Liquid. Smooth. Intense. Period dot com

Those are the first three words that best describe the feeling I had playing Doom Eternal on Friday's PAXwest, Day 1 at the Seattle Convention Center. The show brings many gamers into the Seattle traffic and they often end up taking over Gameworks and most near by eateries. As Google Stadia ran testers through 25 people at a time, they allowed us 15 minutes to feel the streaming-your-game experience and see how far we could advance in the demo mode. In the game, they offered Easy & Medium difficulty, and naturally I wanted it to be as hard as possible to feel any lag, hiccups, and overall performance issues. To my surprise, the demo was being played on a Google Chromebook, attached to an external monitor + controller. (seriously)

It was so casual, and Google didn't make a big deal about it, it was just, two controllers and a screen. While I was hoping to play mouse + keyboard, using this foreign controller ended up being built really nice and aligned with a Sony-PS4 like controller experience. Smooth, high-quality built and very responsive.

As I settle into starting up the demo, I start thinking about the chrombook ($200 ish) that is driving the game I'm about to play on, then realize my cell phone is 3x-4x as powerful. With this in the back of my mind, I was skeptical and almost laughing because this has almost been a dream, or concept that I wondered, how is this not already happening today? Since 2008, Virtual Desktops have continued to decrease cost and increase return on investment for many corporations, as almost everyone today uses some flavor of virtualization in a corporate infrastructure.

It's like Gmail, for example. Phone, PC, Tablet, etc, same experience. Login, then live.

Several "beta" or startups have attempted to pull off what Google has done, first even they had a previous beta that wasn't as refined. While I feel 2020 will start to test our ISP bandwidth limits, the performance was so good, I didn't care much. The thought of never needing a 32GB file for a game download just to see if I "like" something was pretty epic. (COMCAST for example only likes you to consuming 1000 gb / month, INSERT PRICE GOUGING HERE and all kinds of fine print, depending on where you live)

In a world where bandwidth is king, and you either have it, or you don't, this product will not be for everyone. Starting at the largest areas, (where high-speed broadband is fast, and competitive priced) this almost forces this product 1st in "Metro" gamer profiles, IMO, who already have amazing internet and want more consistency and less on-site files to manage. Like the AOL days, I doubt someone with dogey will like playing on dogey internet, while the parents will be waiting on buffering from Netflix and email. The Internet doesn't have "call waiting" as a default, yet. While everyone still might have old CD's on the shelf, the future of gaming has turned into the updates and the online servers you have access too. All the legacy names, Madden Football, FIFA SOCCER even legendary CounterStrike; legacy versions will always need patches, servers, new teams, players, etc, which today are accustomed to large file downloads, often times making you wait for GIGS on GIGS before you can play, do or try anything, anyways. SO.

Without sounding like a google intern, I have to say this game test was 9.5/10. (only a longer testing could have increased the score for Stadia) This play test of DOOM was unlike any gaming experience I've seen on a FPS, let alone a device that costs under $200 to game on. This is a game changer for events, competitions that are seeking to drive a consistent, fair playing field in this difficult to manage field of eSports. Also, the new DOOM felt like Halo 5, but faster. This was the only way I could describe what it felt like. Halo is fast on an xbox and PC but this game and experience showcased why any HALOer will be a natural assassin in this game. Would love to see some professional get the sticks & play on this while the new HALO is being minted, or whatever it is right now.

Cheating, Hacking, eSports faces more growing pains as bro-cultures are torn down and new tribes form in the video game development space. While nothing will change instantly over night, this holiday season will be a major turning point as Sony and Microsoft will have a serious new contender to deal that isn't Nintendo. Stadia.

It's always fun to try new games and see what new stuff is released. The problem is with cell phones, Netflix and XBOX live, you have so much content you've already paid for and hardly use all of. While it this extra glut of content might not be what you want, this was a major first step to release the content choke-hold that CBS/ABC/NBC had on delivering content to large demographic audiences. While "extra" content isn't bad (someone has to be on TV at 4am....) this problem is creating an expectation that quantity = value in today's "BINGE" module. With Disney and soon others fighting for your bandwidth, a family with children who need games like a new shoes; every 5-6 weeks, parents are and will always be searching for a lower cost to achieve happiness for their wolf pack. As more distributors and indie games are given enterprise scale tools, 4-5 man development teams can compete with the big names, so long as they partner with vendors, marketers and distributors who set proper expectations and grow as you go. This expedites the exposure to help spread the word, increase feedback, increasing velocity for developers to find answers to problems they didn't know they had in the game, or the experience.

BRAVO!

Great job Google. Look forward to where your product is headed next, surrounding security, cheating and consistency in the fastest growing space in competitive entertainment.