For more than ten years, Netflix’s success trend has only known one direction: upwards. Since this year, however, the streaming pioneer has been jerky: the number of subscriptions has fallen, as has the share price, and 150 employees worldwide were laid off in May. Measures to counteract this are being planned, including the integration of advertising.
The announcement of another innovation made headlines last July: Netflix announced that it also wanted to offer games in the future. From November the time had come and the fact that this information will now surprise many readers and subscribers may have contributed to the fact that the user numbers recently published by the American news channel CNBC based on data from the analytics company Apptopia are rather sobering : The Netflix games have recorded 23.3 million downloads since November, with an average of 1.7 million users playing games every day, i.e. less than one percent of the current 221 million subscribers worldwide.
Disappointing offer to start with
The main reason for the relatively low use will be that the majority of subscribers simply do not know anything about the offer. Most people don’t use Netflix, which will please creatives, on their smartphones. But that’s exactly where the company wants to guide its customers, in addition to the big screens. “We compete more with ‘Fortnite’ than with HBO – and lose,” Netflix founder Reed Hastings wrote to shareholders in 2019, referring to screen time. This is probably one of the reasons why the company has so far limited its range of games to mobile games and these are only displayed if you use the Netflix app on mobile devices.
Netflix
A game based on the hit series: “Stranger Things 3: The Game”
The few subscribers who already dealt with the new offer in November may have been disappointed. Because at the start there were only five titles in the catalogue: Two retro games offshoots of the platform’s own successful series “Stranger Things”, which were several years old, and three licensed casual games, which are also not new, i.e. easily accessible games for in between, in which things holed and cards had to be dealt. Enthusiasm for a new medium could not be aroused, and Netflix did not live up to its good reputation for original content. “We’re deliberately taking it easy,” explained Leanne Loombe of Netflix’s gaming team at the Tribeca Film Festival in June, “because we’re still experimenting and figuring out what appeals to our members.”
A journey into the afterlife and the search for drinking water
However, it is no longer quite so quiet in the mobile game bar. The number of titles offered has grown to 24 and some of them are quite convincing. Above all, the adventure “Before Your Eyes”, which Netflix licensed for exclusive mobile use after it was released for the PC in spring 2021. The game principle is ideal for this: Players control with an index finger and by blinking their eyes. It tells the story of a boy who, on his way to the afterlife, has to complete a quick journey through time through his life – nothing less than the salvation of his soul depends on the right outcome. This will leave some players watery-eyed, which comes in handy when the game just needs a few blinks to reveal all of its secrets.
The developers of the “Frosty Pop” studio contributed five games, four of them (“Teeter Up”, “Krispee Street”, “Bowling Ballers” and “Shooting Hoops”) casual games in a clean design with simple, smartly implemented concepts. The fifth game, “This is a True Story”, was created in cooperation with the non-profit organization Charity:Water and is intended to draw attention to the fact that almost 800 million people on earth do not have direct access to clean drinking water. In the short adventure, the arduous path of a woman who is affected by the grievance is reenacted, her off-screen comments are based on real interviews. The short game experience is quite memorable, you don’t want to miss it afterwards.
Frosty Pop/Netflix
Screenshot from the This is a True Story game, which aims to raise awareness of water scarcity.
Also recommended is the strategy game “Into the Breach”, in which people who control machines have to defend their civilization against extraterrestrials on a kind of chess board. The game has a lot of potential for frustration, which of course makes the success all the more satisfying in the end. “Into the Breach” has been around since 2018, and the licensing may have drawn some fans’ attention to Netflix’s gaming offering.
The long-term goal: Games related to the series worlds
According to Netflix CFO Greg Peters, there are still a few things to try in the gaming area, but the long-term goal is to create titles that relate to the company’s own worlds, characters and stories. Currently in development are an adventure game based on the Spanish series “Heist of Money”, in which players have to prove their criminal skills, as well as a chess simulation linked to the mini-series “The Queen’s Gambit”, which won eleven Emmy Awards in 2021. On the other hand, there is already plenty of exchange between games and series on the platform, the video game adaptation of “The Witcher” is one of the most successful titles in the company’s history. Adaptations of “Assassin’s Creed” and “Cyberpunk 2077” are currently in the works.
For Netflix, the mediocre user numbers are obviously no reason to refrain from its gaming ambitions. This spring, the company bought the Finnish developer studio NextGame for 72 million dollars, last September the well-known indie developer Night School Studio was acquired. Netflix plans to double its games catalog to 50 titles by the end of the year.