About

Netgamer is a web-based game subscription service. The app would allow users to play on PC, Mac, Android TV, Apple TV, iOS and Android. I worked on this personal project with my friend, Thomas who is the creator and founder of the Netgamer concept.

Challenge

The challenge of Netgamer was to reimagine the future of gaming. In a world where edge devices are more powerful than ever and digital games make up 83% of all game sales, the need for physical games and consoles has increasingly become a thing of the past.

Our concept was to enable users to stream games to their TV, mobile phone, computer, or VR headset. No expensive consoles needed: just your own device and decent internet connection.

Solution

Given the small landscape for existing video game streaming solutions, I started with user research.

Essentially the idea of the app was "Netflix for gamers". As such, I started by looking at Netflix's UI and model. Netflix was a great example of UI/UX done well, because it has a very streamlined flow of content delivery, a good library of content, and has really dialed into the user needs (searching, streaming, skipping pesky intros, and suggestions for new content).

Essentially this exercise would be taking a proven business model, and tailoring it more towards a specific audience. After some initial user-research, and surveying friends who were into gaming, I compiled the typical user's desires and pain points into a list.

• Physical games and consoles are expensive and take up lots of space.
• Most users were concerned with lag and gameplay when polled about video game streaming
• Users want to be able to play on the go from a portable console or phone/tablet
• Users want the ability to play online with friends and voice chat
• Users did not want to pay full price for games that they would only play for a short time

Results

Armed with the above information, we set out to create a solution that would allow users to game from mobile, tablet, desktop, or TV with little or no additional hardware.

Our biggest technical challenge was lag: we knew this challenge would be essential to overcoming user's main issue with video game streaming: Lag and playability.

To combat lag, we experimented with two different architectures. One was running emulators on the user's edge device. This approach allowed for no lag, however we were restricted to older consoles and games that did not have high-end graphics requirements.

While this was a great solution for retro games, we knew that we would face legal and technical challenges emulating every console.

The next approach was to stream video from a real console. This approach was great because we were not dependent on the user's end hardware: only their bandwidth. Using webRTC, we determined that we would be able to create a streaming service that streams controls in one direction, and streamed video in the other direction simultaneously. With this approach, we were able to stream any console to almost any device with very limited lag.

Conclusion

Overall this was a fun design and technical exercise. Since working on Netgamer, we have seen some more streaming services pop up including Playstation Remoteplay, Google Stadia, and Netflix Games.
Playstation Remoteplay is remarkably similar to our webRTC approach and I think validates that we were on the right track in terms of technical approach. As a passionate gamer, I am excited to see how the space evolves and what comes next.