As far as I was concerned, Google should probably not have entered the Games space. Why? Because curating game designs is not something it's set up to do, and the relevant competencies don't seem to be in the leadership. Going in, as far as I'm concerned, was a big risk.
My opinion was, and still is, that there are two reasonable strategies:
1. Don't enter Games with G+.
2. Enter Games and do it right.
I saw going into Games in the wrong way as something that would embarrass and kill the product, just as Zynga contributed to social network fatigue in 2011. However, that didn't happen. Google+ Games failed, but its failure hasn't hurt Google+ in a measurable way.
I still believe that unacceptable risk of embarrassment was taken, but the course that events took (G+ Games fails, but doesn't damage Google+ wholesale) was one that I did not predict.
I don't see any support for this assertion. When was this decision taken? How many people were allocated to this "need" and for how long? Google has a vast services portfolio and a vast user base. Rather than spending cycles on a complicated area that is not a core competence, why not leverage the many services that people already use to drive interaction with G+? (Which is what Google has actually done, so far as I can tell from the outside.)