Opera will pay 5000$ to someone for playing games for a week

[Enter Plasma]

Summary

 

Opera has recently posted a rather unique job opportunity on their website’s career page:

 

Quote

The Best Summer Job - Only for True Gamers

 

They are offering a one-time cash payment of 5000$ to a single person, for them to play videogames on their new platform - GX.games - and provide feedback.
Cringe name aside, that’s pretty good!

 

Luckily, you can spare yourself the humiliation of trying to build a Gaming CV.
You simply need to:

 

Quote

- Prepare a short video of yourself playing any game on GX.games, explaining everything you like about it

- Upload the video to Twitter or TikTok with the hashtag #bestsummerjobever. Remember to tag @operagxofficial and change your privacy settings to public.

 

The focus here is their “GX.games” platform, which hosts a variety of browser-based games made by small and emerging indie developers.

The challenge ends on July 7th, and only one person will be selected for this program.
The selected person will then be tasked to play on GX.games for a week, share feedback, and will be paid 5000$ to do so.

 

 

My thoughts

 

Remember Newgrounds? Is Opera trying to make New-Newgrounds?
Would anybody be willing to take bets on whether this will end up making more money than Epic Games Store?

 

 

Sources

 

Opera job openings
https://jobs.opera.com/p/fdeef94eff19-the-best-summer-job-only-for-true-gamers

[Kisai]

7 hours ago, Enter Plasma said:

 

My thoughts

 

Remember Newgrounds? Is Opera trying to make New-Newgrounds?
Would anybody be willing to take bets on whether this will end up making more money than Epic Games Store?

 

Yes. Opera bought Yoyo games (Gamemaker), you know the game engine mostly known for Undertale and Shovel Knight.

 

You can make stuff in it, it's a lot lighter weight than Unity, but if we're talking about what the true successor to Flash was, that would be nothing. Gamemaker is useful on the "cheap to make" 2D game side of things, and Unity is useful on the "cheap to make" 3D game side, but ultimately the licenses for Gamemaker and Unity have been unfriendly to indies, because they've made the products payware, and then freeware, and then payware again-but-only-if-you-need-X-platform, etc.

 

Ultimately the "indie game" market is either dominated by Unity or RPG Maker (in Japan.)  Nobody makes things in gamemaker with the intent to commercialize it. Just a lot of demos after demos after demos. Only 5 games on this list, have iOS versions. 8 have Android versions,  24 have PS4 versions. 29 have Mac versions. It doesn't take a genius to realize why different games aren't on all the platforms. (input mechanics.) The only game that is on all the consoles, but not the mobiles is Undertale (6 platforms.) The next is 5  platforms (VA-11 HALL-A, and Risk of Rain.)

 

The "HTML5" platform is really dead for games, for reasons that have more to do with Google hijacking the web than anything else. RPGMaker MV/MZ run on node.js (jw.js) which is little more than Chromium stripped of all UI bits. So I don't know how Opera can try and offer anything here.

 

Personally I use Opera, but only because I need the VPN for streaming so that google isn't popping up the local news and weather when I didn't ask for it.

 

 

 

[GhostRoadieBL]

This sounds a lot like they already have a contract ready for someone specific but have to send the "apply by hashtag" out to get a hashtag primed before they start using it for marketing.

 

Unfortunately things like this have been done in the past and no "anyone" people ever get chosen, it's entirely to prevent unfair hiring suits from pointing at the company when they announce the pre-selected contractor.

 

Might sound pessimistic but this is first hand information from hiring for previous workplaces, especially when it's a higher than average contract. Companies don't gamble money on one off videos of everyday people without credentials.

[Taf the Ghost]

3 hours ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

This sounds a lot like they already have a contract ready for someone specific but have to send the "apply by hashtag" out to get a hashtag primed before they start using it for marketing.

 

Unfortunately things like this have been done in the past and no "anyone" people ever get chosen, it's entirely to prevent unfair hiring suits from pointing at the company when they announce the pre-selected contractor.

 

Might sound pessimistic but this is first hand information from hiring for previous workplaces, especially when it's a higher than average contract. Companies don't gamble money on one off videos of everyday people without credentials.

It's baiting Social Media engagement with a low-potential prize. They might actually pay out, but odds are they've already got someone setup and they're just looking to create buzz.

[Doobeedoo]

I mean hey that's a good pay if you get selected heh.

[Dabombinable]

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

Yes. Opera bought Yoyo games (Gamemaker), you know the game engine mostly known for Undertale and Shovel Knight.

 

You can make stuff in it, it's a lot lighter weight than Unity, but if we're talking about what the true successor to Flash was, that would be nothing. Gamemaker is useful on the "cheap to make" 2D game side of things, and Unity is useful on the "cheap to make" 3D game side, but ultimately the licenses for Gamemaker and Unity have been unfriendly to indies, because they've made the products payware, and then freeware, and then payware again-but-only-if-you-need-X-platform, etc.

 

Ultimately the "indie game" market is either dominated by Unity or RPG Maker (in Japan.)  Nobody makes things in gamemaker with the intent to commercialize it. Just a lot of demos after demos after demos. Only 5 games on this list, have iOS versions. 8 have Android versions,  24 have PS4 versions. 29 have Mac versions. It doesn't take a genius to realize why different games aren't on all the platforms. (input mechanics.) The only game that is on all the consoles, but not the mobiles is Undertale (6 platforms.) The next is 5  platforms (VA-11 HALL-A, and Risk of Rain.)

 

The "HTML5" platform is really dead for games, for reasons that have more to do with Google hijacking the web than anything else. RPGMaker MV/MZ run on node.js (jw.js) which is little more than Chromium stripped of all UI bits. So I don't know how Opera can try and offer anything here.

 

Personally I use Opera, but only because I need the VPN for streaming so that google isn't popping up the local news and weather when I didn't ask for it.

 

 

 

Wait...they now own the same game engine I used at school to make games (as a step up from Scratch). Kind of shocked:

Also, even back in 2010 (when I used it last), you could make Isometric 3D games in it - there was even a demo.

[grg994]

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

Yes. Opera bought Yoyo games (Gamemaker), you know the game engine mostly known for Undertale and Shovel Knight.

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

The "HTML5" platform is really dead for games, for reasons that have more to do with Google hijacking the web than anything else. RPGMaker MV/MZ run on node.js (jw.js) which is little more than Chromium stripped of all UI bits. So I don't know how Opera can try and offer anything here.

 

But why Opera limits the GX.games platform to Gamemaker-based games? This just makes no sense. People are about to be able to compile from a wide range of the game engines to WebAssambly/WebGL.

I'm sure that people would embrace a web-based game platform if it would host any WebAssambly/WebGL games from indie developers with a reasonable pulishing model, but with such a proprietary development toolchain GX.games just seems like a dead end for me.

 

16 hours ago, Enter Plasma said:

Remember Newgrounds? Is Opera trying to make New-Newgrounds?

(Forgive this if it is not your taste, but) a New-Newgrounds is not happening without the Newgrounds-like NSFW section :P.

[Sauron]

So opera is hoping to pay only 5k for a social media ad campaign. If you're considering this remember that unless you win (virtually impossible) you're working for free.