OUYA (2013-2015)

“The Little Box Inside This Box Has Big Dreams.”

“There would be no OUYA without you.”
OUYAwesome art by @puttinginpocket.

On May 22nd, 2019, the announcement was made that the OUYA’s online services would be shut down in just a month’s time thereafter.^[1] For a platform relying entirely on digital downloads to populate [and authenticate] its library of games, this spelled the death knell for a piece of hardware which had already spent the past four years in a state of dormancy and disrepair. In the minds of many, the only “surprise” element to this short-notice shutdown was the fact that it hadn’t already happened sooner. The cessation of service for OUYA serves as the predictable punchline to what had become an inside gag within the games industry — the expected ending of a stage play tragedy. In a word: “Inevitable.”

But the OUYA didn’t debut on the scene as an immediately doomed endeavor. Far from it; its beginnings are that of one of the most successful Kickstarter projects of all time, and its expected impact on the games business was to be immense. An attached tagline dared consumers to dream: “What if you could press a button, and reset the entire video game industry?” But of course, that dream would quickly be dashed, along with any other hopes for it as a sustainable fourth competitor in the ongoing console wars. Instead, the questions we’re left to ask ourselves are where it all went wrong, and if anything could’ve been done to avoid this unfortunate fate?

In this article, we’ll be seeking to answer these questions and more, as we provide a history of the life and times of the ill-fated console known as the OUYA. In tracking its development from a bragworthy beginning to a whimpering end, we aim to pinpoint the fatal flaws made along the way. But we’re not just here to fixate on the negatives: Where it’s due, credit will be given to the ideas that made the OUYA such a promising prospect in the first place, and to the handful of success stories it helped hatch. For as easy as it may be to mock the ultimately failed business venture, you can’t say it wasn’t without its merits, or that its original intentions were entirely ignoble. With all that well in mind: It’s time to bring the OUYA to ya’.

Special thanks to a fellow Cassidy (@madlobotanist), who kindly provided the OUYA used to gain the necessary first-hand experience for this article! She also confided in me that she’s “weirdly attached” to the accompanying controller for it, which… hey, y’know what? Don’t put up with anyone telling you any differently. You keep fighting for what you believe in, you hear?

“There Is Nothing Special About This Board! Nothing!”

An original model of OUYA console and controller.

Julie Uhrman sat in front of her computer on the morning of July 10th, 2012. On her screen laid a freshly-written Kickstarter page, now ready to go live. Exactly a week prior, her latest business venture had finally been able to announce its inauguration (initial news of it having already been leaked at least a week earlier than that),^[2] as well as its proposed debut product: An Android-based games console platform, with “a full-fledged development kit” included for aspiring developers.^[2b] Though the past seven days had proven deliberately scant on further details, the time had now come to tell all. At precisely 5:45 AM – while reportedly feeling “scared shitless”^[3] – Julie clicked the button that would launch the OUYA’s Kickstarter campaign; with an initial funding goal of $950K, and a month’s time to make it happen. A mere eight hours later, it had already managed to clear the $1 million dollar hurdle. By the end of the day, backers had managed to further double that sum.^[4] Julie’s fears had quickly turned to elation.

To be clear, Ms. Uhrman was no outsider to the games industry: Over the course of the past decade, she had served a stint as Publishing Manager for Vivendi Universal’s video games operations, as well as VP positions within IGN’s ‘Business Development’ and GameFly’s ‘Digital Distribution’ divisions. Funny thing is (considering the futures of the OUYA), these gigs had proven to be some of the most stable / successful in her career, with her non-games industry track record being comparatively “less than stellar.” Her first startup TerraGo Inc. – a proposed mapping and geospatial analysis service – had collapsed within two years, having failed to repay $1.3 million in initial investments.^[5] A second venture – as director of ‘Business Development and Product Strategy’ for a premium mobile network named Voce – ended in complete disaster shortly following her strategic exit from it; shutting down its cellular services with no notice to customers, and informing company executives of their firings by simply disconnecting their phones.^[6] And finally, her involvement as VP of Business Development for the ‘Jacked SportsTop’ – a product providing “dynamic second-screen experiences” for sports broadcasting – ended alongside the larger company’s acquisition [and subsequent dissolution] by Roundbox Incorporated.^[7] Incredibly, aspects of each of these uniquely disappointing closures would later be echoed in the death rattles of the OUYA.

The other publicly-facing name of note among OUYA’s founding members is Yves Béhar; credited on OUYA’s Kickstarter profile (the only other name appearing besides Julie’s) as “the award-winning designer of Jambox, One Laptop per Child, and many others.” To describe his actual role in these projects and how his expertise applied to the OUYA: He and his team [comprising the company “fuseproject”] would be the ones behind the designs for the UI / UX driving these endeavors, as well as sculpting the form factors and designs for the physical devices themselves. These design decisions would have clear correlations to what specifications and components go into said platforms — as settling on something like the OUYA’s compact cube design would go on to affect what sorts of boards and chips could fit inside the shell. As important an aspect as this proves to be, Béhar’s role within OUYA was still perhaps “overstated” in continued marketing by the company, seeing as his involvement seems to end after his initial design contributions. As the hardware and interface ends of the OUYA continued to iterate past the initial Kickstarter proposal, Yves and fuseproject would seem to play no further role in these developments.

And so, despite brand imagery and soon-to-debut marketing campaigns extolling the virtues of fresh creators and scrappy development teams, OUYA would soon center the entirety of its public-facing operations around its founder and CEO, Julie Uhrman. After all: Electing an individual as the “face” of a company is a marketing practice as old as time itself, intended to help to sell brands as more personable and aspirational. In the case of Julie, her story as a mother looking to incorporate video games and television into continued bonding with her wife and children makes for a simple and effective brand narrative, and lends itself perfectly to the story of a startup games company looking to make a splash in the industry. Also – at the risk of sounding cynical – presenting a woman as the face of your company is a great way to cloak the fact that ‘Team OUYA’ initially seemed to be staffed entirely by men outside of the boss lady! What I’m trying to say here is; Julie was so closely associated with nearly every aspect of the OUYA, it’s gonna be impossible not to mention her name constantly over the course of this article. While not entirely fair to her, it’s also a largely unavoidable reality of covering the company.

In recalling the inspiration for the OUYA, Julie has one point she consistently likes to hammer home: She loves the television. By her estimation, the television “is the most immersive device, and the most immersive thing we can do on it is play games.”^[8] She admits that it’s “not socially acceptable” to talk about how much one might love television, and that she would “never admit how much television my four year old daughter watches to the mothers in the schoolyard.” Over the course of just one fifteen minute keynote speech, I reckon Julie manages to say the word “television” at least one-hundred times; to the point where my eyes glaze over and the word starts to lose all meaning. But despite how wearisome she may manage to make those four syllables sound across all her monologues and press releases, she at least presents one prescient point: The fear that the mobile market would somehow manage to overwrite / “kill” the console market was entirely overblown. In the midst of a gloom and doom period for the home entertainment industry – with seemingly every publisher poised to pivot to mobile – Julie was one of what felt like just a few individuals who understood that consoles would weather the storm.

At the same time, she recognized a major issue with that beloved console market: Budgets were ballooning absolutely out of control, and points of entry for developers outside of the “AAA” space were rapidly declining. By her testimony: “In console gaming today, we have to compete with [games like] ‘GTA 5.’ We don’t have a choice. We have to be on the stage that they’re on. The problem is that if we have a misstep, it’s not on to the next game: It’s on to the next company. It is literally ‘Game Over.’ Every single year, we’re seeing fewer and fewer big titles, we’re seeing people make less big bets — and the data** supports this.”^[8b] The apparent solution to this issue? Create a new dedicated console for smaller-budget / independently-produced games; with a comparatively low price of entry versus “The Big Three,” mandatory free demos made available for every title, and built-in games creation tools to entice enterprising developers. If the major hardware manufacturers weren’t going to accommodate for smaller games and studios, it was up to a smaller manufacturer to do something about it.

The first [of many] problems with Julie’s plan: Venture capitalists had no interest in this latest startup of hers. In attempting to raise seed funding (the earliest round of investments for a startup), OUYA came up largely empty, save for a small handful of angel investors. Blame for this would come to be largely laid on the perceived lack of space for the OUYA in an already-crowded games distribution market, and on investors not having faith in the new microconsole to prove competitive. By Julie’s account, “[VCs] are still scared away from hardware.”^[9] I also have to imagine a history of companies under her purview failing to return on investments was something of a factor as well, but let’s just operate under the commonly-accepted theories for now. So, investors weren’t willing to take the risk on a new video game console endeavor, huh? It was time to initiate OUYA’s plan B: Take the appeal directly to consumers, by means of crowdfunding campaign. And we all know by now how that went for them.

As quickly as the OUYA’s campaign launch proved to be a success, online skepticism just as swiftly reared its head. One of the more infamous of these speculatory postings came in the form of a PCMag article titled “Why Kickstarter’s Ouya Looks Like a Scam”;^[10] which set out to warn folk that crowdfunded tech projects have a potential for / history of falling apart. Honestly, the article is only tangentially about the OUYA to begin with (as far as discussing it specifically), and clearly picked its headline in order to be deliberately inflammatory. At the same time though, more legitimate concerns were being raised by others from the corporate side of the games industry; who speculated that the money being raised on Kickstarter would never be enough to actually make good on console deliveries. In one of the more concerning articles covering the OUYA’s challenges, Kevin Dent of Tiswaz Entertainment (a business consultancy firm catering specifically to the games industry) boldly proclaimed to Polygon that “[the OUYA] is just not going to ship. It just costs too much to develop this. $4 million is nothing. They’ve got to pay fabrication. They’ve got to pay designers. They’ve got to pay manufacturers. They’ve got to market it. It’s a business.”^[11]

Of course, what many failed to account for in making these assertions were the already-secured funds from aforementioned angel investors; including the likes of “Digg founder Jay Adelson, Flixster founder Joe Greenstein, and Jawbone founder Hosain Rahman.”^[12] In fact, OUYA and Uhrman had answers for just about every ill-informed accusation being thrown their way, and were prompt to provide statements to games press where necessary in order to stay in front of the narrative. They would even go so far as to field live Q&A sessions on Reddit and in the comments of a Kotaku article,^[13] to demonstrate their commitment to transparency and public relations moving forward. If anything, Julie would prove to be a little too eager to comment on all things OUYA; occasionally providing frustratingly vague answers in the process, or outright incorrect details that the company’s PR would have to later rectify. For an example of the latter: Julie would at one point state “We’re not going to have online multiplayer until the end of [2013],”^[14] only for another representative to have to quickly correct her by plainly stating “We will definitely be supporting online multiplayer [on launch] — developers just need to build in the functionality.”^[15]

Ultimately, the Kickstarter campaign would succeed beyond wildest expectations; accumulating $8,596,475 from 63,416 backers, with well over 95% of those supporters pledging at a level which would guarantee them a delivery of the console. Furthermore, 842 of those backers had ponied up the pledge money to receive early ‘Developer Special’ consoles — a first-run batch of OUYAs that would come pre-rooted so that eager game creators could “just get going” (as per the Kickstarter’s description). While this doesn’t account for every individual / studio who would be receiving an early developer kit, it does provide an early insight into the “creator to casual consumer” ratio. Speaking of ratios, it should also be mentioned that the proposed sales revenue split for software sold on OUYA would be 70:30 [in favor of the developers]. A fair deal, if not fairly standard. At the very least, the guaranteed prominence of independently-developed games on the upcoming storefront was an attractive proposition, promised at a point in time where the major consoles had not yet fully embraced or set aside sufficient space for indie software in their ecosystems.

To the company’s credit and commitment, they managed the impressive feat of actually shipping those aforementioned developer consoles on time. A rare treat for Kickstarter projects, to be sure! Not only that, but on the same date that the consoles were due to ship (December 28th), they also went and released their SDK to the public^[16] — cutely referred to as their ‘ODK’ (Ouya Development Kit). Needless to say, getting these tools to developers in a timely manner was essential to the whole core of the operation: Without a wide library of games available on launch, the OUYA would debut as dead in the water. In the interest of furthering this cause, OUYA would also sponsor a 10-day game jam in early January of 2013 — titling it ‘CREATE,’ and receiving 166 submissions.^[17] After all was said and done, the company saw fit to pay out nearly $50K in prize monies across seven different judging categories (not to mention shipping out OUYA dev consoles to all finalists), with promised additional cash incentives for completing / releasing these games on the soon-to-release console.

It’s worth mentioning what exactly came with the so-called ODK suite, and how the console functioned as a development kit in itself. To be clear, the tools provided to you by OUYA weren’t enough in and of themselves to create your game: You’d still need to do the bulk of development within a computer-based game development suite of your choice; such as Game Maker, Unreal, or Unity. What the ODK effectively provided were the necessary licenses, Java dependencies, APK files, and plugin files for supported game engines / creation tools. As for the hardware itself, it provided a simple menu interface and file uploading tools, so that developers could quickly and easily launch their latest builds on the console. As it would turn out, early adopters / creators would rate the accessibility and support for development on the OUYA quite highly: Rami Ismail of Vlambeer (Ridiculous Fishing, Super Crate Box, Luftrauser) would admit to being “pleasantly surprised” by the kit, and concede that “the ‘bugs’ [the company] preventively warned for are practically non-existent.”^[18] One Nathan Fouts would further testify as to how “positively silly how quickly you can get something running on [the dev kit].” Admittedly, minor concerns were raised about the design of the controller and potential limitations of the Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset powering the console, but the positives still seemed to take precedent over the negatives at this stage.

In a word, things were going rather swimmingly for the OUYA thus far. With a first batch of backer consoles set to ship on March 28th^[19], established developers [and publishers] putting their support behind the company, and largely positive press surrounding the whole endeavor; OUYA seemed set to exceed expectations and embarrass its detractors once again. All that was left to do was make good on their shipping commitments, and maintain their positive public perception over the course of the next few months. And with Ms. Uhrman soon set to embark on a conference speaking circuit, she would have plenty of opportunities to further proselytize her company and cause, hoping to continue building on the OUYA’s positive forward momentum.

On March 11th, Julie took to the stage at the Austin Convention Center, sitting across from The Verge’s Joshua Topolsky. A conversation on the futures of the OUYA would serve as a keynote interview for SXSW’s Interactive Festival, billed as “an inspiring dialogue about the real-world challenges of crowdfunding, how open source approaches are disrupting traditional markets and how you can find startup success by daring to follow your dreams.”^[14b] What would soon follow would go on to be reported as nothing short of a disaster; with half the audience up and leaving before the halfway mark,^[20] close to a complete lack of new announcements, and enough damning soundbites from Julie to comprise numerous compilation reels. It’s the source for such infamous quotes as “There’s nothing special about this board,” and “Our controller has a touchpad — you’re not gonna find that somewhere else.” In the eyes of many, this debacle demonstrated the complete cluelessness of Julie Uhrman, and served as the proof she was diving headfirst into an industry she clearly had no understanding of.

… Except, she wasn’t clueless, and she actually understood the industry better than most of those skeptics who would hassle her. Don’t get me wrong: Julie certainly didn’t do herself any favors over the course of the hour-long interview. In refusing to answer several of Topolsky’s questions – namely, on the subjects of which other companies she was in talks with business-wise, and how many units the console was currently slated to sell – she can certainly come off as a bit combative. But in the reality of running a company, showing your hand too early in disclosing dealings in progress or market projections can sometimes cause business deals to fall through or be altered in some way; especially if – let’s say – you’re currently in the process of a private funding round, where the amount of capital you can potentially secure is based on your publicly-perceived value. As such, the non-answers to these questions were likely not to blame for scaring off the bulk of attendees. In fact, if you wanna pin-point the exact moment where a portion of the audience gets up and goes? You can watch a number of folk rising from their seats when they hear Joshua admitting “I don’t have a lot of hardballs here, because I want this thing to work.”^[14c]

Oh, by the way? Many of the “gotcha” quotes that folk love to parade around are taken completely out of context. When Julie is discussing the development of a game that will leverage the OUYA’s touchpad, and Joshua calls her out on seeming to forget that the Dualshock 4 controller is also planned to have a touchpad; the context most omit is that non-traditionally controlling games [by smaller studios] rarely ever made it to consoles like the PS4. To quote Julie’s full follow-up response: “That’s true, they could build it for [the PS4]. But they’re building it for me. My point is that we’re going to have inventive, creative, exclusive content that nobody else is going to have, which is the reason to buy OUYA.”^[14d] After Julie delivers her infamous line about there being “nothing special” about the board in the OUYA, and Topolsky retorts by asking “So I don’t need the OUYA is what you’re saying?”; Julie actually sufficiently responds by explaining that “Our storefront is only going to be available on the OUYA. We wanna make sure that you have a great experience, and the only way to do that is to make sure the specifications are the same — identical.” Remember that classic moment when Joshua asks Julie to name what she guesses is gonna be the killer app for the console, and she looks off-stage for a moment before stammering “Stalag-Fight?” This is probably because that was the second time Joshua had asked effectively the same question during the interview; and in her previous answer she had already cited upcoming games by Kim Swift, Paul Pettner, and Tim Schaefer — as well as Square Enix’s Final Fantasy III remake making its home console debut. Hell, immediately preceding her one-second struggle to recall Stalagflight’s easy-to-confuse name, she additionally names ChronoBlade as a game she was currently enjoying.

If you’re looking for some of the more pointed mistakes made by Julie over the course of the panel, there are three major points worth addressing by my estimation. The first is her conceding the point that her company was incredibly slow to formally register a domain and website for the company — thereby allowing that aforementioned PCMag article accusing the endeavor of being a “scam” to top Google’s search results for a time. Her reasoning for not establishing an official landing page sooner comes across as a lack of commitment to / confidence in the project, which maybe wasn’t the best confession to be making. The next misstep was Julie spilling the beans too early on plans for annual hardware revisions; wherein the product line was planned to release upgraded consoles on an annual basis moving forward, and theoretically leaving older models to become obsolete / incapable of running later games. Lastly, when presented the question of whether or not games on the OUYA’s marketplace would be subject to content ratings, Julie’s answer confirmed that their platform would be circumventing the ESRB entirely. To quote Julie: “The developers will self-rate. Of course, we’ve got the button that says it’s an abuse, if it is.”^[14e] When further pressed by Joshua asking if could theoretically submit a game featuring “tons of porn in it, and very violent — like, full-on for adults only, XXX”; Julie’s only follow-up was “As long as it adheres to the content guidelines.”

In a perfect world, folk would be able to balance the ultimately underwhelming response to the SXSW keynote with some of the more forward-thinking statements Julie did manage to make during it. In some of the most interesting anecdotes provided, Julie discusses how community input has helped in shaping and iterating on the controller design; from making concessions for colorblind players, to polling the community as to whether the D-pad should be embedded into a circular shape or provided as individual buttons. At one point, she dispenses a pearl of wisdom about how sales figures don’t necessarily reflect player engagement, and how the latter metric is what the major focus should be when developers / publishers review their analytics. And once again, Julie summates her thesis on the state of the industry, and why she believed the OUYA was the solution to its woes: “I would argue that the type of games we’re seeing is changing, and it’s getting limited. The budgets are ballooning for games. It takes hundreds of people to make a game, multiple years, and the most creative, exciting games aren’t going to the television anymore because it’s just so hard. […] That’s what OUYA’s gonna bring back to gaming. Because it says that anybody with a great idea can now build a game for [the television].”^[14f]

With the last leg of Julie’s tumultuous tour seeming to finish up in April, May would bring a fresh fiasco: A three week delay on the console’s retail release date, pushing the debut from June 4th to the 25th. By account of a statement from Julie given to CNET: “In order to meet greater-than-expected demand [by retail partners], we decided to shift our launch date by a mere three weeks in order to produce additional units.”^[21] A further admittance would be made that there was an issue with controllers coming off the assembly line, wherein the buttons were getting stuck beneath their surrounding faceplate. All said, the details of the delay seemed fairly innocuous, and most in the community were sympathetic. At the same time – quite literally within the same day – news would break that OUYA had secured a further $15 million in VC funding.^[22] Among the recognizable names involved in this round would include NVIDIA (likely compelled by their ties to the console hardware) and former EA bigwig Bing Gordon (representing the firm ‘Kleiner Perkins’). In fact, the latter would be invited to serve on the company’s board of directors, which he happily accepted.

As the newly-established release date drew ever nearer, OUYA seized the opportunity to promote itself on the industry’s biggest stage: 2013’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, better known as E3. Except, well — maybe not exactly on the stage itself, per se? As early as May 19th (roughly three weeks before opening day), OUYA would announce their intention to host their booth within the “parking lot directly across from the Convention Center’s South Hall,” where the proceedings would be “100 percent open to the public — no credentials required!”^[23] In other words, the company were not officially on the trade show’s list of vendors, and were simply planning to operate within the general vicinity of the Los Angeles Convention Center. In other other words; OUYA were very clearly and deliberately looking to provoke the ESA (Entertainment Software Association) who run E3, by circumventing established protocol and putting themselves in a position to disrupt the convention center. They would not be the first games company to run this tactic – following in the infamous footsteps of Gathering of Developers’ “Promised Lot”^[24] – but they would not achieve quite the same result in doing so.

In an entirely predictable turn of events, the event organizers at E3 took issue with OUYA’s “unofficial” festivities taking place outside of their own convention, and made moves to squash it. Their opening volley was to rent the unclaimed spaces surrounding OUYA’s lot, and park semi-trucks in the vicinity in order to obscure the view of the unsanctioned gathering.^[25] In an appropriately petty bit of retaliation, OUYA went and rented the still-unoccupied lots in front of the semi-trucks, and used said space to hang up OUYA banners and other signage — tweeting live updates on the situation all the while. As an [alleged] last-ditch effort by the ESA to try and dissolve the assembly, the police were called and informed that OUYA’s permits might not be in order; thereby forcing them to briefly interrupt proceedings in order to confirm that the company had – in fact – gone through the proper channels. Needless to say, the whole affair ended up garnering OUYA a fair bit of free press, where they were able to position themselves as scrappy underdogs being bullied by a big corporation. To assume that this was their plan from the very beginning isn’t much of a stretch. As such, when IGN came to interview Julie in the wake of the police investigation, she already had her press statement fully prepared: “OUYA Park is open every single day of E3 from 9 to 7. We have ’Happy Hour’ from 4 to 7 with free beer and KROQ [radio station] DJing live, so come on down.” And after an awkward three-second pause (seen in IGN’s video reporting), she added an addendum that you could also “play great games!”^[25b] You know, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Finally – after an eventful eleven months of panhandling and promotion – the OUYA was due to land in the hands of consumers. Naturally, seeing as the Kickstarter backers had been the ones to bring the dream to fruition, they’d well in advance be the first to receive the principal batch of production units off the assembly line, delivered from the factory straight to their mailing addresses. Some time thereafter, retail partners would receive and begin facing their own shipments in stores, formally kicking off the public debut of the crowdfunded console. And luckily, everything at this stage went entirely according to plan; demonstrating the ability of OUYA Inc. to overcome the hurdles placed in front of them, and to gracefully stick the landing on this nearly year-long endeavor.

… Sike! See, originally, all the backer consoles were originally meant to have shipped out to supporters in March, according to initial projections listed on the Kickstarter / as seemingly celebrated at an “unveiling” party for backers in the Bay Area held towards the end of that month.^[26] But by the time a bulk of backer consoles were actually received by OUYA’s shipping partner in Hong Kong, it was already May, and delivery from their facilities to recipients outside of the country was known in advance to be quite a slow journey. By estimation of ‘Operations Chief’ Ken Stephens; shipping confirmation emails would be sent to backers “up to 10 days after your hardware leaves Hong Kong,” and that actual receival of the parcel would range anywhere between “15 to 17 days from that date.”^[27] In other words: You were looking at a delivery window which could take as long as 27 days from start to finish — if not longer, given the potential for further delays. Needless to say, Murphy’s Law went and reared its head, and a non-insignificant quantity of backer-designated consoles didn’t even make it out the warehouse doors until well into June, resulting in deliveries that wouldn’t arrive at their destinations until July.

In effect, retail locations were already stocking OUYAs on shelves while a number of Kickstarter backers were still waiting on their promised “early” consoles to arrive, and making for an altogether messy bit of bad publicity at arguably the worst possible moment. In a backers-only Kickstarter update titled “Gonna fix this” (which would awkwardly prove to be the last-ever update made to the Kickstarter page), Julie shifted blame for all the delays squarely on the company’s shipping partner, opening a four paragraph apology with the proclamation “I am pissed.”^[28] She would go on to lament that “I did not promise to ship to *most* of you before we hit store shelves. I promised to ship to *all* of you.” And all while these unfortunate backers were left waiting, retailers were busy selling through their entire supplies to the general public; with Amazon and GameStop being the first to report exhausting their stock.^[29] The sorry state of the whole affair aside, the OUYA had officially launched, and at least some number of consumers could now experience the so-called savior of television gaming.

** The data points being referenced here are NPD’s end of year (for 2012) figures for the financial state of the games industry; which Forbes had handily transcribed and posted as an article to their own website. While the report does seem to alarmingly indicate that “retail sales of hardware, software and accessories are down 22% over last year;” the article further goes on to point out that digital distribution data isn’t taken into account by these numbers, and that the transitionary period into the next console hardware generation was at hand.

“And so Begins the Revolution.”

Retail boxed unit of an original model of OUYA.

The OUYA is packaged in a sleek dark box, along with one wireless controller (individually priced / sold at $49.99) and all the other necessary wiring / accoutrements. As a bit of an unflattering first impression though, opening said box from any other angle than face-up will likely result in the compact little console and controller pouring out of their inserts and onto your floor or table, as absolutely no effort is made to secure them snugly in the packaging. As an additional bit of flourish, you’d also receive a different “personalized” message on a bit of paper or plastic sheet depending on which order / revision of OUYA you’ve received; where Kickstarter backers were greeted with a modest “Thank you for believing,” while retail purchasers were met with a placard reading “And so begins the revolution.” From here, it’s simply a matter of plugging your console into power, connecting it to a screen by means of HDMI, and clumsily peeling off the faceplates to your controller so that you can slot two AA batteries in. Voilà: That’s your OUYA up and running!

With console I/O and accessible innards having been two of the OUYA’s major selling points, it’s probably worth delving into both of them a bit here. On the input / output front, you’ve got single ports for USB and micro USB, plus ethernet access and the necessary HDMI and power ports. And that’s your whole lot! While that sounds pretty pitiful on the surface, you’ll soon realize that supported controllers are all meant to be paired wirelessly by means of Bluetooth, and so those USB ports aren’t intended for gamepads to begin with. Rather, both inputs are there to facilitate either additional storage devices or direct connections to your computer, allowing for ease of file uploading and transferring. As for the potential to tinker with / modify the hardware under the hood: I don’t believe anyone ever really found much practical use in doing so? It’s not as if you can directly upgrade the underlying Tegra 3 architecture with a new GPU or what have you, or need to make any tweaks in order to download specific games off the storefront. In its most practical application, opening up your OUYA can be useful if you want to replace the underpowered stock fan, and seemingly not for much else more than that.

You shouldn’t be paying $99 expecting the latest and greatest in technical specs here, anyhow: You’re effectively paying for OUYA’s dedicated launcher and software library. And while the system’s user / menu interface would go through some number of updates and revisions, the core of the navigation remained largely the same throughout its continued development. After your first-time account registration (wherein you are immediately prompted for your credit card information just after submitting your username and password); you’re brought to a home screen providing quick access to your games library [labelled as ‘Play’], a ‘Discover’ button taking you to the OUYA storefront, the ‘Make’ page providing access to developer tools / file uploading, and a ‘Manage’ menu with your range of system options. Interestingly, many of the deeper options menus within the OUYA still rely on stock Android interface menus, which stand out in stark contrast to the ultra-slick designs of all the other custom-tailored UI. All the better for developers who are already familiar with development / fine-tuning for Android platforms, I suppose?

Regardless of which revision of interface you may be navigating, there was at least one other constant: Navigating the OUYA’s Discover storefront would always be a sluggish, disorganized experience. With a bare minimum of search functionality and genre categories, the act of discovering new games on the OUYA that might actually be relevant to your interests is unfortunately and needlessly convoluted. Instead, OUYA seems to prioritize its own “curated” collections when it comes to presenting games and apps to users, with vaguely-defined playlists like ‘Party Time!’ and ‘Our Founders.’ At the same time, the storefront has to load hundreds of titles into its cache / index every time it launches, as well as downloading and presenting large thumbnail images alongside each of them. This results in a navigation experience that is simultaneously obtuse and slow to load. It felt as if despite the numerous revisions and changes made to the Discover page during the system lifespan, each update all still remained slavishly devoted to Yves Béhar’s “original vision” for a grid-based, big image-driven, frustratingly unfilterable inventory of software.

At the very least, that software library did end up being quite a varied one, owing thanks to the varied range of developers who saw fit to submit their wares to it. While OUYA seemed content to shine their spotlight most constantly on a small handful of original exclusives, these principals were supported by a plenty large cast of both known properties and darling indies. Admittedly, a large portion of this library consisted of Google Play Store ports; with smaller studios looking to bring their smartphone excursions to a more games-focused marketplace, as well as bigger publishers seeing an opportunity to re-sell some existing mobile games with the benefit of more prominent billing. Of course, this isn’t to discount the number of genuine originals created and submitted with the OUYA in mind, comprising some of the more experimental and high-concept offerings on the system. And then there’s the somewhat messy menagerie of Android utilities, console emulators, streaming apps, and even some number of screensaver applications; all coming together to make for some strange scrolling through the already-strained storefront.

Which brings us to the subject of actually controlling your OUYA, and the proprietary controller provided in order to do so. Yes, the OUYA’s wireless gamepad has come to be regarded in infamy; with common complaints pointing to flimsy triggers, cheaply-molded analog sticks, buttons liable of getting caught underneath the top covering, an imprecise and largely impractical touchpad, significant input delay issues, a general lightweight and fragile feel… We could go on, but you get the picture. We’re talking about one flawed piece of kit here, and I’m inclined to agree with much of that consensus. For points in its favor: I never personally encountered any of the dreaded lag issues, and the controller certainly didn’t fall apart in my hand after some days of decidedly tight gripping and generally rigorous use.** All that said, I definitely see where folk come from when they say the controller feels quite cheaply-made, and pressing in some of the buttons (notably the menu / start button) did leave me fearing that I was somehow gonna get them stuck underneath the surface. Did I mention that the triggers are all sorts of loosey-goosey, or that the D-pad somehow manages to surpass the Xbox 360 gamepads in terms of clunkiness? At the very least, you can go ahead and pair a small assortment of non-OUYA input devices (including PS3 and 360 controllers) in place of the system’s own offering.

Alright, that feels like just about all the bases covered, barring something completely obvious I’ve managed to forget. Now’s the part where we get into some of the games on offer on the OUYA, and try to highlight some of the system’s strengths and weaknesses in the process. In selecting five games for this segment, I intentionally avoided some of the port jobs by big-name publishers (such as Final Fantasy III, Sonic the Hedgehog 4, The Bard’s Tale, et cetera), since all of them honestly just rate as “functional enough.” I also spared this list some of the easier, more frequent targets; like the unfairly-maligned Just Rain screensaver app, or skeevy streaming channels such as He TV. While I’m at it, let me also say that the range of console-specific emulators I tried out were all pretty lacklustre; running into all manner of speed and sound issues, and generally not providing the range of options I’ve come to expect as standard. In picking out my five games to represent the OUYA, I tried to pick from some of the most recognizable originals and more uniquely popular conversions to the hardware — covering a couple of games that may have existed before the console did, but which ultimately found their fame on the platform. With all that out of the way, let’s get these games underway!

** Based on the testimony of friends who have seen me play games with controllers; I am particularly rough with the poor things, between my death grips on gamepad handles and my tendency to push around analog sticks with the crushing force of an eye gouge. I don’t think I’ve ever broken a game controller out of anger, but I have certainly ruined some through my sheer [unintentional] abuse of them. With all this in mind, I did admittedly try to be “extra careful” with this loaner OUYA controller, so who knows how it would’ve fared against my more typical handling?

The Amazing Frog? (Fayju Ltd., 2013)

I’ve spent the past six years building up a lofty expectation for Amazing Frog? in my head. Watching from afar and without a full perspective of the OUYA’s library, I somehow came to a completely unfounded conclusion that this was the console’s true killer app — probably the most promising piece of original software on offer on the system’s storefront. Finally having played it for myself, I must admit: My instinct was absolutely on the money. Predating the likes of the popular Goat Simulator by nearly a full year, Amazing Frog? should be revered as an innovator in the field of physics-driven sandbox games, and praised as one of the most truly unique titles to have launched on the OUYA.

The core of it is simple: You play as a frog with the “amazing” ability to propel himself into the air with his farts, as well as to further endure / survive any damage you may inflict on him in the process. A surrealist frog-themed recreation of the real-life town of Swindon, England is your hopping ground; laden with all manner of interactive objects and destructibles for your amusement. You can spend your time simply destroying everything in sight and finding ways to launch your frog as high into the air as possible, if you so please. But there are also strange mysteries and undisclosed quests to be resolved if you decide to dig a little deeper. You’re free to go frog-wild in any which way you please — and even to do so with a friend in split-screen, if that’s your prefrogative. Additionally – with one of the last revisions to the OUYA version of the game – there is also a competitive multiplayer mode featuring appropriately janky variations on ‘Last Man Standing’ and ‘Flag Tag.’ Between spray-and-pray gunfights in a scientific facility and ragdoll tackle battles in the sewers, it makes for a none-too-serious versus mode that serves as perfect party fodder.

But this is only the OUYA version we’re talking about here: The game has since made its way to Steam, where it still continues to see content updates as of 2019. By estimation, the game has only grown bigger and better since its OUYA debut — possibly owing in part to finally breaking free of the microconsole’s technical shackles, by the looks of it. Simply put, some of the latest functionality in the game wouldn’t have been achievable on the initial Tegra 3 architecture, leaving one to wonder what future the game would’ve had if forced to continue compatibility with that hardware? Hell, the OUYA honestly struggles to maintain smooth framerate as it stands with this lesser-featured revision; especially when setting off explosions or staring down at the city from the sky. Still, the game did get its start on the OUYA, and managed to build a fairly decent foundation for itself on the microconsole. That’s gotta count for something.

BombSquad (Eric Froemling, 2013)

BombSquad is the answer to an age-old question: “What if Bomberman had a physics model and ragdoll characters constantly being blown across the screen?” Yes, BombSquad takes the time-honored gaming tradition of friends and foes tossing bombs at each other, and adds to it some weighty physics and momentum, so that it might all be tinged with a sense of constant unpredictability. Presenting this core gameplay across several different game modes – including wave survival, tower defense, and even a take on flag football – the aim is to see how the application of physics can flip all these different scenarios on their heads, and force players to master the intricacies of momentum and timing in order to improve their odds of surviving. The additional elements of melee mechanics and a variety of randomly-appearing power-ups also help to ensure that things stay properly chaotic at all times.

The game might actually hold distinction as the most popular title on the OUYA, likely by merit of it having a wealth of content available for free. Whereas most games on the marketplace were content dropping a level or two in a demo for prospective consumers to download, Eric Froemling fully embraced the freemium model — giving away the proverbial razer and selling the blades, but also implementing a system wherein you can eventually get the blades for free too if you work hard enough at it. That being said, there’s also shaving cream and nose hair trimmers for sale, and there’s no getting around having to pay for those. I think I’m losing the metaphor here. What I’m trying to say is, you get to play nine unique stages / scenarios worth of content [on the standard difficulty] for free, plus a range of multiplayer options with support for up to eight local players. Access to the more difficult circuit of the campaign is locked behind a reasonable $4.99 paywall — which also grants access to a number of character skins and additional minigames that you’d otherwise have to individually purchase with the hard-to-earn in-game ‘Ticket’ currency.

All said and done, I ended up having a pretty decent time with BombSquad (for the roughly two hours I played of it), even as some of the latter campaign levels teetered close to frustrating for me when the physics didn’t wanna play nice. Local co-op play proved amusing enough, though I was unable to further test the online lobby-based multiplayer component — seeing as the game soft-locked every time I tried to load the server list. Luckily, the OUYA version of the game is survived / supplanted by better-supported versions across the larger Android ecosystem, iOS, and Fire OS. However, there is something to be said for the fact that playing on a large television screen seems like the ideal setting for BombSquad, and that the phone / tablet versions might well lose something in their compactness. Of course, that isn’t to say it’s not possible to hook those devices up in such a way as to put the game on a big screen: It’s just that the methods for doing so still seem cumbersome compared to the OUYA’s relative simplicity.

ChronoBlade Demo (nWay Games, 2013)

ChronoBlade is an odd duck for a number of different reasons. For starters, its origins are as an browser-based Facebook game — back in the day when those were a big deal (and big business, to boot). Soon after, it found itself being pushed as one of the OUYA’s key titles; receiving significant play in promotional materials, being featured prominently at OUYA’s pre-launch gameplay booths, and further benefiting from Julie’s touting of it as one of her personal favorites during press junkets. You get the impression that OUYA were particularly eager to court nWay Games during this period, and that they were primed and ready to throw their weight behind ChronoBlade as being one of the console’s killer apps. It’s a damned wonder then why all that exists of ChronoBlade on the OUYA is a “Demo” release; featuring a small sampling of the game’s ‘Survival’ mode, and directing all further traffic / business back towards the original Facebook iteration of the game.

What you get as part of this “OUYA exclusive survival mode combat demo” is a choice of two characters, who enter into wave survival on a small stretch of flat stage. It plays as a beat ‘em up with some hints at ARPG elements, including item drops and attack abilities on cooldowns. The game tosses you immediately into the fray with little context or explanation for who you’re playing as or what you’re doing, and leaves you to fend for yourself against waves of unspecified mobs using your ill-defined special moves. You might be able to chain a combo if you get lucky enough. Sometimes, you can press a button to use one of your items, and maybe it’ll do something to affect your character? I can’t honestly say for certain on that count. Oh, and while you’re busy with all that, the OUYA will be hard at work attempting to keep up with the action, and largely failing in that pursuit: I clocked the average framerate as being somewhere in the neighborhood of ~20 frames per second, with wild swings in variability and massive stutters. Playing for ten minutes in single-player, I encountered three instances where the game completely froze for full seconds, before casually resuming its chugging action.

And that’s all there is for me to say about ChronoBlade on the OUYA! You can play cooperatively with a friend if you’d both like to see the framerate drop into single digits, and I couldn’t find out if there’s any stopping point where the demo might cut off your progression because I honestly could not stomach the performance for very long. Why Team OUYA put so many eggs in this particularly wretched basket is beyond me, considering their hardware is barely capable of keeping up with even this highly-concentrated demo level? It’s not as if ChronoBlade made for a particularly massive or popular game on the Facebook front, to where playing host to this exclusive demo was some sort of big “get” for the platform. It’s hard to chalk this up as a win for nWay either, as the demo certainly did nothing to interest me in checking out the full version of the game. And so, while I’d have otherwise written this whole piece of software off in any other scenario, I’m discussing it here in order to highlight just how ill-conceived OUYA’s positioning of ChronoBlade in their marketing was.

Soul Fjord (Airtight Games, 2014)

From the creative mind of Kim Swift (who originally conceptualized 2005’s Narbacular Drop, and would help rework said game into 2007’s Portal) comes an absolute hodgepodge of disparate design concepts: A Blaxploitation-meets-Norse-mythology themed dungeon crawler / rhythm game with roguelite elements. So describes Soul Fjord, serving as one of the OUYA’s true exclusives. Yes, even five years after release, we’re looking at a game which has yet to (and may never) make its way to any other hardware or marketplace. That’s an odd fact too, considering that it doesn’t leverage the OUYA in any particular way to where it couldn’t make the jump to some other platform. It doesn’t use the controller’s touchpad, and it certainly has its share of performance issues in the hands of the microconsole’s low specs. While I don’t have a definite answer to this mystery (my best guess is some sort of long-term exclusivity contract that somehow still hasn’t been nullified), I can at least say with confidence that Soul Fjord is – in fact – a video game you can play on your OUYA.

To be fair, there’s nothing I would point to as particularly “bad” about Soul Fjord. The Diablo-derivative loot drops make for a decently compelling gameplay hook, the rhythm-based combat certainly makes for a novel concept in this format, and there’s clearly some love put into crafting the game’s world and characters. Even the microtransactions aren’t too egregious — allowing players to open locked loot chests, and to ‘Soulbind’ specific gear they’d like to keep, all for a token fee of in-game currency (presented as vinyl records). If anything, I feel as if the monetization model might be a bit too light, as the game ultimately proved a complete breeze to play through without taking advantage of any paid features. I guess that’d be the major gripe: Most enemies are stun-locked into total submission so long as you can keep with the beat of your attacks, while those who aren’t are just as easily dealt with by other means. I reckon the biggest challenge might be ensuring that your calibration is properly configured to allow you to keep in tempo. Even if you run into the occasional issues with timing and synchronization, the game is still forgiving enough that you won’t be totally screwed in a given instance. All well and fair by my books.

… Okay, so there’s actually one other qualm I feel like I might have with the game. I went through the effort of checking out every credited developer on Soul Fjord / under the employ of Airtight Games at the time of release, and came to a somewhat uncomfortable conclusion: I don’t think a single person who worked on this game is Black? Creative Director Kim Swift certainly isn’t, and neither are any other of the creative leads (as far as I can gather). And that’s honestly a bit troubling, given the obvious Blaxploitation-inspired theming at play. By the time I found myself wielding a pimp cane named ‘Dolemight’ in order to beat down orcs dressed in full pink pimp regalia, I had to start questioning whether or not this game was on the level? There’s just something about seeing Black culture filtered through and commodified by a team of non-Black creators that leaves me feeling a bit skeeved out. Best intentions on all their parts, I’m sure! But still, certainly something to personally contemplate before you might consider giving Soul Fjord a go.

Stalagflight (Jacob Korsgaard, 2013)

Honestly, it’s unfortunate for Stalagflight that its reputation is tied to Julie’s non-confidently citing it as one of the OUYA’s potential “killer apps”; especially considering it’s such a simple, unassuming little game. Controlled merely by means of left and right movement and one button for jumping, it’s a concept which could easily be translated to the Atari 2600 for all its mechanical complexity (or lack thereof): You latch onto and jump between a stream of perpetually falling rocks in order to see how high you can ascend, while avoiding a rising lava pool and airborne fireballs. As the entire game takes place in mid-air, those left and right movements apply directly to your air control, as well as allowing you to rotate the rock you’re standing on in order to adjust your jump trajectory. If the term somehow does not already exist, I’m coining the genre “Endless Jumper” here to describe it. But even in this ostensibly made-up genre exclusively its own, Stalagflight somehow still rates as just a passable entry to it.

Simply put, there just isn’t enough in the game to motivate you to test its limits and push yourself towards improving; lacking compelling gratification for reaching height milestones, and offering nothing in the way of variety or an engaging aesthetic. When compared to something like Canabalt – the perennial standard for the “Endless” subgenre – Stalagflight’s bag of tricks is revealed to be empty, and its simple style is easily overshadowed. And yes, I would argue that’s a pretty fair point of comparison, considering that both games were produced as part of short-term game jams and further developed after these initial competitions. At the same time though, who’s to say that Jacob Korsgaard was actually attempting to usurp the throne with his little 72-hour endeavor? More likely than not, he made his game with the same intent as most other developers who involve themselves with game jams: To test themselves as creators, and to hone their skills. It’s not his fault his humble little game got swept up in Uhrman’s storm.

For those curious what Jacob’s up to now: He’s only gone and gotten hired as an engineer at Rare, where he’s currently working on Sea of Thieves. Not a bad come-up from ripping music tracks out of SNES racing games and trying to hustle your games on the Unity forums, if you ask me. As for Stalagflight’s lasting legacy; most games like it certainly don’t stick around in the public conversation for as long as it has — sporadic and off-hand as its mentions may be. More power to it.

“I Could’ve Bought Food!”

“We <3 fan art.”
A fan-created image which prominently displayed on the OUYA Developer Portal page for the entirety of its uptime. Its original creator was never credited.

With the official launching of the OUYA began a stream of console reviews from game and tech websites, as well as an outpouring of user testimonials. Unfortunately for Julie and company, the general consensus seemed to lean towards “underwhelmed.” Most outlets shared several of the same concerns and criticisms; some of the most common being the console’s comparatively low specs, the universally-detested controller, and what was perceived by many as a launch library (initially consisting of 178 titles) consisting largely of mobile game glut — disposable, interchangeable titles which ultimately failed to impress or amuse. The OUYA team – perhaps predicting this last point of contention – had seen to it that consoles sent to the press came with some pre-loaded titles, likely meant to be presented as “recommended” for reviewers. By the testimony of Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo: “It had some games pre-installed on it. That was nice. The Ouya people were making my life ultra-easy. Just start playing and have fun, they were saying. Review this thing.”^[30] Of course, when your platform’s marketplace / free software offerings are one of your major selling points, you can only distract reviewers away from it for so long.

Much of Kotaku’s review of the console centered around the thought that the OUYA itself felt somewhat disposable — that it felt like a stopgap or temporary diversion, while consumers might be waiting to afford a bigger and better console, or even holding out for the next revision of the OUYA itself. As Totilo goes on to muse; “You get the Ouya for the now. You get it for the summer of 2013 and the fall. You get this to wedge it in the gaps of your gaming life or in place of bigger, beefier consoles you can’t afford. You get this console to play the Ouya games of the moment.”^[30b] And in that particular moment, the OUYA games on offer amounted largely to a library of bite-sized microgames, coupled with “poor man’s” versions of more highly-produced titles. Not only that, but Stephen was struck by a litany of functionality and accessibility issues right out the gate; including a controller that “occasionally failed to read my inputs or [send] signals to the console that I didn’t send,” games which “inconsistently use different buttons to pause the action and usually fail to signal how to quit them,” and “a worst-in-class internal search engine that only finds games by title and not by developer or any other category that’d be useful in a marketplace as crowded as this.”

Eurogamer would focus the limited praise in their review on the abilities to side-load Android apps (bypassing the storefront to import your own downloaded application files) and run streaming services such as OnLive; paying specific compliment to “minimum of effort” required to get Batman: Arkham Asylum up and running through remote play.^[31] On the subject of actual on-system games however, they were forced to concede that the storefront was “embarrassingly short on must-have titles”; with several planned exclusives not yet available at the time of review, and the glut of mobile game ports which are made to feel “hopelessly vacuous when experienced on a TV set.” James Stephanie Sterling on behalf of Destructoid shared their optimism for the potential future of the OUYA, wherein they hoped to see the marketplace become a haven for homebrew and garage developers. On the other hand, they just as readily admit that the OUYA might just as easily give way to “a Wild West of utter trash, the Xbox Live Indie Marketplace in console form.”^[32] PCMag stepped into the ring once again – now represented by Will Greenwald – giving due praise to the mandatory “freemium model” in place to ensure that all games could be played before being paid for. On the other hand, they were plagued by system software issues; recounting a scenario where “one game strangely took the permissions to load APK files, making it seem like the system had no installer at all, forcing me to get help to install apps manually through a computer with the Android development kit.”^[33]

What’s fascinating to read across all these reviews is the seemingly genuine optimism and hope apparent for the future of the OUYA; with every reviewer sure to mention something along the lines of “future updates might fix some of the current issues,” or that “it might have a better games library some day.” As is the case with most new entrants to the games industry, most (if not all) journalists and reviewers want these new ventures to succeed, and for the business in general to continue thriving and expanding: It’s what keeps everyone in money and continually entertained. But at the same time, the gut reaction most had was that the OUYA simply wasn’t ready to launch, between its share of bugs and lack of compelling games. In response to the widespread lukewarm welcoming, Julie took an interview wherein she could claim that reception to the console was actually “great,” and that negatively-inclined reviewers were simply looking to “pigeonhole [OUYA]  in one way or another.”^[34]

If the company seemed willing to take at least one criticism to heart, it was the fact that their library was still lacking in truly killer titles — exclusives fit to sell folk on the console, or which would sing praises of the OUYA brand while showering in critical and financial accolades. To this end, OUYA announced an initiative in mid-July with the intent of securing further exclusives, picked from the pages of the same crowdfunding website that had helped bring them to fruition: The ‘Free the Games Fund’ was established as a year-long endeavor with the intent of helping game projects on Kickstarter secure additional development money, so long as they promised to maintain a six-month period of initial exclusivity on the OUYA’s marketplace.^[35] Further condition would require that these Kickstarter projects would have to clear their initial funding goals (set at no less than $50K) all on their own, before OUYA would move to match the backer-raised funds. As an added incentive, the campaign that managed to raise the most money [from backers] during the course of the promotion would be subject to receive an additional $100K bonus come the end of August, 2014. On the surface, the initiative seemed like a sure thing: A way for the company to line up some buzz-worthy exclusives, and to make the company look downright magnanimous in doing so.

In actual execution, Free the Games would prove nothing short of a fiasco. Because the initiative would only match funds after funding goals had already been hit, and because the company only allocated a total $1 million for this promotion, the race was on for campaigns to be the first ones to cross their respective finish lines. In the pursuit of this, some less scrupulous developers sought ways to game the system; thereby achieving their funding goals in shockingly short order / by highly suspicious means. The first two games to meet their milestones would be Gridiron Thunder and ‘Elementary, My Dear Holmes!’, as commemorated on August 27th on OUYA’s official blog.^[36] These titles quickly prompted investigation by journalists and the community, who uncovered damning details in the cases of both campaigns. Within a couple of weeks, My Dear Holmes’ Kickstarter page would be shut down on suspicion of fraudulently-registered user accounts comprising the bulk of backers — complete with one account using a photograph from an active “missing persons” case for its profile image.^[37] When Gridiron Thunder’s average pledge per backer statistic was measured to be as high as $626 – a thoroughly ludicrous statistic for a Kickstarter of this nature – developer MogoTXT sent rambling press statements to Gamastura in their attempt to assuage suspicions. The only real effect this tactic seemed to have was making the developers look absolutely unhinged:

“Some people, who are not lawyers and who have no knowledge of the facts, also said that we lack the intellectual property rights to build our game. They have no idea what they are talking about. […] Some of the same people who initially accused us of being scam later said, when we showed that we are working on the game, that our game is not very good. So far as we can tell, these criticisms were made by people who have not developed a game of any note. As seasoned developers know, very few games look good until they are actually complete and we took pains to try to explain this.” ~ ‘MogoTXT’^[38]

OUYA were not directly responsible for the actions of these bad actors. Sure, they may have inadvertently inspired them by the ill-conceived terms of their initiative, but this outcome was surely not one they predicted or would want to further enable… Or so everyone wanted to believe. What OUYA did have direct control over was how they would respond to this unfolding situation. And in this regard, they absolutely dropped the ball, with Julie issuing a frankly embarrassing blog post that failed to address or condemn any of the ongoing controversy. One line in particular encompassed the altogether clueless tone of the whole statement, and only served to frustrate the OUYA community: “If we can put aside the doubt and embrace the spirit of this fund as it is meant, and of OUYA as it is meant, we might just be surprised by what a little positivity can produce.”^[39] In the midst of the widespread negative response to this post, some developers began delisting / withdrawing their titles from the OUYA marketplace; with one Sophie Houlden citing her reason as the company’s “inability to admit that they have fucked up,” and going on to describe how “every single piece of PR that is put out damages OUYA’s reputation more, and the plastic-marketing-smile never seems to come off.”^[40]

After what the community might’ve optimistically pictured as a weeklong period of introspection – but what can more realistically be attributed as response to overwhelming negative publicity – Julie returned to more sufficiently address concerns over the Free the Games initiative: She would announce that Gridiron Thunder would no longer be beneficiary to the fund (claiming that MogoTXT dropped out of the  runnings of their own volition), that the minimum project funding goal would be lowered to $10K, and that the $100K bonus incentive would be retracted on the basis that the community didn’t feel it was in line with “the nature of the fund.”^[41] While these changes made seemed to largely satisfy the community and get the initiative back on track, they would not entirely prevent some further issues down the line; including another game (Dungeons: The Eye of Draconus) being caught in the dragnet for unethically-sourced funding, and ultimately disqualifying itself from the promotional runnings.^[42] But if you can believe it, the worst development in the Free the Games saga is still yet to come.

In the meantime, the bad news would only continue piling onto OUYA, as details of games sales figures on the platform began to surface toward the end of July. Needless to say, they weren’t great: Conversion rates (the percentage for how many players who download a game will ultimately purchase it) seemed to average in the single digits across the board, pairing poorly with already underwhelming download numbers in the eyes of some developers. In providing the then-current figures for his game Organ Trail, Ryan Wiemeyer revealed the following to Gamasutra: “It’s sold about half of what my low-end predictions were. Last I checked we were at 501 purchases from 13,112 downloads (a 3.8 percent attach rate). This accounts for about 0.1 percent of our total Organ Trail sales to date (which is over 400,000).”^[43] In response to developer testimonies appearing and the games press presenting further reports as to underwhelming sales, Julie fired back with a statement to The Verge claiming that “Monetization on Ouya is so far better than we expected”; further posturing that “by the end of the year, we’ll see a few developers telling us they’ve made more than a million dollars on Ouya.”^[44] (SPOILER: No game would ever come even remotely close to this figure.)

August introduced a fresh firestorm to the ongoing disasters; as a proposed commercial spot posted to the OUYA’s official YouTube channel was quickly condemned by the public at large, and shortly thereafter retracted. The animated advert featured an aggravated gamer sat in his underwear commiserating the sorry state of some generic military shooter stand-in (“Medal of Duty XII”) they’ve spent $60 on; before going on to puke so profusely as to flood the room with vomit above his ankles, rip out his own spine through his mouth, and beat himself over the head with it until he is reduced to a comically-squashed pulp. An intertitle then urges viewers to “Stop wasting cash on crappy games,” while extolling the virtues of the hundreds of games that are free to try on the OUYA. Between the tonally odd gross-out nature of the spot and the arrogance in seeming to write off mainstream games as “crappy”, the response to the upload seemed to be immediately and overwhelmingly negative. With a Kotaku article drawing attention to the video, OUYA’s PR department was quick to dismiss the content as “not official”; until further questioning forced them to concede that the YouTube channel it was uploaded to was – in fact – their official account, and to admit that they had been “experimenting with animated content and posted [the] video briefly to get feedback from our community.”^[45]

By this point, it felt as if OUYA could do no right. Continued developer insights painted a grim picture for consumer engagement statistics post-console launch. By admission of one Adam Spragg: “Sales of [his game] Hidden in Plain Sight have tailed off drastically since the initial [Ouya] Kickstarter units all shipped en masse, which isn’t surprising. […] I’ll be completely honest – I haven’t used the Ouya really at all since launch and getting my game out.”^[46] Bombball developer E McNeill would praise the company for their effort to “review the game’s current marketing and give some helpful advice,” before confessing that “the sales are still low, and they’ve continued to slow down over time.” And when OUYA’s PR team was asked to issue public statements and garner attention, they now seemed to consistently trip over themselves in doing so: In one of their most appalling examples, they made headlines while attempting to announce exclusivity over the then-upcoming That Dragon, Cancer — an autobiographical game about a family’s experience raising a child diagnosed with terminal cancer. In somberly and tastefully confirming the news of this acquisition, someone at OUYA saw fit post a tweet to their official @PlayOuya Twitter account reading “The Powerfully Moving That Dragon, Cancer Is Now A Ouya Exclusive … GET SOME.”^[47]**

All Julie could think to do was to admit her and her company’s faults, as she made a tearful on-stage appearance at September’s XOXO Festival. After a period of months wherein Team OUYA seemed unable to admit to any of their mistakes or confess to consistently missing the mark, it fell on Julie once more to put a face to the company, and to finally accept some of that accountability:

“We’re a new company. We’re a dirty company. We make a ton of mistakes. So let me count the ways: We started delivering our Kickstarter units on time, but we didn’t get them all out on time. There was some people 30, 45 days later that still didn’t have them. So as much as you try to plan for everything through Kickstarter, there is always something that’s gonna catch you. For us, it was shipping. Our early controllers had thumbsticks that didn’t work, our action buttons got stuck underneath our faceplates. Some people said that our Wi-Fi was shoddy and that the controllers were laggy. We did a tweet about [That Dragon, Cancer], and we ended it with ‘GET SOME.’ Literally. That was a highlight.

We launched a matching program for Kickstarter projects. If you wanted to bring your game to OUYA exclusively, we’ll match your goal once you hit it. We sooo did not think about the different ways that people could take advantage of that kind of program. We put out a video that had vomiting in it, and then wanted you to buy an OUYA. So, there was vomit and OUYA in the same ad. That was another highlight. We’ve done a lot of things wrong, we have made a lot of mistakes. And I think that one thing that’s really unique about us is that we’re gonna continue to make them.” ~ Julie Uhrman^[48]

What felt like it might’ve been a new turning point for the OUYA – wherein the company might make themselves more transparent / receptive to community needs moving forward – would turn out to only be a one-time bit of confession. Within just a month, it was back to business as usual, with Uhrman officially announcing the company’s intent to release an “OUYA 2.0” at some point in 2014. While discussing changes already being planned for the baseline model of OUYA – most notably, improvements to the controller – an interviewer for Polygon asked how consumers would be able to tell the difference between old and new retail stock of the “original” console. Seemingly without the slightest sense of shame or pause, Julie answered with a blunt “You wouldn’t know until you bought it.”^[49] When the interviewer goes to further point out that consumers might not be pleased to hear that answer, Julie’s follow-up was to claim that “every company does it, it’s just that no one talks about it.” With that matter settled (?), Uhrman would continue to speculate as to what the OUYA 2.0 would entail: “For the hardware, we are looking at different chips. We are looking at what type of performance we want.”

After much ado, the supposed “major” revision of OUYA was finally launched in January 2014: A 16GB version of the platform with reportedly improved controller and console design, all in a fresh coat of matte black and sold at a new price point of $120. What this upgrade lacked were any improvements to the underlying specs as had been initially implied; leaving some wondering if this new product was actually intended as the lauded 2.0 revision, or as a stop-gap release before said product launch? Curiously, this new product listing on OUYA’s online shop served to replace a previous briefly-listed ‘Limited Edition’ console that had come and gone with no fanfare two months prior; boasting the same higher pricing, and conversely colored white. Further confusing the whole issue, OUYA would only refer to the latest black model vaguely as “a new version of the console” — failing to sufficiently address anyone’s questions. And so, tech blogs and gaming news outlets were left to decide on their own how to refer to the new hardware. One shared consensus was certain: The upgrade still utterly failed to bring the console in line with its contemporaries on any sort of technical level. Reporter Hayden Dingman [for the Android publication Greenbot] would contend that “the phone in my pocket right this moment is a more powerful device than the Ouya—and my phone can also pair with a controller and pump video out to a TV through HDMI. My phone is a better Ouya than the Ouya.”^[50] It was certainly a difficult assessment to argue with.

It’s somewhat telling that news of this apparently major hardware revision was all but completely overshadowed by a number of other OUYA headlines. For starters, there was the departure of one of the company’s founders also in January: ‘VP of Product Development’ Muffi Ghadiali. In a short release issued to TechCrunch, OUYA claimed that the company would be “focusing more on the next phase of the business and product development”; and while Ghadiali had admittedly been “invaluable during the launch of OUYA,” the time had come for the company to “shift their needs accordingly.”^[51] In early March, the company would announce yet another fresh initiative, calling itself ‘OUYA Everywhere.’ By Julie’s reflection on the intended positioning of the company: “We’re the open guys, right? So why lock OUYA in a box? Even a beautiful one? […] So we’re embarking on a new project to embed the OUYA platform into other devices on the market.”^[52] Certainly, the announcement of this new “no hardware needed” endeavor coming so soon after the introduction of a new hardware line felt like an incredibly odd move on the company’s part. In what was surely an unrelated development: The 16GB model of OUYA would quietly disappear from the online shop in the coming months.

But perhaps the most surprising headline to come out in this period was an announcement later in March, which declared that the free demo requirement – which had defined so much of the platform’s marketing – was to be dropped in the following weeks. As the pivot was framed by OUYA’s resident ‘Games Guy’ Bob Mills: “Giving devs the freedom to choose gives our gamers access to the best games available. We’re clearing another roadblock in the pathway to publishing on the TV, and that means more great games will make it to OUYA.”^[53] The claim was laid that developers had been asking for the option since before the platform had even launched, and that the decision effectively came down to a question of “Do we support the awesome feeling of getting to try anything before you buy it, or do we make the pathway to publishing on the TV even easier for devs?” Sure enough, as soon as the policy change went into effect, existing demos quickly began to disappear from some of the most well-established games on the storefront; confirming that the demand for this update among developers was indeed real. Less enthused were consumers who had been sold on the promise of “all games will always be free to try,” and those who had been attracted to the platform in the first place for its “try before you buy” policy.

The truth is, all these changes being made were absolutely necessary — as antithetical to the company’s original business model as some of them may well have been. The fact was that original OUYA consoles were simply collecting dust at retail by this point, while the newly-introduced models had also failed to secure the necessary interest levels / pre-order numbers to justify large-scale production. Perhaps most damningly: The single most successful game on the OUYA’s storefront – a competitive archery battle game TowerFall – had only managed to move a mere 7,000 [purchased] copies between the console’s launch and April 2014.^[54] Over the course of a mere month after the game had made its way to PC and PS4, that figure already been dwarfed more than triplefold by sales across the new platforms — with a year’s worth of OUYA sales now accounting for just 21% of the game’s total revenue. Julie’s response to the news story was to desperately try and take credit for the game’s late blooming: “Ouya helped put Towerfall and Matt on the map. His story signals that Ouya works: We are finding the next great developers and making them household names, while rewarding their great games with real money in their pocket.”

At this point, completely changing course was all the OUYA could do, so long as it wanted to continue existing in any capacity. To this end, ‘OUYA Anywhere’ (following a half-commital rebrand from its original “Everywhere” moniker) was meant to further propagate the Discover storefront, in the hopes that the company might subsist on software royalties. If OUYA could still convince indie developers that their marketplace gave their games the most prominent billing and features possible – now across a broader range of devices – they might well find a future as a distribution service. One of the first devices to explicitly support this new launcher-driven approach was Mad Catz’s own M.O.J.O. microconsole — originally positioned as a direct competitor of sorts to OUYA’s hardware offering.^[55] Desperate times for both manufacturers would make for strange bedfellows in this latest development. In celebrating this sure-to-be long-running era of cooperation between the two parties, Julie of course had a freshly-written statement for the press: “Today’s announcement signifies the inception of a truly open platform where independent developers can bring their creations to the platforms where gamers actually play: everywhere.”^[56] The accidental admission / inadvertent implication that OUYA’s own console was not to be counted as a “platform where gamers actually play” did not go unmocked.

Finally, it felt as if the OUYA had found its niche within the games industry, and seemed to have made peace with it. The coming months proved uneventful as far as public fiascos, thanks in large part to the company largely settling into a more passive role: Rather than fruitlessly pushing their hardware or continuing to foolishly plot on conquering the console industry, the efforts now were being put towards expanding the reach of their software distribution and empowering indie developers. Continuing updates on the OUYA website largely centered around spotlight articles on upcoming games and affiliated developers, with occasional news of marketplace optimizations and newly-supported OUYA Anywhere / Everywhere devices (largely emerging in the Chinese market). Increasingly, it was no longer Julie Uhrman being credited with these updates; as other personalities from within the company attempted to establish themselves, and as Julie was likely shifting her focus to some outside business ventures. All that was left to do was wait and see if this new software royalties-focused model could ultimately prove to keep the company afloat.

… Okay, so there’s actually one more hardware-related debacle to share here, and boy howdy is it a doozy. Some of you may remember when television’s Reading Rainbow came to Kickstarter to stage a comeback of sorts, where they planned to deliver a veritable library of content on a mobile app [and directly to classrooms]? They ended up getting a fair bit of press over the course of their campaign, before ultimately quintupling their $1 million funding goal. Naturally, OUYA wanted to get a piece of this action while the campaign was still ongoing, and so entered into a promotional agreement with LeVar Burton’s organization: OUYA would provide 500 limited edition consoles as incentive for the $250 backer tier, to be designed with a custom “Butterfly-in-the-Sky Blue” color scheme and signed by none other than Mr. Burton himself.^[57] The deal would also see Reading Rainbow’s forthcoming app come to the OUYA’s storefront, of course. However – due to an issue with the small size of the planned production run (a meager 155 units that backers had pledged for) – the promise of custom-colored OUYAs was ultimately reneged on; with OUYA instead providing a batch of already-produced original-run consoles in their stead.^[58] At the very least, LeVar Burton would still make good on his obligation to sign them all, and each console would come paired with bonus $10 game cards for use on the OUYA marketplace.

Getting back to the matter of software: November 24th had seen OUYA hitting the 1,000 available apps milestone on their marketplace.^[59] An impressive number to be sure — even if their Discover page still lacked much of the basic functionality needed to actually navigate a catalogue of that size. But that’s neither here nor there: The number was impressive enough to help the company in making their appeal to China’s largest e-commerce company, Alibaba. OUYA would ultimately receive a generous $10 million injection of capital from the mega-corporation in January of 2015, and enter into an agreement that would see a Chinese-market version of OUYA’s Somewhere-or-other service appearing on devices manufactured / sold by Alibaba — including their own ‘Tmall Box 2’ set-top box, and Xiaomi’s line of ‘Mi’ Android devices.^[60] While these names and brands may not mean much to Western readers, they certainly meant something to OUYA: The potential for massive international business. As per a list of fun trivia facts provided by OUYA’s PR department: “An estimated 266 million Chinese gamers play at least 2 hours per month. China’s online game operators made $13.5 billion in 2013. 649 million Chinese are now connected to the internet.”^[61] And now, that market would be opened to them, courtesy of none other than China’s largest commerce company. The future looked bright once more for OUYA.

And then it was all over.

** Testament to the restraint of the developers at Numinous Games (comprising the mother and father of the deceased child); they saw fit to defend OUYA in the face of the ill-conceived tweet, and did not hold them as contemptible for it. By their account: “A person innocently tweeted GET SOME to promote us, in good faith. The Internet smelled blood, and pounced. It didn’t matter what we thought about it, or that the community manager didn’t mean it that way. It didn’t matter that the head of developer relations, who brought us to Ouya, immediately proved to us that our best interest was her first priority. It didn’t matter that a founder fought for our deal even when Ouya’s profitability wasn’t guaranteed, or that the head of Ouya thinks about charity and the value of developers before profit. None of that mattered. What mattered is that we, the nameless mob GOT SOME.”^[47b]

“Thank You for Believing.”

At some undisclosed point after the OUYA’s launch, the company received an undisclosed sum of venture lending from the firm TriplePoint Capital — choosing, of course, not to publicly disclose the news of this dealing to the public. As you might’ve guessed, exact details on this whole transaction are a little difficult to come by! We can at least assume that the sum OUYA was loaned by TriplePoint exceeded the $10 million investment line by Alibaba, and further figure out that OUYA had tripped their debt covenant come April of 2015. As such, when TriplePoint proved unwilling to budge during debt renegotiation proceedings, the only solution was to sell the company — and fast, at that. By Uhrman’s account in an internal memo: “Given our debtholder’s timeline, the process will be quick. We are looking for expressions of interest by the end of this month. […] We have the largest library of Android content for the TV (still more than Amazon) — hells ya!”^[62]

To put all that in some simpler terms: OUYA had chosen to borrow money from a venture capital firm, as they were likely in a strait where they needed immediate funds, but were unable to convince investors at the time to take the usual risk on them. In April, either the deadline for paying back said loan came due, or they had tripped some other term of their debt agreement. Lacking the full sum of money to pay the loan off, and failing to convince their loaners to give them a more significant length of time to collect said money, the only option for the company was to find a buyer willing to accept full responsibility for the debt in the process of buying them out. It’s the potential for situations like this which are why entering into debt covenants are generally advised against by financial analysts — to the point where the story of OUYA is now cited as one of the “cautionary tales” meant to scare companies off the idea.^[63]

In any event: OUYA were now trapped in the terms of their arrangement, and could not afford to be picky about potential buyers. What seemed like the likely / ideal scenario at the time would’ve been for Alibaba to bail out the ailing company, and to allow their operations to resume as they had been — with the American company continuing to support the Chinese commerce giant in the software distribution market. However, it seemed as though the conglomerate were not sufficiently moved by OUYA’s plight, and were plenty content to watch the situation play out from afar. Finally, in August, a buyer had stepped up to acquire the fledgling startup: A fellow American gaming hardware manufacturer in Razer Inc.^[64] When official announcement of the acquisition had actually came out a month later, one key detail caught some off guard. Namely, that Razer had no interest or intention of absorbing the hardware development / manufacturing aspects of OUYA’s business.^[65] Rather, their interest in taking in the once-promising startup was to bolster their own games distribution projects in development — the Forge TV and Cortex games platforms. Furthermore, acquiring OUYA would allow Razer to inherit the company’s contract with Alibaba, giving Razer an “in” to the lucrative Chinese market.

Razer were even gracious enough to offer jobs to employees coming from OUYA’s technical development and developer relations teams, for those interested in continuing in their employment. However, one name that would not be making the jump to “Team Green” would be that of OUYA’s original CEO and founder. Julie Uhrman stated her intent to part ways via Twitter, where she capped off an hour-long thread spent thanking all those who had helped to support the OUYA with a comparatively succinct sign-off message: “OUYA was a once in a lifetime experience. Now, I’m off to find the next…stay tuned!” Her departure at this moment in time was fortunate, as she would manage to avoid facing a soon-to-follow fiasco in the coming days.

Say, remember the Free the Games fund, and how OUYA had promised to offer some cash incentives to developers who completed their games and published them as timed exclusives for the console? Well, one had to wonder if those terms would be null and void, considering the OUYA marketplace was no longer going to be maintained. Luckily, OUYA had a succinct answer for inquiring developers: The company would no longer be honoring their end of any still ongoing agreements, and even if they wanted to, the allocated money no longer existed. As if to make sure that this bad news was broken to developers in the least pleasant manner possible; OUYA representatives “insisted” that individual meetings with developers to discuss these circumstances take place exclusively over Skype calls (which folk speculated was a deliberate effort to avoid “leaving a paper trail”), and strongly suggested that affected parties should not take their stories to the press.^[66] Needless to say, this left a number of developers (roughly 27 involved in the initiative) in some incredibly awkward situations — with some now facing further-reaching financial uncertainty. The story of one developer in particular who was left worrying he would be unable to pay back a $5,000 loan to his family (which he had taken out in order to pay a graphic artist for their services) helps put the whole matter into perspective.

No, it should not come as a surprise that Razer stepped in to do the right thing here: It’d have been an absolute public relations nightmare for them if they hadn’t. As such, they quickly established new deals for the affected Free the Games Fund refugees, wherein they would provide the cash to back promised funding milestones for any developers still working on getting their games completed — regardless of whether or not they decided to release as exclusives on Razer’s storefront.^[67] Sure, there was some convoluted stipulation about having to give away some number of copies of their games for free on said storefront, but this new structure at least gave the involved developers something resembling a path toward getting the money they were rightfully owed. For comparison, and to demonstrate how much priority OUYA had placed on resolving the issue: Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan had not even heard about the outstanding debts to developers until the day the news story broke publicly, as nobody at OUYA had bothered to inform their buyers of the ongoing obligations of funding program. By their estimation, a clause in the contracts they had the developers sign (wherein they would no longer be obligated to pay up in the case of a company buy-out) had already excused them from any further payments.^[66b] By all indications, executives within OUYA would have been plenty content to have just left things at that.

With this little matter finally squared away, there was little else left for the OUYA brand to do but stagnate. Even with Razer absorbing the OUYA’s library into its own Cortex / Forge devices (by means of OUYA Everywhichway), they seemed to have little interest in maintaining any further upkeep or curation efforts. It seemed as though developers would still be able to upload and update games on the service for a period of time afterward, for whatever these efforts were worth. And for those who still owned a dedicated OUYA console of their own, they would still be able to use said devices as they had previously. Razer had promised to “keep the lights on for at least a year,”^[68] which actually ended up extending into another four more years of uptime. During this period, the OUYA branding even saw some use as a publishing label — in bringing Mercenary Kings and 2064: Read Only Memories to Android devices in 2016. But that’s all the OUYA name amounted to by this juncture: A branding for Razer to use as they saw fit, and the label for a catalogue of games now available on more sophisticated devices. The inevitability was that Razer would eventually run out of practical uses for the OUYA branding. It was only a matter of when.

As it turned out, the “when” brings us to where we are at the time of this writing: Faced with the end of support for Razer’s Forge TV endeavors, and the OUYA [and MadCatz MOJO] now set to sunset with it. With the games market for Android TV boxes no longer viewed as lucrative venture, there’s no longer a financially-motivational reason for Razer’s business to continue supporting them. And when the servers shut down which handle OUYA’s services authentication, all the software on the platform will no longer be able to access their purchase confirmations — effectively reverting apps back to their demo / trial modes (if such modes were ever even available). It’s the nightmare of the digital future come to life; wherein it’s revealed that the products you naïvely believed you “owned” are suddenly revoked from you with no recourse. C’est la vie.

Of course, at this point, you’re free to re-purchase most of those games you may have once owned on OUYA on any number of other platforms. By and large, the “best” that the Discover storefront had to offer (as well as plenty of the worst, and near everything in-between) have made themselves available on other consoles and operating systems. Given the limited financial viability of OUYA’s storefront – even in its brief heyday – it should be no wonder that most developers freed up their exclusives as soon as they were able; bringing them to the Play Store, Steam, PS4 and beyond. And in doing so, a number of games that would’ve simply been left to languish condemned to the OUYA would go on to flourish as multiplatform releases.

In addition to the aforementioned TowerFall moving on to far bigger and better things, another example of a couch competitive battle game that did quite well for itself post-OUYA would be Landon Podbielski’s Duck Game. With Adult Swim Games picking up publishing duties across Steam, PS4, and most recently Nintendo’s Switch; the game has proven itself as a cult favorite, and continues to maintain a still-active player community. By the testimony of Corptron Games Corp’s sole developer on Twitter; “Duck Game absolutely wouldn’t have existed without [the OUYA] or the people who worked so hard to make it possible. Working with them was the first time that I was truly able to say that I worked as an indie developer.” Though That Dragon, Cancer would ultimately launch outside the terms of its original OUYA exclusive debut (owing to the state of the company by launch year 2016), developer Ryan Green still poured one out for the former startup, for all their assistance in helping to see the game to market: “Thank you for making the things you thought *should* exist a reality @playouya. We are deeply grateful to you for giving us the hand up our tiny studio needed to make sure our unconventional project saw the light of day.”

In listening to the testimonials of developers who worked with OUYA during their prime, you get the genuine sense that the company and its representatives were truly passionate about their community outreach. It was the part of the job most ex-staffers seem to most fondly look back on, and which the developers who were involved seem to point to as having been the company’s biggest strength. In the interest of highlighting one such example, I reached out to friend of the site @boogadrew: Curator of the ‘Play Different’ YouTube channel, and at one time an active developer for the microconsole.

“The team were great to work with, and the game submission process kept streamlined. They even had my back when I caused a minor controversy. I worked on a game called Those Darn Nipples, which was made for the ‘Boob Jam’; a dev event where people were tasked to make games about breasts without sexualising them. TDN got a positive response when it was released as part of this jam, so I ported it over to Ouya with content warnings, censored screenshots, and locked it under the mature rating, just in case.

Well, boy howdy, it sure caused a stir on the forums, with many people being outraged at the game, thinking it was going to open the floodgates to porn games (missing the point of the game to be about non-sexualisation), and one very worried Ouya owner voiced concerns about his wife seeing it. But I felt I did everything correctly, and the game DID have its fans. Among them were the Ouya team, who featured the game on the main storefront, much to the dismay of those on the forums.

Another game I ported over, Groin Gravitators (a game consisting of male crotch closeups for 90% of the time which naturally didn’t stir controversy at all), was featured at IndieCade, and the Ouya team supported it at their own tent with marketing out of their own pocket. The team were also incredibly friendly and really believed in their product. So yes, overall it was a fantastic experience for me.” ~ @boogadrew

Of course, at the end of the day, OUYA was still a business, and their primary operating goal had always been to drive profits. Hardly a criticism, so much as a simple reality of the games industry. And when the company had failed in that pursuit, all that goodwill they had fostered was worth about as much as a hill of beans. For developers who may still bear bitterness towards OUYA for their broken promises and forever-withheld royalties,** their perspectives are also just as valid. OUYA existed as a contradiction, wrapped in wishful thinking, trapped inside a delusion: It was as optimistic and forward-thinking as it was deeply flawed and stuck in the past. It served as the intersection between the indie spirit and unchecked capitalism. And at the center of this whole convoluted construct was one woman, whose vision had seen the company through its greatest successes and most dismal failures.

In case you were somehow worried about Julie Uhrman’s futures after OUYA, don’t be: She landed just fine after the fall. After just a few months off; she headed business development for a virtual reality developer (Jaunt VR), went on to oversee ‘Over-The Top Ventures’ for Lionsgate’s television division, and currently serves as ‘President of Media’ for no less than Playboy. On top of that, she serves in cushy ‘Advisory’ capacity to companies including Fitz Frames (a 3D-printed glasses producer), Act One Ventures (a VC firm with a focus on UCLA alumni), and a Venice Beach startup by the name Wonder — who are currently in development of an Android device / operating system geared towards gaming.^[69] I would figure that despite how busy Julie keeps herself these days, she’s probably already sitting on enough money to float her and hers for the rest of their natural lives. And hell; even if she wasn’t, and all her current companies shut down tomorrow, she’d still have job offers pouring out the door.

It’s very easy to be critical of Julie, and equally as difficult to actually feel sorry for her. But all that being said, and as [deservedly] hard as I feel I’ve been on her over the course of this article; I can’t say I find her outright “despicable,” as I do so many other CEOs in the games industry. For one thing, I believe Julie really did genuinely care about games as a medium, rather than seeing them simply as a business. She can honestly claim to have been involved with the scene her whole life; having spent her childhood dialing into a local BBS, learning Pascal, and taking dates to the arcade.^[70] And in her vision for her first games industry startup, she sought to encourage the growth of independent developers, as she understood them to be vital to the future of the industry. And when she isn’t busy playing business savvy, her other ongoing passion project is promoting queer voices — speaking to her own life experience as a lesbian. Obviously, none of this is to imply that she is somehow “above reproach” just because she’s gay and loves games: It’s only to say that her intentions carried merit, more so than most of her peers in the Silicon Valley and beyond.

Of course, good intentions aren’t enough to save a doomed games company from inevitable collapse. So, what exactly was it that doomed OUYA’s console aspirations? Because – to be clear, here – the OUYA never stood a chance from the get-go, and there’s still plenty for the industry to learn from its failure. I suppose one of the more obvious points here is that as hard as manufacturers might try (and boy howdy, do they keep trying), there’s no room for a fourth console in the current market. Even if you stake your claim on the so-called “hardcore audience,” or somehow think you’ll steal away the attention of the casual consumer through the sheer power of price points, you’re still never going to establish the install base that you need to keep your operation afloat. Success in the market isn’t a simple matter of “having a killer app” or building a wholly unique software library: It’s about ubiquity — already being and/or quickly becoming a household name. As noble a goal as it might be to focus a console around independent developers and smaller games, it’s still an entirely inelegant solution to a nuanced problem. As it turns out, pushing the major manufacturers to make accommodations for / give more prominent space to the indies did more for that corner of the market than the OUYA could’ve ever dreamed of.

There’s also an argument to be made that the OUYA was a victim of its own hype: That the runaway success of its Kickstarter campaign set public expectations they could never hope to achieve. Certainly, the influence of the games press and a very vocal hobbyist community serve a major role in steering public opinion on games and consoles; and once that opinion begins to waver or wane, so too can a product’s sales. Julie’s unfortunate propensity for putting her foot in her mouth certainly fed into continued “negative” reporting on said subjects, and added fuel to fires set by more cynical commentators. Past a certain point, OUYA (as a company) had completely lost control over their market narrative, and there was nothing they could do to grab back the reins. Each stumble they faced was reported on as a freefall, and even good news was picked apart until a negative could be found and focused on. And for as many times as OUYA could say that they were listening to feedback, or taking the community’s input into account; they could only feasibly change so much about the way their business was structured, or keep up with so many of the concerns being rightfully raised. Their team simply wasn’t big enough to handle the sheer volume of expectations being placed on them — despite how “big” folk seemed to treat them as, with their having made so much money and so many promises in their early days.

Of course, there’s also a more obvious observation to be made here, which itself may have been enough to derail the whole endeavor: The OUYA, as it was initially designed and manufactured, simply made for a bad video game console. Boasting technical specs weaker than some contemporary smartphones (not to even mention its console competitors), a difficult-to-navigate digital marketplace serving as its sole means of distribution, and a controller unfit to occupy a bargain bin with the worst third-party N64 controllers; the simple fact of its design was that none of it was very good. I’m sure Yves Béhar cost a lot of money to consult, and I know his reputation and successful track record precedes him. But boy howdy, this was no creative masterstroke, I tell you what. As nice as stuffing all your system’s guts into the tiniest box possible sounds, and for as sleek as a user interface may look in screenshots, these are still things requiring extensive testing to determine whether or not they’re actual practical. At the end of the day, the OUYA simply couldn’t pass these tests. And without those basics of functionality in place, you can’t establish a viable game console.

If you’re looking for a simple diagnosis for “cause of death” for the company as a whole, there’s certainly a definitive one to be pointed to: That ill-advised debt covenant with TriplePoint Capital. If OUYA could have forgone such a risky gamble, they would’ve likely been able to limp along for some while longer — between their Alibaba contract and shift to a publishing-focused model. Whether or not the company continuing to exist in this capacity would’ve been of benefit to the industry can only be speculated. At that point, you may as well start asking other entirely hypothetical  questions, like “What if the OUYA had actually been successful as a console?” The answer to both those questions is the same: There’s the chance the games industry would be somehow different than where it is today. Maybe the most unsatisfying answer possible, to be sure; but I’ve never been a fan of broad hypotheticals, anyhow. If you’re looking for some more pointed questions to speculate on, I’ve got a few that might interest you: Would the major manufacturers and publishers have been as quick to embrace indie games if the OUYA hadn’t failed them? Could a more refined focus on the devkit aspect of the console have inspired more would-be creators? Will independent developers and more reasonably-budgeted games still be able to save the games industry from itself?

Hell if I know the answers to any of those questions. All I can say with certainty is, OUYA offered no practical answers or solutions to those game industry woes, either. Get some.

** Yes, there are still potentially thousands of dollars of software sales revenue sitting on OUYA’s proverbial table; inaccessible by the developers of said games, and unlikely to ever be compensated.

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