The Current State Of Stadia's State Share

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

State Share allows players to share their current state of play via a simple URL/link, making it feel like a major innovation in collaborative gaming. The feature was developed exclusively for the platform. It’s aim: to allows users to share certain elements of their game in the same way you take and send screenshots and videos of your game. Before the launch of this exciting, interesting and unique capability, Google’s ambitious exclusive game called Crayta launched a beta version of the exciting function.

According to Catherine Hsiao, product manager of Google Stadia, the feature which they call “State Share” allows players to save certain elements of their gameplay as a lateral video recording to allow others to play the same section of the game that the video recording shows. Stadia can also record state media such as videos, screenshots and live streams created within the game. If a player decides to share media, they will be asked for permission to include their state of play in the media. Once shared, other Stadia players can simply jump straight in to that exact point in the game to play themselves.

Other Uses

Hsiao says she expects State Share to make it easier for content creators to interact with their audiences, even going as far as to show videos and live streams where they take on challenges from fans they want to see and where they can share their own game states to get viewers to try them out for themselves.

Speedrunners have already used the feature to share unique speedrunning challenges for specific missions in Hitman, a game that streamers can play with viewers to create challenges they can stream.

We’ve seen how the Hitman trilogy uses the feature to share advanced weapons and equipment which have yet to be unlocked in-game, and lets others try them out if they haven’t yet unlocked them. Certain weapons and items cannot be unlocked in Hitman 3, but you can experience them via state stock by clicking on the link without affecting your progress in the game.

How Does It Work?

state share - avRUIKDp3jd6CdKJkDnTBQKQ8cwud5oidioLitza58

State share allows users to share game state with URLs from in-game capture.

When you play a game that supports state sharing, playable segments of the game (so-called game states) are attached to a video clip or screenshot taken of a particular part of the game. When someone shares one of their game states, you can play it and experience unique variations of the game. State Share is not just a simple screenshot, as other players are able to play the state of the game of the user, meaning that they can play with the same weapons and charging points as well as unique situations and fun moments.

At GDC 2019, Google announced Stadia for Game Developers and State Share was the most prominent feature publicly promoted by the cloud gaming platform as possible. The feature is still in beta, but what it has is the ability to store things like world states and the position of players and what’s in their inventory, which gives the feature a lot of potential when it leaves the beta and gets more functionality to work with other games. Unlike the short demos we are used to before the release of an end product, State Share gives players the opportunity to play extensive demos of games that they are not sure they will like, but which they may end up loving enough to buy.

Stadia is a Google cloud-based gaming platform that allows players to make and share links with friends and other players so that players can share with one click in their games. Weave has seen players in the Stadia community share games on Reddit with State Share and challenge each other on the entire Hitman trilogy. You can access games on Stadia via the subscription plan or buy them directly from Stadia, but if you do not have a game on the platform yet, a state share link will bring you to a Stadia Shop page for that game.