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Google Games

Google Eyeballing Games 69

Posted by Soulskill from the world-of-searchcraft dept.
An anonymous reader tips news of a Google job listing indicating the company's interest in building a gaming division. "The broad job posting requires someone to lead the new venture from designing the user experience, working on partnerships with developers and working with the gaming community." According to the posting, they are "looking for a strategic, technical and game-loving Product Manager to drive Google's gaming strategy. You will design strategies for game distribution and discovery, player identity, game mechanics, and more."
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Google Eyeballing Games More

Google Eyeballing Games

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  • Do you think they'll have an off line mode if they make a solo play game? They'll make some form of DRM just to make thinks searchable and show ads.

    • Re:What are the odds? (Score:5, Informative)

      by pinkushun ( 1467193 ) * on Thursday June 23, 2011 @06:11AM (#36539672) Journal

      Offline web applications is part of the HTML5 specification: http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/offline.html [w3.org]

      • thankyou

      • Further, the browser in Chrome OS has an API for local file access, meaning that you could have save games on local disk. I suspect that the idea is to get games on Chrome OS (some remote-only, some local but with saving to the cloud as well as local disk.)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          Further, the browser in Chrome OS has an API for local file access, meaning that you could have save games on local disk.

          How much space is a web application allowed to request for both the game resources (CACHE MANIFEST) and the saved state of the campaign (localStorage)?

          • How much space is a web application allowed to request for both the game resources (CACHE MANIFEST) and the saved state of the campaign (localStorage)?

            Last I checked, nobody knew. But since the functionality is being used for Google Docs, I would assume that the answer is "as much storage as the device has".

  • Pick me! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mitsoid ( 837831 ) on Thursday June 23, 2011 @05:58AM (#36539616)
    Gaming company + Google = sign me up... Though I'd never get in :-(

    • That's the kind of attitude that ensures you won't :p it's the kind of attitude that led to me not doing my final year project in fact, then it turned out if I'd just asked they would have switched me to the project I wanted since the guy who got the project I wanted switched to something else. I was rather pissed off.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mlush ( 620447 )
      You'll be fine just remember in the interview when Google when they ask "Are you Evil?" don't answer yes

      • I replied "Chaotic Evil mostly."

        I guess that's why they never called me back.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sorak ( 246725 )

        You'll be fine just remember in the interview when Google when they ask "Are you Evil?" don't answer yes

        When they ask "are you evil", show them a booklet with 50,000 pages saying "yes, he's evil", 100,000 pages saying "no he's not", and 2 million pages saying "Is he Evil? Click here to answer..."

    • Google today are Microsoft tomorrow. If you have some good ideas, get to work on them yourself. It's more challenging but your work won't be subsumed by a corporate vision which in Google's case comes down to making a lot of money for shareholders by selling targeted ad space. And remember that the pursuit of happiness involves a journey, not a destination.

      There's street cred but no great progress being a grunt in the cool gang. You're passionate: let it carry you.

      • Paul Graham, I believe, has advocated not hiring engineers/programmers but rather buying up start up companies that demonstrate interesting ideas and technical abilities. Google, Apple, and Microsoft all buy companies (or hire open source developers) for talent rather than products. Hell, a friend of mine got rejected in a google interview, started a hobby project, and was bought out by google 3 months later.

      • And remember that the pursuit of happiness involves a journey, not a destination.

        How about if your destination is a boat full of drugs, hookers and cash?

  • Well, there we go. I really wonder when they will enter the movie business, inevitable as it is.

  • Street view (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MichaelSmith ( 789609 ) on Thursday June 23, 2011 @06:04AM (#36539634) Homepage Journal

    Google street view would make a great MMO, particularly with augumented reality through android phones.

    • Only on Slashdot can I read a comment like that and think, "yeah, that's a pretty cool idea!" While simultaneously thinking, "holy crap we all need to get outside and interact with real people more often."

      • ..these are the two reasons most of us read Slashdot ...

        Cool stuff

        Reminders we should not be like most of the people on Slashdot ...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        While simultaneously thinking, "holy crap we all need to get outside and interact with real people more often."

        One advantage of video games over real world interaction is that video games alone don't have real-world physical violence with irreversible effects.

      • The whole point of a VRG or an ARG is that you get outside and interact with real people. Only on slashdot would someone be so rabid to make first relevant post that they miss the point entirely.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jamu ( 852752 )
      I hope they take the Google Earth flight sim and give that some love. Release it as a standalone product.

    • Google street view would make a great MMO, particularly with augumented reality through android phones.

      Yes, games that run at 2 fps are my favourite.

    • Grand Theft Street View could be fun. Although with craigslist no longer having the adult section how are we going to find hookers for health?

  • GGT (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pinkushun ( 1467193 ) * on Thursday June 23, 2011 @06:14AM (#36539680) Journal

    My Predictions:
    - a Google Gaming Toolkit for making games on their platform.
    - host your games on their infrastructure just like they do with Google App Engine.
    - social networking built into games linked via Buzz, Wave, and your Google account.
    - Profit!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by c0lo ( 1497653 )

      My Predictions: - a Google Gaming Toolkit for making games on their platform. - host your games on their infrastructure just like they do with Google App Engine. - social networking built into games linked via Buzz, Wave, and your Google account. - Profit!

      I bet you're right. TFS

      "looking for a strategic, technical and game-loving Product Manager to drive Google's gaming strategy. You will design strategies for game distribution and discovery, player identity, game mechanics, and more."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rumith ( 983060 )
      I believe you are mostly correct, except that Google has not one, but two platforms - Android and Chrome/HTML5. Also, Buzz and Wave have gone the way of dodo, so whatever social product will be used (if any), it's likely something that isn't yet available.
    • I'd be curious to see what kinds of games we're talking about. Social games or triple A?
  • i think it's time Google finally updates their page describing whom they are. i think they should be perceived an engineering firm rather than just a search engine appliance (or more specifically "the thing that organizes all information"). most likely, people are in agreement implicitly about that, but it feels that they need to explicitly come out and say that are focused on engineering problems. that little bit of perception probably will go a longer way for them.
  • Maybe this [google.com] is still receiving enough visits to make them think that would be profitable.

  • I already thought "Google" was a game.

  • I suspect this is another attempt at tying social networking into their data mining, rather than anything elaborate like a Steam-alike or diving into AAA title development. Rather, something that can easily plug into iGoogle (does anyone actually use that?) and very likely designed to play nicely with typical Android phone form factors, with an eye toward collaborative gaming. They tried the stick approach with Buzz, and got swatted for it. This time they'd be offering to trade pretty Farmville sprites for

  • Not Surprised (Score:3)

    by tbannist ( 230135 ) on Thursday June 23, 2011 @07:37AM (#36540156)

    I don't find this at all surprising. With the growing convergence between consoles, portable gamin, and cell phones it seems inevitable that Google will have to get in on the action. I'm not sure where they're going to go from this, but I could easily see a Google console eventually. It could be used to drive GoogleTV adoption and could be a hub for gaming on Android devices, thus working to promote Android as well . They are also likely to be looking at first party games for Android as killer apps to drive market share.

    It's a pretty obvious next step, really. I don't know if it will succeed, games and game consoles are a very different business, and unless they are looking at producing an open gaming platform (Chrome Console?) it'll be very different from almost everything Google has done up until now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Krneki ( 1192201 )
      For now, whatever they did was the most open platform you could put your hands on. They might not be an open source company, but they are quite open.
    • Wow, and I thought that building a laptop that could only run a web browser was dumb. A game console that only runs Chrome. Now that's just absurd. ;-)
  • hmmmmmmmmm, not sure how i feel about this.

  • OK (Score:3)

    by Forty Two Tenfold ( 1134125 ) on Thursday June 23, 2011 @08:04AM (#36540380)
    There you go. [google.com]

  • making a resume...

  • Perfect for them ... and he's probably looking for a job right about now.

  • http://groups.google.com/group/virgle/msg/1c59bf9a35454b51 [google.com]

    Basically, one could write educational games for Android (like on understanding socioeconics), and in three years, when people replace their current Android phones, the used phones could go to materially poor nations for kids there to learn from all the free educational software.

  • Google is an advertising company. I think you meant: Google gaming eyeballs

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