Netflix Gaming Chief Aims to Reduce Barriers and Sidestep Costly Gaming Consoles

Netflix Gaming boss Alain Tascan has outlined his vision for the future of gaming at Netflix, and his aim is to help reduce “friction” similar to how the Wii helped opened things up for a wider audience.

Speaking to The Game Business, Tascan said when he worked at EA, one of his ambitions was around “lowering friction and eliminating it.” He was a big fan of the Wii because it was a lower-priced console that appealed to a wide audience, and Tascan wants to try to achieve something similar at Netflix.

Tascan said some of the frictions that exists in gaming today is the need to have enough controllers in a home and having an “expensive” piece of dedicated gaming hardware. Waiting for game downloads is another friction, Tascan said. Netflix Gaming aims to offer solutions in these areas by eliminating the need for dedicated gaming consoles and controllers, in part because Netflix aims to offer games over the cloud. In fact, cloud-streaming games is already available on Netflix.com under the Games tab.

Tascan hopes Netflix can create more “party games” that can help people have fun quickly–without the need for a console or a special controller.

“For party games, I believe we can give instant fun, using the phone controller as a very innovative controller,” he said. “On every phone you have a gyroscope, you have a microphone, you have a speaker, you have a touchscreen… if you give that to creative people, what do they do? Whether you’re alone, or with two people, or 20 people, why not? Can we do something really engaging?”

Tascan went on to say that what he’s excited about at Netflix is helping games reach more people.

“The same way mobile opened up gaming to go beyond 150–200 million players to now 3.2–3.3 billion players, I believe we can reach to a larger number of players,” he said. “Does it really need to be these super complicated RPG-style games? There is a place for them, for sure. But this for me this is what’s interesting. Netflix is giving us this opportunity to have access to these people. What do we give them, and in what way, so they can enjoy and engage with [games] over and over?”

Finally, Tascan addressed a question regarding Netflix’s commitment to gaming. After all, the company already shuttered its AAA game studio to instead focus on mobile and party games. Google, many will remember, was heavily invested in gaming with its Stadia product, only to quickly shutter it.

Tascan said to find success in a market like gaming, “it takes time, stubbornness, and investment to get great results.” Not every company is willing to put in the time and effort, but Tascan said Netflix is different.

“If you look at our two Co-CEOs, Ted [Sarandos] has been in the company 25 years, Greg [Peters] over 15 years. And look at where Netflix was 10 years ago in terms of their core business. They know the path of being stubborn, hard-working, innovating, having a vision and going after it,” Tascan said. “The road is not always straight to the top. But I believe them when they told me that gaming was important, because if [Netflix] wants to entertain the world then there’s no-way around it, we need to be in games. When I look at these two leaders in particular, but also the rest of management, I believe in their full commitment.”