Culture 4 short months after saying 'We'll have to adapt and change', Netflix's AI games VP adapts and changes into a person who isn't working there anymore - Bald homosexual comes up with funny headline and unfunny article which both hates AI but also supports it for moderating COD.

Article: PC Gaymer Archive: Ghost

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Netflix's stabs at trying to do a prestige videogame haven't really worked out much for it, all told. Despite really revving up back in 2021, and starting its own gaming studio in 2022, it's also, uh, shut that gaming studio down, with nary a trio of As to its name despite promises and golden words.

Despite falling short, the Vice President of Netflix Games, Mike Verdu, was able to cling on, and was given a new role as VP for GenAI for Games. He then immediately got into a pair of AI-generated boots and took to LinkedIn to wax prophetic about his new position, which he occupied for a grand total of four months before vanishing into the night, GameFile reports. Netflix confirmed Verdu's departure to the site.

I'd like to take a second to just go over some of Verdu's glowing words which, again, I must stress, were written only four months ago:

"I don't think I've been this excited about an opportunity in this industry since the '90s, when we saw a new game launch every few months that redefined what was possible. It was an incredible time to be making games as talented creators showed all of us what the future looked like. Guess what? We're back to those days of seemingly unlimited potential and the rapid pace of innovation, which resulted in mind-blowing surprises for players every few months."

The choice of words, "every few months", is a little unfortunate. Given it has quite literally been a few months and now he's out the door—still, Verdu really seemed knee-deep in the sauce in those halcyon days of November, 2024. "Many view this technology with fear, but I am a game-maker at heart and I see its potential to unlock all of us, to create mind-blowing new experiences for players, to lift us to new heights. Yes, we'll have to adapt and change, but when have we failed to meet that challenge as an industry?"

When, indeed. Listen—I'm being very glib, here, so I do want to outright state that AI isn't exactly the devil. Deep learning programs have plenty of reasonable, boring uses in game development—there's also upscaling tech, which we're having an increasingly mixed relationship with, but on the whole do have the genuine potential to do some cool stuff.

On the development side of things, WoW's a good example—it's been using deep learning AI not to generate art assets or do writing, but to handle busywork, like fitting armour to different models. Meanwhile over in Call of Duty, the tech appears to've made genuine strides in moderating online games and reducing voice chat toxicity. It ain't all bad.

But jeez, am I tired about hearing about the brave new AI future that's totally around the corner this time, you guys. Maybe I'll eat my hat in the year 2050 when we're all plugged into the mainframe, but for now, it really does seem like the use cases of AI in game development are… well, kinda boring. The speculative, neo-NPC nonsense hasn't really spun up into anything. Even when a studio is using AI to cut corners and pay creatives less, it's pretty unpopular. I am distinctly unshocked that Verdu's brave new world is yet to come to fruition.

 

[Vyse Inglebard]

OK, I have to give them credit: that is a pretty damn funny headline.

 

[Schwarzwald]

Netflix is not and never will be a serious company, regardless of how much money they make. They're a bunch of clueless clowns who have absolutely no idea what they want to be, but simultaneously have enough money after hitting the early streaming lottery to try and be everything. They will throw piles of cash at absolutely any project in the name of striking it big, regardless of how detached it is from the company's profile, just kind of shrugging at the 99% of the time the product ends up being garbage or literally amounts to nothing. The Hallmark Channel is a more respectable and serious organization.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

Netflix is not and never will be a serious company, regardless of how much money they make. They're a bunch of clueless clowns who have absolutely no idea what they want to be, but simultaneously have enough money after hitting the early streaming lottery to try and be everything. They will throw piles of cash at absolutely any project in the name of striking it big, regardless of how detached it is from the company's profile, just kind of shrugging at the 99% of the time the product ends up being garbage or literally amounts to nothing. The Hallmark Channel is a more respectable and serious organization.

The Hallmark Channel actually understands what it is trying to do and has a coherent thought process.

Your point is perfectly put. Netflix is a company run by people who are midwits. They worship market research but do not actually understand human beings. It's fucking insane how hard they can fumble the bags they have.

 

[Grub]

Whatever happened to companies just doing one thing well? Why does every company have to try and do everything? Especially when they can't even do their main thing well.

 

[Google.com]

Whatever happened to companies just doing one thing well? Why does every company have to try and do everything? Especially when they can't even do their main thing well.

Line go up or share holders sue for not making line infinitely go up. Eventually you hit a point where it's not possible to make line infinitely go up.

 

[Baroque]

I never understood the “Netflix games” venture—do that many people watch Netflix on their phones? I can’t imagine that the tv or cablebox hardware is good enough for decent gaming, and I would guess most people access Netflix through those channels.

 

[Vyse Inglebard]

Line go up or share holders sue for not making line infinitely go up. Eventually you hit a point where it's not possible to make line infinitely go up.

^this. Publicly traded companies rely on investors for some amount of operating costs, and the highest ranking investors can even legally control some part of your company as if they were employed there.

But there’s never any guarantee that an investor knows what is good for your company. They just gave you a lot of money and expect you to pay it back at some point (by increasing shareholder value). And its created this culture of people who race to maximize everything at the expense of the structural integrity of the company and its employees. It’s like the end of Back to the Future 3, right, where they need to get this old 1800’s locomotive up to 88mph. Feeding it that much fuel, getting the heat up that high, it builds up extreme pressure in the boiler and the train will eventually explode. Except for a lot of these business types, exploding the boiler is the point. Exploding the boiler is a successful operation. Some companies need investor money to survive. But… not all do. Many of them still go public anyway, because the race to explode the boiler matters more than just being comfortable. We’re still in the era of people starting companies just to sell them.

Netflix didn’t want to just coast. Movie disc rentals by mail became streaming movies. That turned into streaming TV. That turned into Netflix wanting to make their own original content so they wouldn’t have to pay to license anyone else’s movies. That turned into Netflix wanting to offer games. And lest we forget, the founder of Netflix specifically has a vendetta against theatrical movies and continues to deliberately erode that market. There is no “coasting” for Netflix. There is only more and faster. Netflix put out 17 original films in 2016. In 2024, Netflix put out 543 Netflix Original movies and TV shows. The aim is not to maintain a good platform, the aim is to dominate and make all the money there is to make in multiple industries. The line must always goes up until the boiler explodes.

 

[Grub]

I never understood the “Netflix games” venture—do that many people watch Netflix on their phones? I can’t imagine that the tv or cablebox hardware is good enough for decent gaming, and I would guess most people access Netflix through those channels.

I've seen a few mobile games with the Netflix logo and I've never been too sure what that was about. And when I say a few I mean a shitload

 

[6 Years Ago]

I never understood the “Netflix games” venture

I don't understand it either but I'll say that Netflix makes a very decent basic solitaire game for Android (the best thing is the no ads whatsoever)

They have a bunch of simple little ad-free puzzle games for mobile and they're fine for what they are.

 

[Calandrino]

I've seen a few mobile games with the Netflix logo and I've never been too sure what that was about. And when I say a few I mean a shitload
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Slayaway Camp is pretty cool. Shredder's Revenge and World of Goo are on there. It's not a bad service. There are also at least 1,000 dating sims based on reality TV shows where you pick the sexiest hunk to hook up with. Can't miss.

 

[quaawaa]

I've seen a few mobile games with the Netflix logo and I've never been too sure what that was about. And when I say a few I mean a shitload
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It's a copy of Apple Arcade where you pay a subscription for a bunch of mobile games without ads or in-app purchases.

 

[Harvey Danger]

I never understood the “Netflix games” venture—do that many people watch Netflix on their phones? I can’t imagine that the tv or cablebox hardware is good enough for decent gaming, and I would guess most people access Netflix through those channels.

The thinking is probably something like, "We have the biggest streaming platform in the world, the biggest installed base for our app on smart devices, and customers trained to consume entirely virtualized entertainment. Selling games is a natural extension."

If they were already game makers, like Valve on Steam, it would make sense; but they aren't even good movie or TV show makers. All the exceptional talent of Netflix is contained in their engineering department, which has invented new tech and algorithms to handle the amount of bandwidth their service uses. They probably should have stuck to being a platform publisher instead of dev studio, but again this is the company that thought they could do remakes of classic IPs.

 

[Google.com]

The thinking is probably something like, "We have the biggest streaming platform in the world, the biggest installed base for our app on smart devices, and customers trained to consume entirely virtualized entertainment. Selling games is a natural extension."

If they were already game makers, like Valve on Steam, it would make sense; but they aren't even good movie or TV show makers. All the exceptional talent of Netflix is contained in their engineering department, which has invented new tech and algorithms to handle the amount of bandwidth their service uses. They probably should have stuck to being a platform publisher instead of dev studio, but again this is the company that thought they could do remakes of classic IPs.

It's even more bizarre when you remember they experimented with interactive movies on their platform and that flopped.

 

[whatever I feel like]

As the king of streaming it must have seemed natural for them to try to shit out a stream of samey, dated MMOs from no name studios. Afterall, it works for NCSoft.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

Whatever happened to companies just doing one thing well? Why does every company have to try and do everything? Especially when they can't even do their main thing well.

If you grasp too much, you grasp loosely, as we say in Spanish (but in actual Spanish). People today want to be masters of all trades and now companies do to.

All Netflix has (had) to do is to have a full catalogue for us to watch. Basically, online Blockbuster. If actual Blockbuster starts to just do that alone and nothing else, they could put them out of business perhaps.

 

[NoReturn]

I've seen a few mobile games with the Netflix logo and I've never been too sure what that was about. And when I say a few I mean a shitload
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iirc I remember reading that some of those games were developed specifically as Netflix ports, not just "Existing Android build with licensing added" so I wonder how much money that cost up front, too.

 

[Grub]

iirc I remember reading that some of those games were developed specifically as Netflix ports, not just "Existing Android build with licensing added" so I wonder how much money that cost up front, too.

I'm not sure. I have noticed android games that have been nodded to remove the Netflix stuff though so whatever it is i'm sure it doesn't make the games better.

Oddly enough crunchyroll has some too.

 

[George Lucas]

Whatever happened to companies just doing one thing well? Why does every company have to try and do everything? Especially when they can't even do their main thing well.

They don't really have a choice. All of their earnings have to be put into future growth of the company or go back to the shareholders. If they were to do a dividend, they are now labeled as a 'value' stock and they have to work in a totally different investment model environment. Their base product isn't stable enough to support a value company. Value companies are companies that have little risk of failing, think of companies with huge contracts like IBM or a company that literally feeds us like Coca-Cola. Netflix is neither of those things.

They are stuck in a growth stage but lack the capability to grow, so they have to throw stuff out there to see what sticks. The writing's been on the wall for them for a long time. I think eventually they will spin off a lot of assets, downsize, and start paying dividends, but it all depends on their cash flow.