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This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: etc.

Waiting for Stadia extrajudicial Shi En, while actively saving themselves.

On September 29, 2022, Google announced that it would shut down cloud gaming platform Stadia in January of the following year, which means that Stadia has only been operating for more than three years since its official launch in November 2019. The outage of Stadia will undoubtedly affect many players, at the same time, some manufacturers of Stadia exclusive games will lose their products forever if they can't find new ways. Q-Games, the developer of Pixel garbage: PixelJunk Raiders, is one of them.

Pixel trash: Raider is a space exploration-themed Roguelike game that takes full advantage of Stadia's state-sharing function: players can embed their game status into videos or pictures and share it with others, allowing friends to play the game at any time.

Dylan Cuthbert, founder and chief executive of Q-Games, revealed that Google showed Stadia to third-party developers before the game was developed, and he immediately became interested in features that allow players to share the experience. "We built a game around these basic ideas, which is an interesting design challenge."

"Pixel garbage: Raider" has a distinct artistic style, and the game scene is set on another planet. Cuthbert wants the team to add more games to the game during the development process of "Pixel garbage: Raider." this has also led to a lengthened development cycle. But about six months before the launch, he began to realise that Stadia might be in trouble. "We wanted to take some time to develop further, but Stadia told us that you should get the game on the market as soon as possible, or you'll never get a chance."

"Pixel trash: Raider" was officially launched in March 2021, and players don't have a high opinion of it. At the time, Google had just closed its self-research studio, led by Jade Raymond, creating first-party games for Stadia. "I think it's a bad omen, and bad luck is coming." Cuthbert said.

Q-Games hopes to get the game out of Stadia's shipwreck so that people can play it somewhere else. Interestingly, this is not the first time Q-Games has tried to save his game. In 2017, they launched The Tomorrow Children, a PS4 adventure game with a unique pixel art style, but the free game was discontinued by Sony just six months later because of poor revenue and unable to afford server costs.

"although we have a strong user and fan base, we don't want to squeeze more money out of them." Cuthbert recalled, "it was very difficult for us to increase the basic income of the game, so Sony shut it down."

Son of tomorrow uses unique pixel raytracking technology, and Cuthbert, Q-Games and many players were saddened by the sudden outage of the son of tomorrow. " We stopped running "the son of tomorrow" in 2017, but fans continue to post about it, talking about the game. The game has gone offline and no one can play it, but almost every day people talk about it on social media. "

Players' enthusiasm for the son of tomorrow prompted Cuthbert to try to revive the game and start negotiations with Sony's licensing department. "I told Sony that if I gave me back the IP, I would redo the game so that you wouldn't have to bear any operating costs. I will let it appear in front of the players again, and even improve the performance of the game for PS5."

But before Sony nodded, Cuthbert had to find the licensees, dubbing actors and music directors of the Sons of tomorrow's various development tools to get their permission to redistribute the game. "it took me about a year to get the license. some people are hard to find because some companies that have worked for the game may have gone bankrupt." Cuthbert said.

In any case, Q-Games finally found all the components needed to revive the son of tomorrow, which was released again in the second half of 2022 as the Nirvana version. Cuthbert found that players still love the game as much as they did in 2017. "We were encouraged by the support from the players, and everyone was crazy with delight."

Q-Games is a game developer based in Japan, which has been established for more than 20 years. From left to right, CEO Cuthbert, chief cultural officer Ryuji Nishikawa and creative director Kazuhiko Kaisbert said he hoped that "Pixel trash: Raider" would also be reborn like the "son of tomorrow". However, Pixel garbage: Raider faces more challenges, not only with exclusive licensing, but also with Stadia's own features. How to transplant such a game? Cuthbert says he believes the team will be able to solve these technical problems. "the state sharing system is replicable, and players obviously can't enter the game directly through video or similar means, and by late development, it's actually not that important."

But Cuthbert admits that Q-Games will have to engage in difficult negotiations with Google and that there may be some friction between the two sides. Although they own the IP of Pixel garbage: the Raider, it is difficult to redistribute the game on other platforms due to the terms of the contract.

"if we can raise enough money, we will remake the game and then resell it. We also managed to add an additional clause to the contract to allow it to be released on other platforms, but still have to pay a huge royalty to Google, which is not economically feasible at all."

Cuthbert hopes to find a distribution partner to help cover the R & D and marketing costs of remaking and releasing Pixel garbage: Raider. But before that, he needs someone to help him renegotiate with Google and revise some of the terms of the contract. If Q-Games has to pay Google huge royalties, it will be hard for him to find a publisher who is willing to sign the game.

"inside Stadia, someone seems to be trying to give us a hand. He has just sent me a message that he is trying to deal with this and ask us to be patient. But I don't know how much longer we will have to wait."

Google's next step is to license Stadia-related technologies to partner companies. maybe there is another option for these games in the future? Although Pixel garbage: Raider is about to disappear, Cuthbert is still proud of the game. In his view, if Stadia can realize its full potential, it could have solved the long-term preservation problems faced by the old games. " You can visit the video website on this platform to watch videos of old games from the 1980s, and your parents can also play games on it without the hassle of using the browser. The reason why I am passionate about Stadia is precisely because it has the potential to greatly reduce the threshold for getting started in the game. "

In Cuthbert's vision, Google could build an ecosystem around Stadia, like a simulator, preserving all the games and technologies of the past in the cloud. In this way, you can easily play games with a long history with the click of a button. "I think if we want to seriously preserve the old games born in the 1970s and 1980s, or even earlier, this is the system we need, rather than relying on buying cheap retro consoles."

At this stage, however, Cuthbert needs to find a way to keep Pixel garbage: the Raider alive.

"I just have to wait and see what happens next. I hope Google will come and tell us, 'well, we'll give it to you, and then you can do whatever you want.'"

Google Stadia will shut down the server on January 18.

This article is compiled from: http://www.theverge.com/ 23522519 / pixeljunk-raiders-google-stadia-q-games

Original title: "The quest to save a Stadia exclusive"

Original author: ASH PARRISH

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