At Stadia, we're really focused on lowering
the barriers for discoverability when it comes to games,
really helping developers find new audiences,
but also helping people instantly find
games they want to try out and play them without having
to have any barriers or consoles or hardware to purchase up
front.
The other thing that's really exciting about our Stadia team
is across the board, we have so many folks
that are really excited about independent developers,
independent games, and publishers
who are focused on indie games.
But when we originally launched Stadia
in November of last year, we had way
more studios apply than we could actually work with at the time.
So we've spent the beginning of this year really improving
some of our internal processes, tools,
and building some programs we're really excited about that
are going to enable us to work with more of you developers
out there and bring more of your awesome games to Stadia.
So one such program, which I'm actually
here to talk to you about today, is Stadia Makers,
which we announced March of this year.
And even more recently, we announced the first seven
titles that are coming as part of the Stadia Makers program.
At its core, what Stadia Makers is is a program focused
on developers who are building their games on Unity
that want to bring them to Stadia.
We've spent a lot of time really crafting a program that
would help developers throughout different aspects of the game
development all the way through publishing
their games on Stadia, working closely with our partner
Unity, who is also helping when it comes to technical support.
Without self-publishing currently available on Stadia,
this is really a way for us to not only help developers,
but also make it an easier process for bringing
your games to Stadia.
So let's talk a little bit about what that support actually
is for developers.
First and foremost, and one of the most important things
is we provide direct funding.
So whenever you're bringing your game to a new platform,
there's some cost associated with it.
So we're happy to provide some funding to help cover that.
But the funding is not just to de-risk development
in bringing your game to a new platform.
We've been hearing from developers
that the funding has been critical in expanding
their team during important parts of development,
or even bringing some content that was planned
for post-launch and rolling that into the initial commercial
release.
So every time we get feedback like this,
it's super validating and exciting for the team,
because that's the exact reason that we're
happy to do this for developers and make it
part of the program.
Another benefit is we provide development tools.
So depending on the size of your team,
we can actually provide up to five physical development
kits for your team to use.
But one of the nice things about Stadia
and being a cloud platform is you can actually give your team
members access so they can do development and testing
right in the cloud.
This has always been a really neat feature
of having a cloud platform, but man,
has it never been more important given the state of the world
right now.
With development teams being spread apart,
not being able to go into the office, working remotely,
not having access to some of their tools,
we've had a lot of really good feedback about this increasing
productivity for teams and letting
them continue to move along their roadmap without having
to make delays or go to the office to pick up a kit
and bring it home.
And then last thing I'll mention when it comes to support
is our partner Unity with Stadia Makers
has been committed to providing technical support for all
our Makers partners.
And they've really been fantastic,
from just answering questions in their forums,
to providing support when it comes
to meeting your milestone dates or making
sure you meet your launch date, providing reviews of content.
They've really been fantastic, and we're looking forward
to have them continue to provide technical support
as we bring on more Makers partners.
And one of the other questions we get
asked a lot is, well, how do we know
if our game's a good fit for Stadia Makers?
What are the requirements?
So happy to talk a little bit more about this.
One thing I'm really proud of with our team here at Stadia
is we've tried to be as developer friendly as possible
when it comes to these terms and requirements.
One really good example is there's
no exclusivity required.
So if you're publishing your game on Stadia,
it doesn't have to be exclusive to Stadia,
and you don't even have to launch first on Stadia.
What we will ask is that you launch your game day and date
on Stadia the same time you release on other platforms.
And then one of the other criteria we look at
is making sure your team is in a supported Stadia development
country.
The reason this is important is we
need to make sure that your team will have access to our Google
data centers with a Stadia instance
that they can actually test during development
and have access to test on what is unique in that it's a cloud
platform and you're going to be in a streaming environment.
And then one of the last requirements we have,
as you've heard me repeat over and over,
is our partner is Unity.
So we, of course, will want your game
to be built on Unity's game engine.
And even more specifically, we'd look for your game
to be on Unity 2019.3 or later.
If your game isn't currently on 2019.3, that's completely fine.
Just one of the requirements will
be you'll have to upgrade your engine to a later version.
Depending on which version you're currently at,
that could be a bigger or smaller ask,
depending on how much testing you're
going to need to see how that runs for you.
So we've talked a little bit about the requirements.
We've talked about how we look at supporting developers
and the type of content we're bringing on.
But a really good example of that is we've
recently announced seven titles that
are coming as part of our first round of Stadia Makers games.
I'm really excited to announce this.
You may have seen some of the press and articles recently
talking about this.
But the reason I really love showcasing these games
is it gives such a good indication
of the breadth of content we have within Stadia Makers--
everything from point and click adventure games
to traditional 2D platformers to narrative adventure games,
even typing adventure games.
So one of my favorites, actually--
if you haven't checked out Nanotale, the game is amazing.
But this is a really good indication
of the type of content we're looking
to continue to bring as part of Stadia Makers.
You don't need to be making the next Battle Royale or card
battler game.
We're really just looking for awesome games
from super creative teams that we
can continue to bring to our gamers on Stadia.
Now that we've actually announced those titles,
we've been working with our development partners
to promote some of these games, as well.
And they've done a fantastic job of not only evangelizing
their own games, but also giving interviews
to the press and outlets about their experience with Stadia
and their experience and benefits of working with Stadia
Makers program specifically.
I think, of course, they can always
tell about their experience better than I can,
so I'll just tell you their quotes specifically.
But one of my favorites is Dima from Fireart, who said--
and hitting the nail on the head, I might add,
"The most appealing fact of Stadia
is it can be enjoyed by anyone with a browser
without the need for a dedicated console."
So this is a great example of what
I was saying earlier, where our goal is really
to lower the barriers for discoverability
when it comes to games so that the minute people discover
your games, they can instantly jump in and start playing,
whether they have a launcher installed on their PC
or are an existing console owner.
And another one of my favorite quotes
comes from Bruno at Fishing Cactus
who said because of the funding they
received as part of Makers, they were actually
able to make some of the features they were planning
for post-launch a part of their initial commercial release,
which again, that's music to our ears.
Nothing makes us happier than helping developers
realize their initial vision.
And if Makers can help them do that,
that's exactly what we're here for.
So we've talked a little bit about the support
you get as part of the Makers program, what
the requirements are for content,
and how we look at the type of content that
might be a good fit for Makers, and even
some of the feedback from our existing Makers partners.
So if it sounds like Stadia Makers could
be a good fit for a game you're working on
and you'd like to get it in front of the team,
applying is actually super simple.
All you need to do is go to stadia.dev/apply.
Make sure you check the box that says you're
interested in Stadia Makers.
We'll ask some information about your game, the experience
of your team, the release date you're targeting, what type
of game you're making--
just some general questions so we
can get a better feel of the project you're working on.
Once you've applied, myself and our Makers team
will actually review those applications,
look to make sure the requirements I mentioned
earlier are all checked those boxes, and if it's a good fit,
our team will get in touch and talk about next steps
for moving forward with Stadia Makers.
If you apply and the game's not a good fit for Makers,
we'll send you a note and let you know.
But that's no problem at all.
There's obviously opportunities on Stadia
outside of Makers as well.
So even though your game might not be a good fit for Makers,
myself or some of our other content team
may review your application, love what you're working on,
and get in touch to talk about other opportunities on Stadia.
So really looking forward to seeing more of you
apply through stadia.dev and seeing more of the projects
you're working on.
All right folks, so that's the high-level overview
of Stadia Makers.
With our recent announcement of the first games that
are coming, I know I've been getting reached out to a lot
by publishers and developers asking
for more information on the program,
asking how they can get involved,
how we think about content.
So hopefully this answers some of those questions for you.
We're all looking forward to seeing more of you apply,
seeing more of your games, seeing what you're all
working on out there, and just bringing
more of your awesome games to Stadia.
So thank you so much.
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