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Player-Owned Servers and the Future of Multiplayer Gaming with James Zinn
45 Plays3 months ago
Episode Summary:
In this episode, we’re joined by James Zinn, Partnership Manager at Shockbyte, to dive deep into the world of server hosting, multiplayer game experiences, and player-owned game servers. James shares his insights on the balance between cost and control in multiplayer game development, and how developers can utilize player-owned servers to foster community, enable user-generated content (UGC), and manage their server hosting costs.
We also explore James' journey into gaming, his role at Shockbyte, and how Shockbyte is providing solutions for game developers and players alike. Whether you’re a developer looking for alternatives to AWS or Microsoft Azure, or a gamer curious about how multiplayer servers operate behind the scenes, this episode has something for you.
Timestamps for Key Takeaways:
- [03:30] Understanding Different Server Types: P2P vs. Dedicated Servers
James breaks down the different types of multiplayer servers, explaining the pros and cons of P2P (peer-to-peer) and dedicated servers. He also discusses why many game developers choose one over the other, using examples like Battlefield and League of Legends. - [17:30] Player-Owned Game Servers: Benefits for Developers and Communities
James highlights the benefits of player-owned game servers (POGS), including how it lowers costs for developers and encourages community engagement. He emphasizes the importance of UGC in building strong gaming ecosystems and how this model allows players to take ownership of their gaming experiences. - [24:30] Monetizing Player-Owned Servers
James shares real-world examples of how players can monetize their custom servers by selling in-game items or experiences. We discuss how games like GTA and Minecraft allow server owners to run their own in-game economies and the impact of this on gaming communities. - [32:00] Conference Experiences and Networking in the Gaming Industry
James reflects on his experiences at major gaming conferences like Gamescom, GDC, and DICE, offering advice on networking in the gaming industry. He shares personal stories of meeting influential people in the gaming world and the importance of putting yourself out there to build meaningful connections. - [36:30] Advice for Aspiring Game Developers
For listeners hoping to break into the gaming industry, James offers practical advice on how to get started. He emphasizes the importance of hands-on experience, whether through volunteering, joining game communities, or creating your own games using platforms like Unity or Unreal Engine.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Player Engagement Podcast. Greg here, and this is just an intro to what you're about to listen to. Today, we're talking with James Zinn from ShockBite. We're going to talk about multiplayer and the different types of servers that exist for it. We're going to talk about P2P versus dedicated servers. We're going to talk about POGs and why you should look into POGs. What's the benefit and how you can monetize it from both a player as well as a publisher or developer?
00:00:25
Speaker
And just networking in the industry and my support to go out there, reach out and make your dreams come true. So this is a great episode. James is a really fun person to talk with and I hope you enjoy this episode.
00:00:43
Speaker
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Player Engage podcast. Today, we are joined by James Zinn. He is the head of partnerships for ShockBite. And he also has his own little studio he's working on called Blue Scarf Games. We're going to talk about all things server hosting, which is kind of beyond my knowledge. so I'm going to sound like a real newbie here for a little bit. But before we dive into it, James, thank you so much for being here today. Anything you want to say about yourself?
00:01:09
Speaker
um ah Just firstly, thank you so much for having me, Greg. is It's an amazing talking to you. um And everyone at Keywords is absolutely great. um I'm James. um I'm part of the Shopify team. And I've been working honestly in multiplayer and in gaming for probably about two years. And there is nothing like the gaming space. And everyone here is incredible. And I couldn't recommend it more than anything else. so oh Yeah, no, I appreciate it. I'm really excited to have you here today. and I am. I am, because, you know, and again, honestly, I don't know a lot about server hosting. I've worked on servers in the past, but when it comes to video game hosting, it's way beyond my knowledge. And, you know, we always see the ads out there for AWS or Azure, who's giving you tons of credits to
Understanding POGS vs Traditional Hosting
00:01:54
Speaker
come on here. And then when you and I were talking earlier, you were telling me about POGS, which is called Player-Owned Gaming Services for Servers.
00:02:01
Speaker
Services or service you can correct me there, but and that's all over my head, right? So kind of from a really high level Start to the level set with me and whoever is listening, right? Like what are we talking about here? Yeah, so What we're gonna be talking about today in general is As we're gonna be deep diving I think just into multiplayer in general there is so much going on in the multiplayer space to talk about and and I think that a lot of us as gamers sort of kind of skim over that while we're playing we're playing the game we don't really we're connecting to the online servers and we're having our match and then that match lasts 20 minutes 40 minutes.
00:02:39
Speaker
um And then we leave the match, and it says, you win or you lose. And then you kind of forget that there was people who ran that background. um um But there is. There's an a massive, massive, massive industry that um allows that player interaction to actually happen in the background. And there's tons of of background tech people that are way more knowledgeable than I am and and all of the coding involved on how to get that set up. But it's a really interesting space that I'd really like to dive into.
00:03:07
Speaker
So um sort of kind of diving into where we fit into everything um and what I've been chatting about with
Types of Multiplayer Servers
00:03:15
Speaker
you. um So there is three different types of of multiplier in general. I mean there's there's a lot more but three different that we'll be talking about. We have offline, we have p2p, and then we have some form of dedicated. and um and And P2P is very close to offline. um Offline would mean that you're sitting on a couch with your buddies, you're playing Mario Kart, you're playing um the good old couch multiplayer games. Some people, you know, like Power Falls engine. like I'm a huge fan of couch multiplayer. I have way too many of them.
00:03:50
Speaker
um Some people may know P2P games. Those would be games that are like fighting games would be a great example. that's usually They're usually just one-on-one. And I've also been told a lot that the RTS genre um is P2P primarily. They are asynchronous. They don't usually need to transfer a lot of information. um Or it's not between a lot of people.
00:04:12
Speaker
So those are PTP. And then the final area is called Dedicated Servers. And this is what all of us understand as being your Call of Duty, your League of Legends, your Minecraft, um ah your you Rust, your Falheim, anything that you're going to be connected to is going to involve a server whatsoever. And that's what what we've been talking about.
00:04:35
Speaker
It breaks down into a whole bunch of different areas um where there is like actual dedicated servers or there are player-owned servers. um And when people are trying to build their own game, um there's a lot to talk about on which direction to go.
00:04:53
Speaker
um And there's a lot of headache involved because there's a lot of prices and I'm wondering like, how am I going to do this?
Financial Challenges in Server Hosting
00:05:01
Speaker
So I think that there's there's a deep discussion to be had about what che people should be worried about and what the industry should be thinking um should maybe be educated on more.
00:05:13
Speaker
Okay. So this is making sense to me. All right. Offline is our good old fashioned golden. I are super smashed by those we're playing with our friends. He fighting RTS. I assume PDP is basically you guys are just connecting with each other. There's just not a whole group of people. So right in there.
00:05:30
Speaker
And then you have dedicated servers, which I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, I remember I feel like when Battlefield 3 came out, that's the first time I became aware, like the game has to support custom servers, right? EA will put out their own servers for Battlefield, but you can choose to get your own server where then if you want to have your friends join and it's like your private Battlefield where you where no one else is going to join you. Am i I heading in the right direction there?
00:05:58
Speaker
I would say that you're right and that's kind of what we're here to talk about today, but not every company agrees. Okay, and now I want to start digging into that. well Why wouldn't a company agree with that?
00:06:10
Speaker
so um i Basically, and we can use Battlefield as a great example, because I am a huge fan of Battlefield. I've been playing Battlefield since Battlefield Bad Company 1. I am sorely addicted to that title. um And they actually not too long ago shut down the Battlefield Bad Company servers, which made me cry. um But there are fortunately still community servers running, so you can actually still play, um because they made it an option for that game.
00:06:37
Speaker
um But for more recent titles, um such as the most recent Battlefield 1 and things like that, um and not I'm not super aware, but I don't think that community servers are a thing anymore. um Basically, what needs to happen during development is that um the developers sort of give out their own code, their server to their server development executables um to the community. And they say, well, we're really excited for you guys to make your own creations. But it also opens up a slew of potential issues and a lack of control for them as developers.
00:07:18
Speaker
um And it also means that if people are playing on their community servers, people are not playing on their official servers, where they do have more control. They've got control over cosmetics. They've got control over um player counts and rules and and how gameplay is going to function.
00:07:36
Speaker
um and things like that, and updates to the game. And and the things like Rust would have more control over um over skins and and things like that. Now, Rust actually also has community servers, so this is how they've chosen to do this as well. um But depending on how much control a company would like over their servers decides how do they choose to go.
Impact of Server Control on Game Design
00:07:59
Speaker
um League of Legends, as one example, um very much wants every game to be very, very competitive, wants to play out exactly like they want it, and they want all of their skins to have the same value across every single match, which makes a lot of sense because people will pay a lot of ah lot of money um to have their skin full of counts.
00:08:20
Speaker
um so they don't release their server to their server code. There's no one no one's allowed to boot up their own matches. so um They're allowed to make custom matches, um but that's within the confines of their own game. It's on their own servers. They still have control over the value of their skins. Would it be safe to say most esports type of games wouldn't allow this to make it a fair playing field?
00:08:45
Speaker
um you Some, um it very much does depend on the game. Counter-Strike, I'd consider a pretty big e-sport game. um But they also actually have custom servers. okay um So those are modded to all the biggest heights and you can make custom maps, you can make custom game modes, people import skins and ah lots of cool stuff. um ah There's tons of different options for CSGO and CS2. So it really does depend on what kind kind of control that the developer is looking for.
00:09:24
Speaker
And I have a feeling it's gonna be the same answer here, but we're seeing a lot of games with user generated content, right? UGC is like the big thing this year, last year, right? UGC typically...
00:09:35
Speaker
ah Do you see it more often when you do have these developers that allow for custom servers? Like ah is UGC higher in those games than the ones that are locked down? Yeah, I think that ah Honestly, um it's been it's been a great thing because UGC is so big that um It it encourages people to have more ownership of the games and we can start talking about that about this now as well if you'd like um but um that you usually see being important to the game when you make ah but you make something unique for your game. So you made a skin and or you made a map. um People are excited to play on your map. That builds a community around your map. And you're excited because you made that map. And your your piece of that game now exists in the game. um So you kind of drive attention to the game because it's yours. um So there is self-advertising for the game. That's good for you. That's good for the that' good for the developer. um And then same comes with custom servers. so
00:10:34
Speaker
um which is POGS, a Player-Owned Game Servers, that self-advertises for the game because everyone wants to be involved in that new community you're building. um And it's really a great thing. um And we haven't even dived into the costs of actual server hosting yet.
00:10:51
Speaker
um which there are a lot of. um But UGC is absolutely massive when you're choosing this model. And usually when someone is developing a game, they actually decide to go with UGC first and then realize, oh wait, I actually should be choosing the POGS model instead because it allows the ownership of this section of multiplayer, which goes very well hand in hand with UGC.
00:11:17
Speaker
Okay. i'm I'm following so far. I'm not going to say I'm an expert yet, but maybe by the end of this, hour I'm going to be better. But yeah before we continue down this conversation, let's talk about James and how did you end up here on the partnership side for a server hosting company?
00:11:33
Speaker
Yeah. so So I've been i've been doing ah video game work for a long time. I think that the but me and you have talked about this. but We've been talking about this for a while. um But I think the biggest thing about getting in the gaming industry is always just working it like because you're you're passionate about it. um I've been passionate about it since I was in college.
00:11:59
Speaker
um Even when I was flunking out the classes required to actually do game development, I said I didn't care and I made my own game anyway. No, I didn't end up releasing the game, but ah it showed me that it was what I wanted to do. um And even if I wasn't going to be the one developing it, this is what my lifeline is. And I was working in gaming and dividing my time to gaming conventions and gaming companies.
00:12:21
Speaker
um outside of it being even a paid opportunity just because it's what I love to do um and that sort of thing transformd transformed into social media roles in gaming and then into marketing roles in gaming um and then you start to meet people at higher steps in the gaming sphere and then you land new roles in gaming such as my role at ShockBite and it moved from there.
00:12:43
Speaker
That's awesome. I think, yeah, we we had a very similar similar kind of college experience, right? Where we both didn't do well in our classes. And I kind of just said, screw this. see you You kept going. So good for you. um But we both ended up here. So here we are. I love it. I love it. What was the first game you played that made you be like, this is what I want to do?
00:13:04
Speaker
oh Well, no one's going to know it, but I played this Star Wars tank game way way way way way back when just when I was a little old kid in front of the television on on an original Xbox way back when and I was immediately addicted. um And I can't even remember the name of it now, um but i' That game immediately cemented in me that I was never going to get out of gaming. um And ah since then, ah Fire Emblem has been a driving force for me, um which is a JRPG turn-based strategy game by Nintendo, and it runs
00:13:45
Speaker
Unfortunately, way too much of my life. Hey, that's what happens when you start working here, even before you're working here, it's, uh, it's addicting, right? Um, so let's talk about cloud hosting versus player owned gaming services, right? Like Amazon, Azure are huge. Why, why?
00:14:07
Speaker
Why do I want to look elsewhere rather than using systems like that? And are they better at certain certain things than POGs?
Cost Comparison: Cloud Hosting vs POGS
00:14:15
Speaker
Yeah. So um I ran a couple of numbers because I've been looking into it a lot. um And um for a developer,
00:14:23
Speaker
um you're When you're making your game, as as ah I even was, because besides Fire Emblem, Fire Emblem was maybe my only single player game that i I play. Everything else I play besides that is all multiplayer. It's like Battlefield, I play League of Legends, I play RuneScape, it's my game that I can't get away from. um It's all multiplayer games.
00:14:43
Speaker
um so um When you're a developer, as I am, and I'm making a multiplayer game, I'm looking at all my options, and you're looking at, well, I want to make dedicated servers. And you're looking at these two people, and you're looking at what the price is are going to look like. It usually comes in the form of um of like gigabytes per hour or something like that.
00:15:01
Speaker
um And it's imagine something like ah five cents an hour, which is a guess. This isn't necessarily true. um It's usually much more than this. um But imagine around five cents an hour. um Now, hopefully, you have 1,000 people playing. That would be lovely.
00:15:23
Speaker
It may not may not even be that many, and it may be more if your game does great. Like, if you look at Helldivers, you've got 50,000 people, way more than that, maybe 100,000 people. Depending on the game, Spectre just released to 20,000 people playing. Spectre Divide.
00:15:39
Speaker
ah It could be way more than that, but let's just say 1,000 because it's an easy number. So if it's $0.05 for 1,000 people to play for an hour. It's $50. That's not too bad. and That's one hour. um So throughout the day, some people will hop off. Some people will hop on. So for 24 hours a day, just about, that's going to be $1,200 to you as a baby developer just trying to release your game.
00:16:05
Speaker
And then you know if you if you hope this keeps up because your game is doing great, that that whole month is going to cost you $37,000.
00:16:16
Speaker
And that's that's just a start. And that's if you're that's if you're doing OK with players, just at a consistent 1,000 all day long. um And that's a lot of money for someone who just wants a match to last, for someone to hop into a match of League of legal Legends. It lasts 30 minutes. They win the game, and then they hop off um and hope that that's going on all day long.
00:16:40
Speaker
um so um It can cost a lot, even though it looks like a little when you're looking at what pricing looks like. um And it really eats into, I suppose, your dream, your budget. um So another option, if you are looking at UGC, um and even if you're not looking at UGC, um just like I talked about with CS2 and CSGO earlier, um and even Battlefield,
00:17:07
Speaker
um ah there's a lot of of opportunity to go with player-owned game servers. And that's because when you provide but you relinquish a little bit of that control to your players by making the server executable, which you have to make anyway, because you need something to be able to run on AWS, Microsoft Azure, and all this stuff anyway, you have to make this essentially anyway so that you can run it on this.
00:17:35
Speaker
um If you relinquish this executable to players and and other companies, um they can run it on their own, on whatever hardware they'd like, wherever they'd like around the world. um And that's at zero cost to you, which means that not only do they have the control to run it how they want, where they want, which would optimize their experience for them. um Because if someone say, if I'm playing on an EU server for in League of Legends, I'm going to be lagging. um But if I have control of where I want to play, I'm going to make sure my League of Legends server is going to be here. So not only are they going to have control, but it's going to have cost to do zero to run that server because I ran it.
00:18:21
Speaker
um Which is great and a lot of companies um actually successfully do this by making a server browser. I'm sure that. Anybody who's played a lot of games is right recognize the server browser ah SCP you've got rust battlefield as a server browser as well.
00:18:38
Speaker
um very common thing um and it's super easy. You can even just sort by most popular games and people can hop in or you can just press play and it usually will just jump you into a game that's looking or server that is looking for players, um which is essentially just matchmaking, which you can do. um It's something that we've really been pushing educationally because um developers don't know that this is an option that they can turn to, to really lower costs on them. They think that, okay, well, if I can't,
00:19:08
Speaker
If I can't afford $37,000 a month, I got to go P2P. And P2P can't handle their game of 12 players playing globally. That's a MOBA, like League of Legends. P2P can't handle that.
00:19:21
Speaker
So they do need to go dedicated and they're like, well, heck, I don't know what to do now. So I'm, I'm still a little lost, but I'm, but I'm getting a lot of this. Who are you selling to the players or the developers or both? Um, so I'm saying I'm, I'm telling I'm trying to educate, um, the developers. Okay.
00:19:43
Speaker
that they have an option that is good for them because there won't be any costs involved um and it's good for their communities um because it opens up UGC, it opens up a community self-advertising and it opens up performance of their game for them um because if they were trying to run it, it would be so costly to run it that I'd be worried about them trying to handle it. Yeah. Um, and the thing is, is that, um, if, if servers go down at at league of legends, right. For a day, it's not actually the legends fault because they're not, they don't own the hardware, right. They're using AWS or micro officer or somebody. Right. and But guess who gets blamed.
00:20:29
Speaker
Right, of course, it would be the legends. Right, but if if you gave out the dedicated server, because you're a developer, to someone else, to everybody else, and then that person's server goes down, it's not on you, because they know that that person owns the server. But do you think the player's sentiment would be any any different?
00:20:49
Speaker
That's a good question. um And it does vary. That's a good question. um But we do, because usually these um these networks, so that server network, will usually be so self-advertised. They'll have their own website. yeah um um or Or even on the Discord, ah it'll be they'll have their own Discord at a minimum. and They'll be like, join us, play on our server. um They'll be so self-owned.
00:21:17
Speaker
um Usually, they do know who to turn to to say, hey, it's down, and it's not the ah the developer. Do you see the developers supporting the community by by um offering these, by enabling your users to do this? like are Are developers incentivizing players to go build a server?
00:21:39
Speaker
um i I have seen um it be done quite often. um I think the most recent examples of this are our Rust has done this now and Shrouded did this, The Rising has done this, um they put buttons in their game, they do advertising on their socials. And they say, like, hey, um we've teamed up now with not only server hosts, but we're really looking to push a community aspect.
Community Servers and Player Engagement
00:22:07
Speaker
um And they have the community managers really push this hard and say, like, this game is looking to foster a community of servers. um And we'd like you guys to to really own a part of our game through this player-owned game functionality.
00:22:29
Speaker
I'm going to go down a rabbit hole here and if you need me to stop, tell me to stop. But have you seen a place where players can start to monetize their server? Like, is it support like, Hey, Mountain Dew wants to advertise in my server and maybe at the top of there, there's like a little thing or something like that. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Well, that's actually, that's actually a big thing. Um, it's very, it's very funny because, um, honestly, uh,
00:22:54
Speaker
very, very early on. And this is kind of going back a long time, but um ah the way ChalkBite was sort of founded um was actually ah by our our CEO um who made his own Minecraft server um when he was like 14. And it was literally with like 20 bucks. And he just grew it up that way. And it got so popular and it was like a Call of Duty Zombies server. um And it literally was like advertising in there.
00:23:23
Speaker
And um it wasn't advertising other other products like this, but that is something you could do. um And the same thing happened with one of the other biggest Minecraft networks called Hypixel. um They were looking to do ah basically in-game advertising.
00:23:39
Speaker
um and it was going to be how they were willing to make a ton of money, um but the only reason that that's sort of recently fallen off is because games have started to put a in their EULA that you can't advertise other products within your game.
00:23:55
Speaker
um ah But there isn't anyone saying that you can't ah you can't push it outside of the game itself in your community once you've built it through the game.
00:24:09
Speaker
I assume you see a lot of these communities build a discord or something like that as well where they're all communicating so it's kind of like this whole ecosystem that's kind of being built. um well right What we actually see a lot as well is because um its this kind of loops back to ah ah Them need developers need to relinquish control a little bit. um If you imagine a GTA, there are tons of of GTA servers. I imagine everyone has seen maybe GTA roleplay servers, um things like that. um If you join a GTA roleplay server and you wanted that is a custom server that is owned by an individual um on their website, ah you could go and you could, with real money, maybe $5, $10, purchase an actual car in game.
00:24:53
Speaker
um And that would be how they would fund not only the server costs, but make money. um So you instead of buying skins through Riot Games, you're buying a car on the server.
00:25:05
Speaker
through ah through Greg. And the game supports that? Is it just me transferring the the car to that individual then? um Yeah, so there are a bunch within our giant multiplayer space, there are players um who are companies who make websites to connect that purchase to the game's API um and actually transfer it to the player.
00:25:28
Speaker
Interesting. That's crazy. So so there'd be ah not an infinite amount to these things. There's just a finite amount because I may not always be able to get the silver pickup truck or whatever, right? Because eventually there's no more left. Well, well ah they could do it like that if they wanted, but um they also they also probably just want to make a lot of money. so Yeah, I get it.
00:25:52
Speaker
All right, so about halfway through the podcast, I would like to do the fireball round where I'm just going to throw some questions at you. Let's do it. Ready for it? Yep, ready. All right, you kind of answered this one, but not completely. What is your favorite single player experience?
00:26:06
Speaker
um I'm trying to look for a different one that isn't Fire Emblem. I've been playing Valkyria Chronicles again, um which is World War II Fire Emblem. Oh, there you go, it's a Fire Emblem.
00:26:20
Speaker
ah Do you remember and do you want to share your first ever gamer tag? um ah I don't have a funny one. ah my My first one was over SirMillion, but my brother's was funny because it was randomly generated on Xbox and it was hopeful trash. Nice. Love it. um what is and Again, you may have answered this one. What is the first memory you have from gaming?
00:26:43
Speaker
The first real memory I had from gaming was just ah sitting back and playing at my grandmother's house ah with one of my friends on my dinky little laptop playing Roblox. Nice. And it's just one of my boys and ah it's it's just nostalgic.
00:27:09
Speaker
There you go. You, uh, when James was in elementary school, what were you dreaming of doing when you grew up? Um, definitely something gaming related. Uh, every single day at at elementary school, we would come in and we would start the computers and then we would play video games on them. So something already gaming related. And my last question, which people told me they don't like, but I'm going to continue to ask it is what did you have for breakfast? Uh,
00:27:36
Speaker
That's assuming I had breakfast. That's assuming. It's almost lunchtime. I know, right? I'm going to have cereal. There you go. For lunch or for breakfast? Every meal. Every meal. Lucky Charms. That's just what my son, you saw his video. It's ah what he had for breakfast too. You guys got something in common there. You need to tell him. He's he's a great interviewer.
00:27:56
Speaker
Thank you. He's gonna take my job one day. um Hopefully sooner than later. um There you go. You're off the hot seat. Thank you. um Your journey to where you got our today is fascinating, right? and you you You went from wanting to be a developer in some ways, and you are marketing your own partnerships. Where do you see yourself going? Right? what What's the dream? and And obviously, it's going to be a changing thing. But I'm curious kind of how you want to navigate this space. Yeah, so um ah overall, um i I find myself more and more just like ah you are, Greg. um and We've talked about this a bit. I think we're the talking kind of people. um there's There's a bunch of different kind of people in this space that are all really great at different things. um And I'm really ah not that great at development, as it turns out.
00:28:48
Speaker
um and But I do like to to to get people together and really accomplish cool things. um That's where I find myself thriving and but find myself having fun. um So I want to be project manager on things. I want to be project organizer on things. um And I want to be standing up on E3 with Greg right here. And then we're announcing this really cool thing that everybody's doing together. And that's where I see myself.
00:29:15
Speaker
I tell that on every job interview that I'm going to be up on E3 and and that's with with every company and we're all going to be doing the cool stuff. I love it. I love it. I feel that same sentiment, right? Just talk about it, share it. It's such a great, great audience, right? And it's just fun to be working and through that.
00:29:33
Speaker
yeah um A lot of games are going multiplayer, obviously, especially with mobile, right? And mobile's pretty much strictly multiplayer, not strictly, but pretty much, right? yeah I mean, from a high level, do you have any best practices? Like you are building a game or you're working on a game, right? Like when you take a look at it and you're thinking about, do I want to add multiplayer to this game? How do you start it in the beginning? So you you build that foundation for it, even if you're not ready to implement it out of the gate.
00:30:02
Speaker
Yeah, um and that's a fantastic question. It really is a fantastic question, because you need to think ahead on a lot of things. um um And what it really comes down to is being true to yourself and thinking, what do I need? Because while I i may be a part of company, um there's I even say this in my day to day work life, um there is no reason that a company should be selling something to somebody who doesn't need it. um And you need to be considering that just because everybody else is doing a thing. ah ah maybe Maybe we're talking about POGS here and maybe I sold you on POGS. um
00:30:41
Speaker
If POGS isn't what you need to be doing, if you're making an RTX or maybe you're making a one to three player top down story based game, um and P2P is better for you um because it costs nothing to the developer um and there isn't a lot of data that's transferred over, if that's better for you, then that is genuinely what you need to be going for. um But the development process on P2P is significantly different than a server executable um for development for a dedicated servers. so
00:31:15
Speaker
ah because you need to actually ah develop what a mirror is going to look like for everyone else's data transferring through. It's a little bit technical, and unfortunately, I've been through the process of of developing a little bit of P2P, hated it, never want to do it again, and I'm glad that I won't be. um But um I do know what it's like, and it is much different than creating that server executable. So thinking ahead on on on what what your game looks like and what it really needs um for the player experience um comes first and then you decide how you're going to build from there.
00:31:55
Speaker
So take a look at the full scope, kind of the dream and narrow it down to like the smallest side. How do we get started with the simplest way? don't Don't put too many tools in there that you're not going to end up using because then you're probably going to just trip yourself up in the in the long run. and And then you have to rewrite everything from scratch. i've I've had to remake my entire game probably three times over just because it's like, oh, well, this doesn't work the way I wanted it to. Are there tools that, I mean,
00:32:20
Speaker
And again, this might be a weird question, but like, do Unity or Unreal ah provide tools that help you get started with POGS if you wanted to do use something
Unity and Unreal Multiplayer Tools
00:32:29
Speaker
like that? Obviously, I think when we were talking earlier, so there's always these big buttons like, oh, connect to Azure, connect to AWS, right? Because they're probably paying a lot of money to get their stuff right in the game. But do Unity or Unreal provide the same tools for player-owned?
00:32:41
Speaker
um Yeah, they absolutely do. um And it is it is not as obvious as maybe Unity's multiplayer. Unity's multiplayer is another version of essentially Azure or something like that, that is Cloud server hosting. Unity has a built-in one called multiplayer, which, because it is by Unity, is even more obvious.
00:33:00
Speaker
ah ah to go along with launching something multiplayer. The buttons are huge. It says, would you like it to be multiplayer now? You say, yes, please. And then you press the button. um But there are a lot of options that say, like make a headless server now, make a dedicated server. um There isn't a lot of education around it. um But listening to podcasts like these, listening to words that I said like headless, dedicated, things like that will navigate you in the right direction through menus. um And being able to look that up through documentation is more than enough to kind of get you there.
00:33:30
Speaker
When we spoke last time, you're throwing around tools like multi-craft and pragma. How do those kind of fit into this? what I don't know if you can do like a TLDR on what those tools actually do. Yeah. um So ah last time what we sort of talked about um was a little bit more on um our side of the POGS industry.
00:33:50
Speaker
um And ah those tools that ah are are are a little bit separated from each other, so I'll break up write down what they are, and I can do a TLDR on it. um So ah Multicraft um in general is just ah one of the tools that a lot of us server hosts use to provide a panel for everyone in the industry. um And it was recently acquired by Nitrotto.
00:34:13
Speaker
um And there's a lot going on there, ah but that is the case. And um Pragma and Specific is an interesting um company who is ah allowing ah different developers to ah actually use their services to not be locked into a single um a ah AWS option. So um most of the time,
00:34:40
Speaker
When you choose a cloud server option, when you're choosing multiplayer, um they'll ask you, OK, well, need you need to stick with us for a year. It needs to cost for three years. But then you get a cheaper deal. um Fragma will say, OK, well, um if you come with us, we've made deals with everybody. um And you can swap freely between all of them. Interesting. So making switching easy for no matter what tools or systems you pick in the long run?
00:35:03
Speaker
um pretty sure. That's true. James does not work for pragma so we're not taking anything he says. I think. as a yeah As a fan of the industry and someone that wants to eventually speak at E3 and we met at Gamescom, what are the different conferences you've been to and I guess which one is most memorable for you?
00:35:27
Speaker
Yeah, um so ah I've been to a lot of conferences now um with ShockBite and it's been it's been a blessing to be able to do so. i've ah Gaming conventions in general is something that I've been doing my entire life. That's basically how I got into gaming.
00:35:41
Speaker
um I've been to ones all around Florida, basically all of them in in the state. um But ah ones that I've kind of been to outside of that are are like Gamescom, Cologne, I've been to DICE, I've been to GDC, um and then I've been to like Holiday, Missouri, and Florida.
00:36:02
Speaker
um And there are a couple more that are currently planned, like I'll be going to Tokyo Game Show at the end of the month. Nice. Yeah, and we're looking at at other potential ones too, which is really exciting. um But I think the most memorable one so far has been DICE. um DICE was absolutely amazing. I got to shake hands with some absolutely absolutely miraculous people in the industry that I could never have expected to have done so with.
00:36:28
Speaker
um and the the award show to finally see Baldur's Gate when one of everything ah was great. I can imagine. um Again, you and I have kind of not so clear paths on how we got into gaming, but we are both here and we are both thrilled.
Advice for Gaming Industry Newcomers
00:36:46
Speaker
If you were to speak to someone that's maybe in university right now or high school and they want to get into this industry, are there any tips or tricks that you would share, just stories you would tell on how you did it or tips?
00:36:58
Speaker
Yeah, um I actually host i always panels about this all the time at at nearly every convention I attend because I'm so passionate about this kind of thing. um Very genuinely, um what you need to be doing to get into the industry, I think, is just do things that you enjoy.
00:37:15
Speaker
And don't it doesn't matter if you are paid and show show that you want to be doing it. um So if you like making games, um like you have a game in mind, it doesn't matter if if if you don't have development experience. There are ways to do it. Pirate Software, the the content creator, does this all the time. He says, I don't care. Go make a game. Stop making excuses. Go make a game.
00:37:40
Speaker
it ah Everyone can do it. It's not hard. um There are tons of different ways to do it. I made it on construct, which is like baby coding. um It's super available for everybody. um You can go to conventions where they need volunteers for things. um You can go do um online QA testing for games, where you can literally try games. You join join game communities and be their community moderators.
00:38:07
Speaker
um These are all real experience that you actually can write on your resume um as genuine work experience that when people see on your resume will take as not only is it something you did that was real, um but it shows a a passion for the industry, which is 10 times more from so for than then someone who just wants money.
00:38:31
Speaker
And when HR sees this or whoever's team you're going to be transferring into at that company sees this, they're going to see that passion. They're going to care. I love it. Just do it. And we've heard that a few times now. It's like, you know what? With YouTube, with Unity, with Godot, with Unreal, there's documentation, there's videos, there's tutorials out there. like do it. And where was I reading was reading something other the other day where someone said, you know, the best thing for your resume is build your own thing, build a game, right? If you work on a game, that's fine. People see that like, Oh, you worked on Call of Duty, you worked on this game. But if you build your own people see that the passion is there that you're willing to go out of your way to make something special. And that it's more, it's not just, Hey, I am an artist or I'm a sound person. I built this entire thing. And I think again, with the tools out there, it's silly for you just to be waiting for something when you can go get it.
00:39:20
Speaker
Yeah, you're so right and and building out your brand and and spending actual time doing something that is yours and owning it shows that you care. In your own personal growth, it didn't say in the last 10 years, right? If you were to look back at yourself 10 years ago, what would surprise you about yourself?
00:39:41
Speaker
um I think that this is going to sound a little weird. but I think that i i I find myself to be luckier than I ever imagined. um um i I think that I fall find myself falling into a lot of very fortunate situations. um And um while I do work very hard for all of them, um it's really incredible to be able to.
00:40:12
Speaker
once you're in the industry and you're working really hard and you show that effort and you show that care to see other people recognize you for that effort you're putting in and to be able to talk to people like you, to just be able to immediately come up to you and to be able to talk to you and have that one-to-one bond like, hey, gaming, oh, that's so cool. And we have that same story getting in. It's like, wow, this person's so cool. So the industry is amazing. And that's something that I just can't I never thought it would be this way. I love how you said that. You know you said fall into fortunate positions and and I don't necessarily think that's the case. I mean, you're putting yourself out there. You're going to these conferences. You're networking. You're talking to everyone. I mean, it does feel like luck and I get it, but but luck isn't really a thing. You're you're setting yourself up. you're You're meeting the right people and and it's awesome. It's something that surprised me about myself. If I looked at that myself 10 years ago, I was an introvert. I was quiet. i was
00:41:08
Speaker
then Then I got into this industry, I'm like, I'm going to just start talking to anyone, um everyone and anyone because it's fascinating. And I think, again, we we are alike, where it's everything. I just want to learn about this whole thing as much as I can talk to as many people hear their stories. And I think as much as it it is falling into fortunate positions, you are setting yourself up for these fortunate positions. So so don't discount that part of you yourself. you the way to wear that You're right. No, you're right. You're right.
00:41:35
Speaker
I think, James, I think that's all I have for you today. I don't know if there's anything else you want to talk about or anything you want to share with our audience. um I don't think so, but I don't think that you ever answered what you ate for breakfast. What I ate for breakfast today was a cup of coffee, and I think that might just be it. I don't know if I had breakfast yet, like you, but I'm not going to have Lucky Charms. My son ate all of them, so I don't have any left. He didn't eat a cup of coffee. He drank a cup of coffee.
00:42:01
Speaker
I know, that's breakfast though. All I need is caffeine for the morning, I'm good to go. That's fair, that's fair. James, it's been awesome having you here.
00:42:11
Speaker
um You're with ShockBite. We will share all the information for ShockBite on our Player Engaged podcast. James, we'll have your LinkedIn and any other URLs you feel like sharing with our audience. um Again, before we end today, is there anything else you want to just talk about or? um but If anyone has any questions about anything, um whether that's getting into the industry um or that has to do with pogs or multiplayer in general, um I am sorely educated on all of these. um
00:42:42
Speaker
and And I'm more than eager to share this with anyone who's interested. um And I will immediately add you back and be happy to chat. ah So yeah if you have anything, please do add me, and I'm eager to eager to talk to you.
00:42:56
Speaker
Yeah, and it's just a fellow gamer that loves games. So if you want to talk gaming, find find James, find anyone in the industry, because everyone wants to talk about games here. But James, again, thank you for joining me on a Friday. I hope you enjoy your ah your lunch slash breakfast of Lucky Charms. And I hope to talk to you again. Yeah, thanks so much, Greg. Bye.