It’s game time for streaming services: a growing number of streamers are betting on casual games as a way to keep viewers hooked when they’ve run out of things to watch.
Toronto-based Zone-ify added free casual games to its ad-supported streaming service in June. Last month, close to 70 casual games arrived on Happykids and Fawesome, two ad-supported streaming services run by streaming startup Future Today. And later this year, Netflix is expected to expand its own gaming efforts with what company executives have called party games — casual titles that could turn movie night into game night.
It’s not the first time that companies have tried to blur the lines between gaming and leanback entertainment. But while prior efforts were largely focused on turning streaming devices into would-be game consoles, this new push focuses much more on casual gaming. Think Connect 4, not Counterstrike.
Casual games have been a huge hit on mobile, where breakout hits like Candy Crush and Wordle, the uber-popular word game the New York Times acquired in 2022, have turned hundreds of millions of people who would never describe themselves as gamers into habitual players. Can the same happen in the living room? And what does it take for streaming services to have their Worlde moment and launch a title that gets tens of millions of people to play every day?
For this week’s edition of Lowpass, I chatted with Zone-ify’s chief content officer John Orlando and Volley CEO Max Child to find out. I also spent a little too much time playing casual games on my TV …
From Angry Birds to Bandersnatch
When I first heard about streamers adding casual games, I thought: here we go again.
Over the years, there have been many attempts to turn streaming into more than just passive entertainment. Roku, for instance, struck a partnership in 2011 to bring Angry Birds to its platform. At the time, Roku even released a limited-edition Angry Birds-themed streaming device.
Amazon released its first Fire TV device with an optional game controller in 2014. And when Nvidia entered the streaming device market with the Nvidia Shield in 2015, it initially didn’t even include a remote control in the box, with the company betting that the device would appeal to gamers first and foremost.
None of those efforts succeeded, for obvious reasons: hardcore gamers want powerful hardware and AAA titles, something that streaming devices simply couldn’t offer. And people who buy a Roku do so primarily to watch TV, not to play mobile games in their living room.
Netflix’s first attempt to expand beyond leanback viewing with interactive titles like Black Mirror: Bandersnatch failed, as well, in part because the titles lacked the stickiness and replayability of video games. “As a novelty, it’s incredibly fun to do those interactive things,” Orlando tells me. “But it’s not something that you want to do all the time.”
“Gaming is different,” Orlando says. “You’re going to keep playing for hours, and you’ll want to come back.”
Chances are you’ve never heard of Orlando’s Zone-ify service, which looks a bit like Tubi did 10 years ago: a few high-profile titles and lots of older catalog content you’ll likely find elsewhere, as well.
At this point, the company’s game library matches that vibe, with a bunch of knock-off versions of popular games like Connect 4 and Candy Crush, all of which can be played with a remote control. And yet, I quickly found myself sucked in, solving level after level in a game called Crazy Lot, which looks a lot like Rush Hour.
To add games to streaming, Zone-ify partnered with ES3, a company that has been building interactive advertising experiences for major media companies. However, this was the first time that a service used ES3’s tech for gaming inside a free streaming app. “I was shocked that there wasn’t another ad-supported video service that was doing it,” Orlando says.
Phones become dedicated second screens
Zone-ify didn’t remain the only ad-supported service with casual games for very long. In late July, Future Today announced that it was adding puzzles, word games, and things like pool and air hockey to its Happykids and Fawesome apps on Roku devices. And some time later this year, Netflix is expected to launch a first crop of party games.
“We want to reimagine what social engaging experiences can unfold in the living room,” said Jeet Shroff, Netflix’s vice president of game technology, at a Netflix Game Developers Conference event earlier this year.
Netflix’s party games are an extension of the company’s massive push into gaming, which also includes dozens of mobile games and cloud gaming to bring AAA titles to the TV. Netflix did scale back some of its more ambitious indie gaming efforts and closed down an in-house game studio last year. However, the company is still heavily invested in gaming as a whole, with its gaming head Alain Tascan telling reporters at the GDC event that Netflix was on its way to become the Netflix of gaming.
As part of those efforts, Netflix has built its own mobile game controller app. In the context of party games, that controller is poised to become a dedicated second screen, complete with prompts and clues that could make things like multiplayer quizzes more fun. “You have information that perhaps is only available to you,” Shroff said. “There’s all this amazing social gameplay that can unfold.”
Incorporating phones into TV-based game play works surprisingly well, according to Child, whose company Volley has been building voice-centric multiplayer games for smart TVs. “We were worried about the friction of having people go get their phones,” Child says. But in a world where people cling to their mobile devices all day, that worry turned out to be unfounded. “We found that people are happy to use their phone,” he says.
Volley makes use of phones to extend voice input to multiple players (few people own a TV with built-in far field microphones, and sharing a single voice remote can be awkward during a fast-paced game). For some games, they also offer dedicated controls: the company’s Jeopardy adaptation turns your smart phone into a buzzer, making the game feel a lot more like the real thing. “It really replicates that actual experience of being on the game show,” Child says.
Volley’s experience with games like Jeopardy seems to validate some of Netflix’s ideas. “The live multiplayer family game night experience is really compelling,” Child says. “You have kids playing with their parents, playing with their grandparents.” And once they start, they keep playing. “Our average session is well over an hour,” he says.
However, Child also cautions that bringing games to the TV can’t be a one-and-done kind of affair. Even for casual games, players want regular updates — something that may require streamers to treat games much like the rest of their content. “If a streaming service had only one show you wanted to watch, once you finished that show, you wouldn’t come back,” he says.
This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a column on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week.
