

Google promises a unified social and mobile game platform - acro
http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/06/google-promises-a-unified-social-and-mobile-game-platform/

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ch0wn
There are some references in the Google+ app for Android to an unpublished app
named "com.google.android.apps.oneup" that seems to be related to gaming.

I'm really interested to see where Google is heading with their gaming
strategy.

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kwamenum86
My first and only thought is "Google will fuck this up"

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michaelochurch
Google has an incredible amount of talent under its roof and has established a
brilliant apparatus for drawing more talent in.

The problem is that Google has the wrong people making major decisions, and if
it doesn't find a way to fix that, its next 50 years will be pure mediocrity.
Talent doesn't matter if the direction is nukular buttfail.

One thing I like about Google is the ideology of being non-editorial. This
served it very well in web search, where being non-editorial is necessary
(because of the size of the problem) and stately, but it's an unmitigated
disaster in game selection. Farmville was good for Zynga but bad for Facebook;
it clogged the channels with spam, contributed to social network fatigue, and
marred Facebook's reputation.

To get games right, you _have_ to be editorial. The _only_ way a general-
purpose social network is going to beat Facebook in the next 5 years is if it
generates an _excellent_ games brand. In-house game development wouldn't work
at Google, so the solution is to form relationships with top indie developers,
_not_ to promote (and give preferential treatment, such as early inclusion)
whatever mainstream publishers like Zynga throw at them.

If any Google execs are reading this, that'll be $17,500 for the advice. A
bargain.

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vibrunazo
I believe they are being editorial with games already, via the Staff Picks on
the Android Market. They certainly are openly editorial with Google Music. So
now that they're unifying all that, I guess we can only expect more of it.

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michaelochurch
Even if Google becomes "editorial" with games, there's no reason to believe
that the people in editorial roles will be at all competent. I would bet
against it. Google, without a doubt, has hundreds of people inside the company
who would be awesome in such a role... but they'll never be picked.

Google's founders are brilliant, and the line engineers are great, but between
those two sets there are layers upon layers of stewing, necrotic incompetence,
a result of this being that some really horrible ideas (such as a performance
review system that has everyone-- not just managers-- dropping everything for
2 weeks every fall to write reviews) see implementation while good ones die in
obscurity.

