00:00SPEAKER- Okay, Brad, I have been talking a lot about
00:04SPEAKERthe difference between putting your PC on the desk
00:07SPEAKERversus putting it on the floor lately.
00:09SPEAKER- That was a topic of discussion last week.
00:11SPEAKERIt's inspired further discussion on the Discord, let's say.
00:14SPEAKER- We talked about it on the full nerd at length
00:16SPEAKERbecause Gordon, my friend Gordon Mung over there
00:20SPEAKERis convinced this is a generational thing.
00:22SPEAKERHe thinks that the children want to keep the PC visible.
00:27SPEAKERWhereas the olds like it hidden away
00:30SPEAKERlike some sort of secret shame.
00:31SPEAKER- I mean, I didn't want to come out and say it,
00:33SPEAKERbut he might be onto something.
00:34SPEAKER- I think it's because of streamers personally.
00:37SPEAKER- Well, yeah, but I think those issues
00:39SPEAKERdovetail together, right?
00:41SPEAKER- I blame streamers for a lot of things, yeah.
00:44SPEAKER- I mean, you know what I mean?
00:45SPEAKERLike it's because of streamers and the young,
00:47SPEAKERthe youths like streamers a lot more than the olds.
00:51SPEAKER- Well, and also like if you take the time to put sick RGB
00:54SPEAKERin a rad, like hard cooling loop in your PC,
00:57SPEAKERyou want to show it off.
00:58SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
00:59SPEAKERI mean, okay, just to be clear about what I said last week,
01:01SPEAKERI was being flippant as I often am about the issue.
01:05SPEAKERYou should put your computer
01:06SPEAKERwherever you feel comfortable putting it
01:08SPEAKERor wherever makes you happy.
01:09SPEAKERBut I mean, in my case, it was just a practical consideration
01:12SPEAKERof I just need the desk space.
01:13SPEAKERLike I just can't afford to have that much of a footprint
01:16SPEAKERcarved out of this desk.
01:17SPEAKER- No, you run a tight ship over there.
01:19SPEAKER- Yes, that's true, I do.
01:20SPEAKERBut a lot of people chimed in on the Discord
01:23SPEAKERsaying that keeping up on the desk keeps dust
01:26SPEAKERand other detritus out of.
01:28SPEAKER- So it turns out that was the one big piece of feedback
01:31SPEAKERwe got on the full nerd also,
01:32SPEAKERwas that, hey, I put it on my desk 'cause it's cleaner.
01:36SPEAKERAnd that made me, 'cause I actually don't have enough space
01:40SPEAKERon my desk either with all the microphones and light stands
01:42SPEAKERand all that crap.
01:43SPEAKER- Yeah, you know, actually, now that you mentioned that,
01:46SPEAKERmaybe this is partially a streamer and podcaster problem.
01:49SPEAKER- Well, yeah, 'cause also like I don't want it close enough
01:52SPEAKERthat the mics can pick it up, right?
01:54SPEAKER- Yeah.
01:54SPEAKER- But I did realize that you can buy screw-in
01:57SPEAKERunder desk hanging mounts for your PC,
02:01SPEAKERwhich like I have this whole big cable snake thing
02:03SPEAKERthat's kind of always a pain in the ass
02:04SPEAKERand never really works the way I want because I'm tall.
02:07SPEAKERSo it has to go, like it's basically a track
02:10SPEAKERfor the cables that go to the tower
02:13SPEAKERwhen the desk goes up and down 'cause this is a stand desk.
02:16SPEAKERAnd if I was short, it wouldn't be as much of a problem
02:18SPEAKER'cause I could take some of the links out
02:19SPEAKERand it wouldn't have to go as far,
02:21SPEAKERbut it has to scrunch really far down for me
02:23SPEAKERbecause I'm tall and of course, I have like five monitors,
02:25SPEAKERlike three monitors, but there's a lot of cables
02:28SPEAKER'cause it's a desktop PC, it's not a laptop.
02:30SPEAKERThere's a lot of stuff happening.
02:32SPEAKERIt would be really convenient
02:33SPEAKERto just have fixed length cables.
02:35SPEAKERAnd I'm kind of thinking about making a change.
02:38SPEAKER- Oh, actually, hang on.
02:40SPEAKERWe've talked about your desk before
02:41SPEAKERbecause I was going to start, I was going to ask
02:43SPEAKERhow sturdy of a desk do you need to have
02:45SPEAKERto trust screwing something into the bottom of it
02:47SPEAKERthat supports your whole ass computer?
02:49SPEAKERBut then you've got a pretty heavy duty desk if I remember.
02:52SPEAKER- Well, I mean, it's just a normal,
02:54SPEAKERlike it's normal composite, you know, it's a composite port,
02:57SPEAKERbut like I would put screws into it.
02:58SPEAKERI'm not gonna tape it up there.
03:00SPEAKER- Wait, I thought you had a desk from like a grade school.
03:03SPEAKER- That's my old desk, that's the previous desk.
03:08SPEAKER- You moved to the standing desk.
03:09SPEAKERWhat happened to the grade school desk?
03:10SPEAKER- It's got a bunch of shit piled up over
03:12SPEAKERin the other side of the room.
03:14SPEAKER- Wait, hang on, you have two desks in there.
03:16SPEAKERWhy don't you just put the computer
03:17SPEAKERon top of the other desk?
03:18SPEAKER- Well, the cables would have to be about 30 feet long
03:20SPEAKER'cause it'd have to go around the edge of the room.
03:22SPEAKER- Fair, yeah.
03:23SPEAKER- What I could do though, man, you got me thinking,
03:26SPEAKERI could just scooch this and make a really terrible big L
03:30SPEAKERin the worst possible place that takes up the entire room.
03:32SPEAKER- Sleek, modern, motorized standing desk
03:35SPEAKERand like, what are we talking, 40 to 50 year old
03:38SPEAKERinstitutional public education desk?
03:41SPEAKER- Yeah, it's probably a '60s, '70s era kindergarten desk
03:45SPEAKERthat I ripped the short little kid legs off of
03:47SPEAKERand put tall legs on.
03:49SPEAKER- Sounds like a match made in heaven to me.
03:51SPEAKER- I mean, it's nice, that desk holds a lot of stuff
03:53SPEAKERit turns out.
03:54SPEAKERI have all the board games that don't fit in the closet
03:56SPEAKERare there because I haven't wanted to spend money
03:58SPEAKERon a set of shelves to have a place to put
04:01SPEAKERall the board games, so yeah.
04:02SPEAKERAnyway, the hanging thing, that seems like the way to go.
04:06SPEAKERMight be the best of both worlds.
04:08SPEAKER- Maybe a bit of a devil-may-care solution, but you know.
04:12SPEAKER- Look, I'm not gonna, like I said,
04:14SPEAKERI'm not using double-sided tape.
04:15SPEAKERThe screws are sturdy.
04:16SPEAKERScrews in the composite board, that's what holds
04:18SPEAKERthe entire United States of America together.
04:20SPEAKER- Man, fair.
04:22SPEAKERI'd be afraid to mark my desk up like that.
04:24SPEAKER- It's the bottom.
04:25SPEAKER- I know, but.
04:26SPEAKER- Also, the top of the desk is the most replaceable
04:29SPEAKERpiece of furniture in your house.
04:31SPEAKER'Cause like, you can unscrew the top that's on your desk
04:34SPEAKERcurrently, if you have an Ikea-style office furniture desk,
04:38SPEAKERand go to Ikea or anyplace else and buy another top
04:41SPEAKERand put it on there.
04:42SPEAKERLike, I could get, if I wanted, if I felt so inclined,
04:45SPEAKERI could get a top for this desk that's all dry erase board.
04:48SPEAKERWhich seems like it'd be really slidey
04:49SPEAKERand kind of a pain in the butt.
04:51SPEAKERBut it would be nice to be able to just write stuff
04:52SPEAKERon the side, on the top of the desk.
04:54SPEAKER- Yeah, I can see it, I can see it.
04:55SPEAKER- So what are you gonna do?
04:56SPEAKERYou're gonna put the desktop up there?
04:59SPEAKERAre you gonna go, are you gonna move up top?
05:02SPEAKEROr are you gonna?
05:03SPEAKER- Dude, you've seen how big this case is.
05:05SPEAKER- Oh, right, you have that case.
05:07SPEAKERI forgot.
05:08SPEAKER- I don't know if there's a desk on the market
05:09SPEAKERthat would hold a, I mean, I'm gonna need like
05:11SPEAKERsome Napoleonic era, you know.
05:14SPEAKER- Look, if you've ever been in a car shop
05:16SPEAKERand you've seen like those big hanging heaters
05:18SPEAKERthat are designed to heat things
05:20SPEAKERwhere the garage doors open all day,
05:23SPEAKERyour desk, your computer could hang
05:24SPEAKERfrom one of those mounts on the ceiling
05:26SPEAKERand it wouldn't look unlike one of those heaters.
05:29SPEAKER- Yeah, that's, look, there might be something to that.
05:31SPEAKERYou know, I think I'm just going to keep it on the floor
05:34SPEAKERand stick to my quarterly maintenance schedule.
05:37SPEAKER- Just blast it out, blast out the fans,
05:39SPEAKERblast out the, you have filters on that thing, right?
05:42SPEAKER- Oh yeah, yeah, all these modern, most cases,
05:44SPEAKERI mean, these fractals, but most modern cases
05:46SPEAKERare pretty filtered out, right?
05:47SPEAKERLike not a lot of dust gets in this case.
05:49SPEAKERIn fact, I haven't actually done the maintenance.
05:53SPEAKERI haven't done the quarterly maintenance
05:54SPEAKERI think this year yet, so.
05:56SPEAKER- Oh boy.
05:57SPEAKER- I'm actually way behind, but every time I do pull it out,
05:59SPEAKERtake it out on the back porch and blow it out,
06:01SPEAKERthere's a ton of dust on the filters
06:03SPEAKERand shockingly little inside the case.
06:05SPEAKER- Yeah, like for me, for me dusting inside the case
06:07SPEAKERis usually a, like get a Swiffer
06:10SPEAKERand just kind of run it over the flat surfaces
06:12SPEAKERand then it's fine.
06:13SPEAKER- Yeah, like a thin layer of like mobile dust
06:15SPEAKERwill come off when I wave the blower around in there,
06:18SPEAKERlike there's certainly dust, you see it flying off,
06:20SPEAKERbut there's no caked on dust, there's not enough dust
06:22SPEAKERfor it to form that awful solid layer.
06:26SPEAKER- I haven't had to get a toothbrush out
06:27SPEAKERand work on the fan blades on the GPU yet, so I like that.
06:30SPEAKER- Yeah, yep.
06:32SPEAKER- Clean PC is a good PC, Brad.
06:33SPEAKER- That's right, true words.
06:35SPEAKER(upbeat music)
06:45SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)
07:03SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod, I'm Will.
07:06SPEAKER- I'm Brad.
07:07SPEAKER- Brad, you know what's difficult?
07:09SPEAKER- What is difficult?
07:10SPEAKERWell, boy, that's a-
07:11SPEAKER- It's a kind of open-ended question, I guess.
07:13SPEAKER- This answer could go a lot of different directions
07:15SPEAKERright now, what's difficult?
07:16SPEAKER- Matchmaking, it turns out, is difficult.
07:19SPEAKER- You know, even Googling about matchmaking is difficult
07:22SPEAKERbecause if you don't add any qualifiers to that,
07:24SPEAKERyou get a whole lot of online dating advice.
07:26SPEAKER- Oh, well, you got any tips?
07:28SPEAKER- Mm, you know, I immediately went and put
07:30SPEAKERlike online multiplayer matchmaking into the first
07:33SPEAKERand then just narrowed it down from there.
07:35SPEAKER- Probably that's best.
07:37SPEAKERBut yeah, it's something that's like,
07:39SPEAKERfrom a player perspective, is deceptively simple, right?
07:41SPEAKERYou press a button in a limited period of time,
07:45SPEAKERlike 10 or 20 seconds, you should get matched
07:47SPEAKERwith another player who will give you a decent fight
07:51SPEAKERthat hopefully you should beat,
07:52SPEAKERyou should be able to defeat.
07:53SPEAKER- Yes, of course, you should win all of your matches.
07:57SPEAKERThat's key to the quality online multiplayer experience.
08:00SPEAKER- So, I mean, it's funny,
08:03SPEAKERthat's not ever been my perception.
08:04SPEAKERLike, I look at the number of teams in a game,
08:06SPEAKERlike if I'm playing a two-team team DM game,
08:11SPEAKERI assume I should win 50%, right?
08:13SPEAKER- Yeah. - More or less.
08:14SPEAKER- Sounds fair.
08:16SPEAKER- If I'm playing a free-for-all game
08:17SPEAKERwhere there's 16 players,
08:19SPEAKERI assume I should win like 75 or 80%
08:21SPEAKER'cause I'm better than 75 or 80% of other players.
08:25SPEAKER- Right up until you get matched with players
08:27SPEAKERwhere that's no longer the case.
08:28SPEAKER- Yeah, well, okay, so realistically,
08:30SPEAKERno, I don't think that I should win 70% of games
08:34SPEAKERwhen I'm playing against 16 other solo players.
08:36SPEAKERAnd also nobody really plays a free-for-all DM
08:39SPEAKERvery much anymore.
08:41SPEAKERBut people do have some real specific feelings
08:44SPEAKERabout matchmaking and I think,
08:47SPEAKERI don't know what your perception is,
08:48SPEAKERbut my feeling is that when we move from server browsers
08:52SPEAKERand like typing connect in an IP address in the console
08:55SPEAKERto hit a button and you're gonna be in the game
08:57SPEAKERin a minute or two,
08:58SPEAKERit's generally been a pretty positive change.
09:01SPEAKER- I think that's right, yeah.
09:03SPEAKERI mean, I'm thinking back to my Quake days
09:05SPEAKERwhen it was just jump on a pub server and stomp everyone.
09:08SPEAKER- Yeah, the loss is that sense of community.
09:10SPEAKER'Cause like when I used to run a Team Fortress 2 server
09:13SPEAKERfor a maximum PC and PC gamer,
09:15SPEAKERthen like a community built up around that server
09:17SPEAKERand you don't have as much of that anymore,
09:19SPEAKERwhich is a bummer.
09:20SPEAKER- Yeah, and the other thing was the potential
09:22SPEAKERto get on a server with a bunch of people
09:24SPEAKERwho were not as good as you.
09:25SPEAKERBecause now, as we're going to discuss here,
09:28SPEAKERthere are a lot of modern guard rails
09:29SPEAKERthat kind of prevent you from ending up in a game
09:31SPEAKERwhere you're head and shoulders above everybody else.
09:34SPEAKERBut there was something to that on occasion back then.
09:37SPEAKERIt's not like you would want that for every match,
09:38SPEAKERbut you know, occasionally jumping on a pub server
09:40SPEAKERand just completely dominating was a bit of a thrill.
09:44SPEAKER- Well, and at the same time,
09:46SPEAKERlike when we were playing competitive,
09:49SPEAKERwhen I played on a competitive Quake world team,
09:52SPEAKERthere was real value to going out and doing scrims
09:54SPEAKERwith teams that were dramatically better than us
09:56SPEAKER'cause we would learn stuff, right?
09:57SPEAKERYou get better by,
09:58SPEAKERyou play up to the level of your opponents often,
10:01SPEAKERI think is what sports people say.
10:03SPEAKER- Hang on now, did I know you played
10:04SPEAKERon a competitive Quake world team?
10:06SPEAKER- It was a high ping league, it didn't really count.
10:09SPEAKER- Got it, would I know the name?
10:10SPEAKER- No, you would not know the name.
10:12SPEAKER- Okay, fair.
10:13SPEAKER- I don't know that I know the name anymore.
10:15SPEAKER- Fair.
10:16SPEAKER- But we played, we played probably,
10:18SPEAKERlike we played in like the scrim leagues.
10:19SPEAKERSo it was like, basically you'd hop in an IRC channel
10:23SPEAKERand everybody had their names
10:25SPEAKERand everybody had their channels
10:27SPEAKERand other teams would look at the ladders
10:31SPEAKERand say, okay, this plan is like three levels above us,
10:34SPEAKERlet's challenge it, see if anybody's on.
10:36SPEAKERAnd at eight o'clock on Eastern time,
10:39SPEAKERthere'd be a hot Quake action at pretty much every night.
10:41SPEAKER- Man, I should have done that,
10:42SPEAKERI just played pub servers my entire Quake career.
10:45SPEAKER- It was, I mean, team DM Quake,
10:48SPEAKERwhich existed almost exclusively on DM3
10:51SPEAKERand pub Quake are two wildly different game,
10:54SPEAKERlike it's, it's like the difference between playing,
10:57SPEAKERit's like, honestly,
10:58SPEAKERit's like the difference between playing anything else,
10:59SPEAKEReven semi-competitive,
11:00SPEAKERit's like the difference between playing kickball
11:02SPEAKERin elementary school
11:03SPEAKERand playing in one of the weirdo kickball leagues
11:05SPEAKERdown in the park.
11:05SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
11:07SPEAKER- To be fair, you know, like when I got to GameSpot
11:08SPEAKERand I worked with some people
11:09SPEAKERwho had literally worked with Thresh
11:12SPEAKERand played them like one-on-one occasionally,
11:15SPEAKERI think it was a good reminder of why I never tried to go,
11:17SPEAKERI'm not gonna say I didn't try to go pro
11:18SPEAKER'cause I didn't have a chance of going pro,
11:20SPEAKEReven if I had wanted to,
11:21SPEAKERbut like, I never got super serious
11:23SPEAKERabout the competitive side of it
11:24SPEAKERbecause that's when you got into like having to count
11:27SPEAKERthe timer on the armors and stuff like that, you know,
11:28SPEAKERlike you had to really dissect the way the game worked
11:31SPEAKERand learn every in and out of it,
11:33SPEAKERand I kind of never wanted to take it that seriously,
11:36SPEAKERso maybe I didn't miss out.
11:38SPEAKER- See, I really liked winning at the LAN, you know,
11:41SPEAKERI was at the university at a time when LANs were popular,
11:45SPEAKERso I really liked winning at the LAN parties
11:47SPEAKERthat we do at the end of the day,
11:48SPEAKERand so I learned, you play enough,
11:51SPEAKERyou get an innate sense of the timing, anyway.
11:53SPEAKER- Yeah, fair.
11:54SPEAKER- But yeah, so we lost that sense of community,
11:58SPEAKERand we're gonna talk about why it's hard today,
12:01SPEAKERand this kind of came up because of this report
12:03SPEAKERthat Call of Duty released,
12:05SPEAKERActivision released for Call of Duty
12:07SPEAKERearlier this week or last week, I can't remember.
12:09SPEAKER- Yeah, last week or two.
12:10SPEAKER- But they've been doing a series of like white papers
12:14SPEAKERexplaining how their game works,
12:16SPEAKERwhich is super interesting,
12:18SPEAKER'cause most studios just don't talk about this stuff at all.
12:22SPEAKERThe first one was about ping,
12:23SPEAKERthis one's about skill-based matchmaking,
12:25SPEAKER'cause they've been doing some testing
12:27SPEAKERon the Call of Duty audience.
12:29SPEAKERSeems like mostly, the stuff they talked about
12:31SPEAKERwas mostly Team DM, but it seems like they applied it,
12:34SPEAKERthey tried it across the entire,
12:36SPEAKERlike all the available queues in a modern Call of Duty,
12:40SPEAKERwhich like realistically, if I launch Call of Duty today,
12:42SPEAKERI can't figure out how to start the game that I want, really.
12:46SPEAKERTheir front end thing is real weird.
12:48SPEAKER- A lot going on in those menus.
12:50SPEAKER- Yeah.
12:50SPEAKER- Before we get into it real quick,
12:52SPEAKERdo you think it's just their kind of position
12:53SPEAKERof unquestioned market dominance
12:55SPEAKERthat makes them confident enough to put stuff like this out?
12:57SPEAKERBecause I assume the reason most developers
13:00SPEAKERdon't talk about this stuff
13:00SPEAKERis because it's proprietary information,
13:02SPEAKERlike it's kind of, to an extent,
13:05SPEAKERit's part of their secret sauce
13:06SPEAKERthat makes their multiplayer game successful,
13:08SPEAKERand they don't necessarily want to just
13:10SPEAKERgive those secrets away.
13:12SPEAKER- I mean, maybe, I think,
13:14SPEAKERso it's interesting because your skill ranking
13:19SPEAKERin traditional board games, or esports leagues,
13:22SPEAKERor say chess, which is where all this kind of started,
13:26SPEAKERis a matter of public record,
13:28SPEAKERso it's not viewed as having a better ELO,
13:33SPEAKERa better skill-based matchmaking rank for your chess league
13:36SPEAKERisn't viewed as a competitive advantage
13:38SPEAKERversus other chess leagues, right?
13:39SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm just gonna say real quick,
13:41SPEAKERbefore we get into it, this is like possibly,
13:43SPEAKERthis is one of the bigger, wow,
13:44SPEAKERI feel like an idiot moments I've had in quite a while,
13:47SPEAKERfinding out that ELO originated in chess
13:49SPEAKERbecause I always thought ELO was a riot term
13:52SPEAKERfrom League of Legends,
13:53SPEAKERwhere I think they do use that term, right?
13:55SPEAKER- They use ELO specifically, yeah.
13:57SPEAKER- 'Cause you see different equivalent terms,
13:59SPEAKERlike MMR and stuff in other games,
14:01SPEAKERand I was just like, "Oh, right,
14:02SPEAKER"let's just call theirs ELO,"
14:03SPEAKERbut then I found out, oh no,
14:04SPEAKERthat actually came from chess decades ago.
14:07SPEAKER- Well, and like golf handicaps are also,
14:12SPEAKERlike a golf handicap is another way of doing this,
14:14SPEAKERit's a way of saying, hey,
14:16SPEAKERit's more about normalizing difficulty
14:18SPEAKERfor players of different skill levels,
14:19SPEAKERso you can have a fun game
14:20SPEAKERwith players of different skill level,
14:22SPEAKERbut the idea's the same, hey, here's how good you are,
14:25SPEAKERhere's how good this other person is,
14:26SPEAKERyou can take those two numbers
14:28SPEAKERand figure out how much of an advantage
14:30SPEAKERyou need to give the worst player.
14:33SPEAKEROkay, so, like you said, all this stuff is private, right?
14:36SPEAKERMost studios don't talk about this.
14:38SPEAKERI think Call of Duty's talking about it,
14:39SPEAKERI wanna believe it's because somebody on their comms team
14:43SPEAKERis like, "Hey, people really don't like
14:46SPEAKER"a lot of the choices we make,
14:48SPEAKER"and part of it is probably 'cause we never talk about it."
14:51SPEAKERA lot of times internally at studios,
14:53SPEAKERwhen I, you know, both at Straight Bomb Bay
14:55SPEAKERand other places I've helped folks out with this stuff,
14:58SPEAKERthe people working internally on this stuff
14:59SPEAKERmight not realize that it's something
15:00SPEAKERthe audience is gonna be interested in,
15:03SPEAKERso they may just not talk about it
15:04SPEAKERbecause they don't think people will care.
15:06SPEAKERAnd like realistically, like a million people
15:08SPEAKERplay Call of Duty every day probably,
15:10SPEAKERI bet 10,000, 20,000 people read this white paper, right?
15:13SPEAKERSo it's not like they're touching
15:14SPEAKERa large portion of the audience,
15:16SPEAKERbut it may be the loudest portion of the audience.
15:20SPEAKER- So we started out because of this
15:23SPEAKERand how skill-based matchmaking affected,
15:25SPEAKERhow this test affected their matchmaking cues,
15:28SPEAKERbut we realized kind of to talk about,
15:29SPEAKERwe need to talk a little bit about
15:30SPEAKERhow matchmaking works in general.
15:32SPEAKERAnd I think it's instructive to talk about why it's hard,
15:36SPEAKERbecause it's a difficult, like it is one of those things
15:40SPEAKERthat seems simple when you talk about it.
15:42SPEAKERYou're like, "Oh, okay, you press a button,
15:43SPEAKER"and I press a button at the same time,
15:45SPEAKER"and we get putting the game together."
15:46SPEAKERWhat's hard about that?
15:47SPEAKER- Right, it's like, "Oh, every player's probably
15:49SPEAKER"just got an invisible number attached to them,
15:51SPEAKER"and it just compares the numbers
15:52SPEAKER"and puts people with similar numbers together."
15:54SPEAKERThat's it, right?
15:55SPEAKER- Yeah, oh, it's simple.
15:56SPEAKER- Right, probably more complicated than that.
15:58SPEAKER- And the other thing that's interesting
16:00SPEAKERas I started digging into it is I realized that it's not,
16:03SPEAKERit's difficult whether your game has a million players
16:06SPEAKERor 5,000 players, it's difficult if your game
16:10SPEAKERis a small-scale 1v1 or 2v2 or 150-player battle royale.
16:14SPEAKERIt doesn't matter what genre it is,
16:16SPEAKERwhether it's a shooter or RTS, a MOBA,
16:18SPEAKERI don't know what a Rocket League is, but a Rocket League.
16:20SPEAKER- A casual automobile-based sports game.
16:23SPEAKER- Yeah, a fighting game, like all of these,
16:26SPEAKERthey all have their own unique set of challenges.
16:30SPEAKERAnd I also don't think a lot of people realize
16:36SPEAKERthat making mistakes in how you set this stuff up
16:39SPEAKERis literally a business-killing decision.
16:41SPEAKERLike, you can kill your studio by messing this up, so.
16:45SPEAKER- Yeah, and there's nowhere is it more true
16:48SPEAKERthat you only have one chance
16:50SPEAKERto make a first impression kind of stuff
16:52SPEAKERthan with a multiplayer game, right?
16:54SPEAKERLike multiplayer games launch and then die constantly, right?
16:58SPEAKERLike they live and die in their first two weeks
17:00SPEAKERor a month or something, right?
17:02SPEAKER- Often, I mean, people have dug out of those holes before.
17:04SPEAKERLike you look at, I wanna say Dead by Daylight
17:06SPEAKERhad a little bit of a soft launch,
17:08SPEAKERbut then they ground it out over 10 years
17:10SPEAKERand it's a juggernaut now, right?
17:14SPEAKERBut it's not, you can also succeed too much
17:18SPEAKERand kill your studio that way.
17:20SPEAKERLike the Splitgate developers had,
17:24SPEAKERis that Halo, it's a kind of Halo-style arena shooter
17:28SPEAKERwith portals. - Right.
17:30SPEAKER- And they had so many people playing
17:34SPEAKERthat it was that they were financially killing themselves
17:36SPEAKER'cause they hadn't figured out their monetization stuff.
17:37SPEAKER- That's right, that made some headlines, didn't it?
17:39SPEAKER- Yeah, and they had to shut down the first game.
17:42SPEAKERThey basically had to kill the first game
17:44SPEAKERand shut it down when they had millions of players
17:46SPEAKERand say, we're gonna work on Splitgate 2
17:48SPEAKERand we'll get it out and it'll be ready to go.
17:50SPEAKERAnd I don't think they actually came out and said,
17:52SPEAKERhey, the server costs are killing us,
17:54SPEAKERbut it was pretty easy to read behind the lines
17:56SPEAKERof, hey, why is the only reason you would do this
17:59SPEAKERwhen you have a bunch of people playing this game?
18:01SPEAKER- Right, I actually just got an email
18:03SPEAKERabout Splitgate 2 in my inbox today.
18:04SPEAKERI did not realize that they had revved to a sequel that fast.
18:08SPEAKER- Yeah, they announced Splitgate 2
18:10SPEAKERand that they were sunsetting the first game
18:12SPEAKERpretty much simultaneously, if I recall.
18:14SPEAKER- And that's largely due to the missteps with the first one?
18:18SPEAKER- Well, I don't think they, again,
18:20SPEAKERI'm reading between the lines here,
18:21SPEAKERso apologies to the people who make this game.
18:24SPEAKERBut yeah, they had a bunch of people playing
18:26SPEAKERand they had no monetization in the game
18:27SPEAKERand when you have dedicated server costs,
18:30SPEAKERit's like that escalates.
18:35SPEAKERThe numbers get really scary really, really fast.
18:37SPEAKER- Sure. - So anyway.
18:40SPEAKER- So I guess there's two kind of main things here,
18:43SPEAKERthe technical side of why it's difficult
18:45SPEAKERand then the social stuff.
18:46SPEAKERAnd there's places where these things overlap,
18:48SPEAKERso we'll kind of talk about it back and forth.
18:50SPEAKERBut again, and also as a disclaimer,
18:55SPEAKERgetting the social stuff right
18:56SPEAKERis a highly technical problem too.
18:59SPEAKERIt's just the player behaviors
19:02SPEAKERand the things that players can do
19:04SPEAKERversus how the servers work
19:06SPEAKERand how the game connects people to servers
19:09SPEAKERis kind of the split here.
19:10SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause you still have to take the fuzziness
19:12SPEAKERof human behavior and translate that
19:14SPEAKERinto something quantifiable that can be fed into a system.
19:17SPEAKER- Ideally you do, yeah.
19:19SPEAKEROkay, so it's difficult technically
19:21SPEAKERbecause you start with how are you gonna host this game?
19:25SPEAKERIf it's a small-scale game, if it's two or three players,
19:28SPEAKERyou can do peer-to-peer listen servers
19:30SPEAKERwhere one player is the host
19:32SPEAKERand the other players connect to them.
19:34SPEAKERAnd there's usually some sort of a turn type server
19:40SPEAKERthat helps you punch through the routers.
19:43SPEAKERSo you don't have to, in the Xbox 360 days,
19:45SPEAKERwe were always opening ports to play multiplayer games,
19:48SPEAKERand then somebody realized that you could just
19:49SPEAKERbounce everything through this other server
19:51SPEAKERand that would let you bypass the NAT traffic.
19:56SPEAKERAnd also a relatively small number of those servers
19:59SPEAKERcan cover the entire world,
20:00SPEAKERespecially for games where latency doesn't matter that much.
20:02SPEAKER- Right, because there's not a ton of throughput required.
20:05SPEAKER- Yeah, well, the throughput goes through,
20:08SPEAKERbut it's relatively inexpensive
20:09SPEAKER'cause it's just in and out.
20:11SPEAKERThere, you don't have this,
20:12SPEAKERit's not computationally expensive.
20:14SPEAKERSo you need, you do need servers depending on,
20:18SPEAKERlike you have to expect where your servers go
20:20SPEAKERbased on the latency requirements of the game, basically.
20:22SPEAKERSo if you're talking about like Stardew Valley,
20:24SPEAKERwhere the latency, where the tick rate can be,
20:27SPEAKERyou know, 20 a second,
20:28SPEAKERinstead of versus 10,000 a second for Counter-Strike,
20:31SPEAKERthen you can put the,
20:33SPEAKERyou can put the servers relatively far apart.
20:34SPEAKERAnd if people zoom around a little bit, it's no big deal.
20:36SPEAKER- Yeah, I've seen those referred to
20:38SPEAKERas both stun and turn servers.
20:39SPEAKERI'm sure there's some distinction there
20:41SPEAKERthat I'm not familiar with, but do you, oh, go ahead.
20:43SPEAKER- Oh no, go ahead.
20:44SPEAKER- Do you know when those became commonplace?
20:46SPEAKERWould you, would you say it's probably somewhere
20:48SPEAKERin the like 2012 to 14 range?
20:50SPEAKERBecause like you said, 360 PS3 era,
20:53SPEAKERthere was a ton of, well, I'm at the office
20:55SPEAKERand granted a lot of people don't play
20:57SPEAKERmultiplayer console games at the office, but we did,
20:58SPEAKERyou know, 'cause that was our line of work,
21:00SPEAKERbut there was numerous occasions like,
21:02SPEAKERwell, I guess I just have to go,
21:03SPEAKERI'm gonna have to test the multiplayer on this at home
21:05SPEAKERbecause I can't get it to work at the office.
21:07SPEAKERAnd then at some point,
21:09SPEAKERand I feel like it was maybe I'm like,
21:11SPEAKERDestiny is the example I'm going,
21:13SPEAKERthat guy I go to in my mind.
21:14SPEAKERSo probably around 2014, like that just kind of stopped
21:17SPEAKERand things just started working.
21:19SPEAKERI never really thought about why they just started working
21:21SPEAKERat the time, but I assume it had to be
21:23SPEAKERa nascent version of this.
21:25SPEAKER- Well, so Destiny's weird.
21:26SPEAKER'Cause I think some parts of Destiny are servers,
21:29SPEAKERserver hosted in some parts.
21:30SPEAKERI mean, the lobbies and stuff are definitely server hosted.
21:32SPEAKER- Yeah, honestly, maybe the reason I'm thinking of Destiny
21:35SPEAKERis that it would flash NAT messages at you.
21:37SPEAKERGames started to tell you like,
21:40SPEAKERoh, you're on a moderate NAT or you've got a type three
21:43SPEAKERor a strict NAT or whatever.
21:45SPEAKER- Yeah, and I think that Destiny,
21:48SPEAKERI think bits and pieces of Destiny are servers
21:50SPEAKERand some other bits are peer to peer or listen servers.
21:55SPEAKERLike if you're in a dungeon with just four other players,
21:58SPEAKERmy guess is that somebody on your team
22:00SPEAKERis hosting that game.
22:01SPEAKER- Right.
22:03SPEAKER- So yeah, it seemed like that was midway
22:05SPEAKERthrough the last generation.
22:06SPEAKER- Okay, if I, it was,
22:09SPEAKERthat probably wasn't the reason it happened.
22:11SPEAKERProbably somebody started doing middleware
22:12SPEAKERthat let you do the turn servers relatively inexpensively,
22:14SPEAKERbut I wasn't working in that space at that time.
22:16SPEAKER- Sure.
22:17SPEAKER- I know that the networking, the internet networking
22:21SPEAKERthat we used for Unity with Foo was really,
22:25SPEAKERlike it was like $100 a year or something
22:27SPEAKERto get basically NAT punched through and turn servers
22:31SPEAKERin depth, like on any Unity game for,
22:35SPEAKERit went up with the number of users.
22:36SPEAKERBut the starting point was really, really cheap.
22:39SPEAKERSo yeah, and there's benefits to doing this, right?
22:42SPEAKEROne is that you don't have any costs.
22:44SPEAKERYour cost is the turn server and the matchmaking server,
22:46SPEAKERand those are both reasonable monthly fees,
22:49SPEAKERnot hey, I have to have an AWS guide
22:51SPEAKERto help me figure out how to do this.
22:52SPEAKER- Right, because again, you're offloading
22:54SPEAKERthe actual hosting of the match
22:55SPEAKERto one of the players in the match.
22:57SPEAKER- Yeah, and it works, well,
22:58SPEAKERand like all fighting games work this way,
23:00SPEAKER'cause fighting games, there's no authoritative server
23:02SPEAKERin the center.
23:03SPEAKERYou're better off connecting player to player,
23:06SPEAKERand then you end up with the,
23:10SPEAKERthere's a bunch of really interesting math
23:11SPEAKERand kind of, I don't wanna say arguing between the clients,
23:16SPEAKERbut that's not exactly it.
23:18SPEAKERDetermining who has the authoritative,
23:21SPEAKERwhose card trumps whose,
23:23SPEAKER'cause it's not a host advantage situation, right?
23:25SPEAKER- Right, right, and that's where you get into,
23:27SPEAKERI mean, and I don't know the ins and outs
23:29SPEAKERof this method very well,
23:30SPEAKERbut you started hearing a lot about rollback netcode
23:32SPEAKERin fighting games 10 years ago, or maybe less.
23:36SPEAKER- Yeah, it was like Street Fighter IV era, right,
23:38SPEAKERwas when that started.
23:39SPEAKER- Yeah, so I wanna say that came out of,
23:40SPEAKERit was like GGPO, that came out of like the fan community,
23:42SPEAKERor home brew scene, I think,
23:43SPEAKERand then started making its way into commercial projects.
23:46SPEAKER- Yeah, but yeah, so some games don't have to worry
23:49SPEAKERabout servers, and player-hosted stuff is great, works fine.
23:53SPEAKERThe downside of this is that also player-hosted listen
23:58SPEAKERservers are generally allowed by console providers.
24:01SPEAKERSo the console host have some specific thoughts
24:04SPEAKERabout player-hosted dedicated servers,
24:06SPEAKERwhich we'll talk about in a minute,
24:08SPEAKERbut generally you can play cross-play to consoles.
24:11SPEAKERIf your anti-cheat stuff is bad,
24:12SPEAKERit opens you up to some hacking stuff.
24:14SPEAKERYou're super dependent on the player's machines,
24:16SPEAKERespecially on PC, or in console situations
24:19SPEAKERwhere there's cross-play, like when all of the new games
24:22SPEAKERcame out at the start of this generation,
24:23SPEAKERand they were PS4, PS5, or Xbox One/Xbox series,
24:28SPEAKERyou had to really think about whether the older consoles
24:31SPEAKERwere able to host especially larger games.
24:33SPEAKERYou might see some weird limits
24:35SPEAKERon your old gen console host as a result.
24:38SPEAKER- Yeah, I would assume there's some pretty robust logic
24:40SPEAKERin effect to select who should be a host of a given match
24:43SPEAKERout of a given player pool,
24:45SPEAKERespecially more so on PC where hardware capabilities
24:48SPEAKERare gonna vary infinitely versus consoles.
24:51SPEAKERIt's a much smaller list of targets.
24:54SPEAKER- But the middlewares don't really provide tools for that.
24:57SPEAKERThat's something you have to build internally.
25:01SPEAKERFor example, on the Anacrusis,
25:03SPEAKERthe server was fairly CPU-intensive
25:06SPEAKERbecause we had a lot of AI running
25:07SPEAKERand a bunch of aliens at any given time.
25:11SPEAKERWe couldn't run the server on an Xbox One, right?
25:14SPEAKEREspecially launch-era Xbox Ones
25:16SPEAKERjust didn't have the CPU and RAM.
25:18SPEAKERSo when Xbox One tried to host,
25:21SPEAKERthe experience was really bad for everybody
25:22SPEAKERplaying the game that was connected to them.
25:25SPEAKERSo people generally build heuristics into their game
25:29SPEAKERthat determine who's able to host,
25:32SPEAKERwhich players connect to which hosts, stuff like that.
25:35SPEAKERAnd most of those are kind of applied to everything,
25:37SPEAKERso we'll talk about them in a little bit.
25:41SPEAKERThe last thing is that if the host quits on a listen server,
25:46SPEAKERthe game ends or you have to have built some sort of
25:50SPEAKERgame state freeze/transition
25:53SPEAKERthat dumps people over to a new host
25:56SPEAKERor picks up where the game was.
25:57SPEAKERAnd that, it turns out,
25:58SPEAKERis a really complicated computer problem
26:01SPEAKERthat has to be built individually for each game, pretty much.
26:04SPEAKER- Right, and that probably necessitates
26:06SPEAKERsome amount of downtime, right?
26:08SPEAKERI feel like when I've seen that in action frequently,
26:10SPEAKERit's just like a host quit,
26:11SPEAKERtransferring to new host kind of thing.
26:13SPEAKERIt's going to pause everybody's game and pop a message up.
26:16SPEAKERIt's not just going to happen seamlessly.
26:18SPEAKER- No, ideally it's just a level load.
26:20SPEAKERSometimes you have to restart the level
26:22SPEAKER'cause you have to get a clean game state, stuff like that.
26:26SPEAKERSo this is what a lot of small-scale games,
26:28SPEAKERbut this doesn't work for highly ping-dependent
26:31SPEAKERor high data rate games like Counter-Strike and Valorant
26:35SPEAKERand even Call of Duty, right?
26:37SPEAKER- 'Cause there's only so much you can expect
26:39SPEAKERfrom somebody's home internet and game console, right?
26:42SPEAKER- Well, yeah, and on listen servers, especially on shooters,
26:45SPEAKERthere's a massive host advantage generally,
26:48SPEAKEReven in the modern era.
26:49SPEAKERSo then developers have to look at dedicated servers
26:53SPEAKERand you can go two ways with that.
26:54SPEAKERThere's some other options too,
26:55SPEAKERbut you can either host all the servers yourself
26:58SPEAKERor you can have player-hosted dedicated servers
27:00SPEAKERwhere you just put the server file up on Steam
27:03SPEAKERand give people a way to configure their own servers
27:05SPEAKERand connect them to the matchmaking pool and all that.
27:09SPEAKERThe player-hosted servers are great
27:11SPEAKER'cause they move a lot of the cost off of your studio
27:13SPEAKERand they let you have a handful of dedicated servers
27:17SPEAKERthat are official ones
27:18SPEAKERand then you can let everybody else
27:19SPEAKERjust host their own thing.
27:21SPEAKERThey can run mods, they can do all sorts of crazy stuff.
27:24SPEAKERIt means that you have low ping servers
27:27SPEAKERliterally everywhere, even in regions
27:29SPEAKERthat you might not be able to afford to support.
27:31SPEAKERSo unless you're a really enormous game,
27:34SPEAKERyou're not gonna set up South American servers
27:36SPEAKERfor the most part.
27:37SPEAKERYou'll run stuff in Central America or Dallas
27:41SPEAKERand it has to be good enough.
27:43SPEAKERAnd that's a shitty experience for people in Latin America.
27:45SPEAKER- So dedicated player-hosted servers are great for that.
27:51SPEAKERGenerally speaking, the consoles do not like you
27:53SPEAKERto let their clients connect to dedicated player servers
27:57SPEAKERbecause it's a vector for jailbreaking and hacking consoles.
28:02SPEAKER- Sure.
28:04SPEAKER- The server, doing dedicated servers on either side
28:07SPEAKERlets you parcel out discrete information to clients
28:09SPEAKERto minimize their ability to cheat,
28:11SPEAKERwhich is one of the main ways we avoid cheating in shooters.
28:14SPEAKERSo if your client doesn't know that somebody's hiding
28:17SPEAKERin a bush because they're not making any noise
28:19SPEAKERand they're not visible, then there's no way
28:22SPEAKERfor your cheater program to know
28:23SPEAKERthat there's somebody hiding in the bush, right?
28:25SPEAKER- Just basically kind of a need-to-know basis.
28:27SPEAKERServer doesn't tell the client any more
28:28SPEAKERthan it absolutely needs to know at any given time.
28:30SPEAKER- Yeah.
28:34SPEAKERYou're still likely to have to manage
28:36SPEAKERthe server distribution somehow.
28:39SPEAKERYou can post it on your website if you want,
28:41SPEAKERbut Steam offers a pretty good way to do this
28:42SPEAKERand predominantly these are PC games
28:45SPEAKERthat are gonna go this route.
28:47SPEAKERAnd then it also opens the door to third parties
28:49SPEAKERthat are official partner-hosters
28:52SPEAKERthat will do managed installs and stuff for you,
28:55SPEAKERwhich makes it easier.
28:56SPEAKERAnd those, in some cases, can qualify
28:59SPEAKERfor console hosts as well.
29:03SPEAKERSo this isn't a great solution if you wanna do cross-play,
29:06SPEAKERbut it is a totally viable solution,
29:09SPEAKERmostly for PC-only games at this point, I think.
29:11SPEAKER- Yes, and I've written here in the notes, flippantly.
29:17SPEAKERPlayer-hosted dedicated servers are a lot of fun
29:18SPEAKERfor home server nerds, so if you have dedicated servers,
29:21SPEAKERyou should release a player
29:23SPEAKERor you should release a public dedicated server.
29:26SPEAKERFinally, it's just fun.
29:28SPEAKERIt's just fun to run your own server.
29:30SPEAKER- It's awesome.
29:31SPEAKERI ran a Valheim server for a couple years
29:34SPEAKERand it was so much fun that we could just,
29:37SPEAKERif somebody woke up at two o'clock in the morning
29:38SPEAKERand wanted to work on the house,
29:40SPEAKERthey could log in and start chopping down trees, right?
29:43SPEAKER- Right, like I ran that Minecraft server at Giant Bomb
29:45SPEAKERwhen the pandemic started
29:46SPEAKERand we were doing those weekly streams.
29:48SPEAKERI've been playing games off and on with some college friends
29:51SPEAKERthat I'd reconnected with after some years
29:53SPEAKERand they had been into Valheim previously
29:56SPEAKERand then they were like,
29:57SPEAKER"Oh, I wanna spin up a new Valheim thing."
29:59SPEAKERAnd they were like, "Oh yeah, I'll go rent another,"
30:01SPEAKERblah, blah, blah.
30:02SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Oh, I could just start one."
30:03SPEAKERAnd they were like, they were like blown away.
30:04SPEAKERThey were like, "Wait, you can just run one?"
30:06SPEAKER- You're a different kind of nerd, Brad.
30:08SPEAKERLike they were familiar with the concept of dedicated servers
30:10SPEAKER'cause like I said, they had paid to rent one previously,
30:13SPEAKERbut then the idea that I could just do it
30:15SPEAKERand they wouldn't have to pay for it
30:15SPEAKERand it would still just be there 24/7.
30:17SPEAKERThey were quite pleased.
30:19SPEAKER- It's, I mean, like it's amazing.
30:22SPEAKERYou can do that for everything from Minecraft on up, right?
30:25SPEAKERYou can run Minecraft servers on a machine
30:27SPEAKERin your house really easily.
30:28SPEAKERAnd that's awesome.
30:29SPEAKER- It's just fun. - It's really good.
30:31SPEAKERI think Minecraft, the console versions of Minecraft do,
30:33SPEAKERif you're running a bedrock server now,
30:35SPEAKERfinally let you connect from the console
30:38SPEAKERto PC dedicated servers now,
30:40SPEAKER'cause for a long time the bedrock server
30:42SPEAKERwasn't really available.
30:43SPEAKER- Yeah, I think it was listed as alpha for quite a long time.
30:45SPEAKERI haven't looked at it in a while.
30:46SPEAKER- Yeah, but now you can just run it.
30:48SPEAKERIt's really nice.
30:50SPEAKERSo then the third option,
30:51SPEAKERand this is the one where you can get into real trouble
30:53SPEAKERif you're especially a small studio
30:55SPEAKERand not super well-funded or not making it,
30:56SPEAKERlike making okay money, but not incredible money,
30:59SPEAKERis developer-hosted dedicated servers.
31:03SPEAKERYou control everything.
31:04SPEAKERThere's a smaller threat service for hacks.
31:06SPEAKERIt's really expensive.
31:07SPEAKERSo it requires ongoing monetization.
31:10SPEAKER- Yeah, are you able to get into,
31:12SPEAKERI mean, without like blowing up any
31:14SPEAKERinside information you shouldn't talk about?
31:16SPEAKERLike, are we able to talk
31:17SPEAKERany kind of ballpark expenses on ongoing?
31:20SPEAKERI mean, I'm sure there are so many variables there.
31:22SPEAKERIt's hard to even, in vague terms, nail it down, but.
31:26SPEAKER- No, I mean, look,
31:27SPEAKERyou can start with what a normal colo spot costs
31:30SPEAKERif you bring your own computer,
31:31SPEAKERwhich is like three or $400 a month, right?
31:33SPEAKERAnd then you go up from there,
31:35SPEAKERand you can go look at what AWS servers cost.
31:38SPEAKERSo AWS is Amazon's web services.
31:42SPEAKERThere's three or four main kind of compute cloud providers,
31:48SPEAKERGoogle, Amazon, Microsoft with Azure,
31:51SPEAKERand Rackspace really is the other big one.
31:55SPEAKERAnd you can look at a server cost 24,
32:01SPEAKERa big server on AWS, depending on which zone you're in,
32:03SPEAKERcosts like $24 an hour.
32:06SPEAKERAnd you can multiply that by the number of hours
32:08SPEAKERin the month and figure out what your cost is.
32:10SPEAKERAnd then there's additional costs for bandwidth in and out
32:12SPEAKERand dumping new images in and stuff like that.
32:15SPEAKERAnd pretty soon you've spent $50,000.
32:17SPEAKER- Okay.
32:19SPEAKEROf course, you know, like a big part of the question
32:21SPEAKERor one of the big variables there is like, for example,
32:24SPEAKERlike how much compute does your dedicated server take?
32:26SPEAKERYou know, like, and how many instances of it
32:27SPEAKERare you gonna have to run?
32:28SPEAKERYou've got some, you've put some interesting technical detail
32:31SPEAKERon that front down that we'll get into later
32:32SPEAKERthat I was not aware of.
32:34SPEAKER- Yeah, so like, this is, honestly,
32:37SPEAKERthe push to dedicated servers that are hosted
32:40SPEAKERby the company is why we have so many live service games now
32:44SPEAKERbecause you can't, like, if you are going to run
32:48SPEAKERa high quality online live game with servers
32:54SPEAKERin, you gotta think about regions, right?
32:56SPEAKERSo it's like North America East, North America West,
33:00SPEAKERsometimes North America Central,
33:01SPEAKERif it's a really high latency game,
33:03SPEAKERor low latency game rather, Northern Europe, EMEA,
33:07SPEAKERwhich is like East, Southern Europe and Middle East
33:10SPEAKERand Northern Africa.
33:12SPEAKERLATAM, which is usually Mexico City,
33:15SPEAKERand then that covers, or Brazil,
33:16SPEAKERand that covers all of South America, Central America.
33:19SPEAKER- Yeah, sea.
33:21SPEAKER- Oceana, yeah.
33:22SPEAKERSo that's Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia.
33:25SPEAKERJapan and, like, Russia are often, like,
33:29SPEAKEREastern Russia get lumped together sometimes.
33:32SPEAKERIt gets really out of control really fast.
33:35SPEAKERAnd so each region that you choose to support
33:40SPEAKERis some machines that are warm all the time.
33:42SPEAKERSo that's fixed costs that you're always gonna have
33:44SPEAKERbecause you need to have a certain number
33:47SPEAKERof live servers running all the time
33:50SPEAKERso that when players join, it doesn't take three minutes
33:52SPEAKERfor the first match to start up in that region.
33:54SPEAKER- Yeah, do you know if servers in that context,
33:57SPEAKERif the cost scales with load on the machine,
34:00SPEAKERor is it a pretty flat cost,
34:01SPEAKERwhether it's pegged at 100% CPU or idling?
34:05SPEAKER- So if you're doing cloud stuff, it's typically hourly.
34:08SPEAKERThere's no, you can use 100% of the CPUs
34:11SPEAKERthat are allotted to you.
34:12SPEAKERYou buy the number of CPUs you want.
34:14SPEAKERSo if you buy, like, an extra large in AWS
34:18SPEAKERthat has 24 cores, then you get 24 cores
34:20SPEAKERand you can burn 'em all the time if you want.
34:24SPEAKERThe other thing that's tricky about this, though,
34:26SPEAKERis that, like, if you mess this up,
34:28SPEAKERyou can absolutely wipe out all of the profit
34:30SPEAKERthat you make with the game.
34:31SPEAKERLike, really, really shockingly quickly.
34:35SPEAKERIt will allow cross-play with consoles.
34:38SPEAKERBut you are limiting the ability to reach a global audience
34:41SPEAKERby the server infra that you're willing to pay for.
34:44SPEAKERAnd the people who live in areas that aren't served
34:46SPEAKERcan still play, but they'll have a kinda crappy experience.
34:49SPEAKERAnd like I said, for like Stardew Valley multiplayer,
34:51SPEAKERit probably doesn't matter.
34:52SPEAKERBut if you're playing Valorant multiplayer
34:54SPEAKERand Riot doesn't roll out servers in your region,
34:56SPEAKERnobody's gonna play Valorant in that region
34:57SPEAKER'cause it's gonna suck.
34:58SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
34:59SPEAKERIt's been interesting to see the swing back toward this
35:01SPEAKERbecause it was a lot of dedicated servers early on.
35:04SPEAKERI'm thinking all the way back to like Battlefield 1942,
35:06SPEAKERyou know, like US West, like you said,
35:08SPEAKERUS East, like you saw a lot of those.
35:11SPEAKERThen into the 360 era, you know,
35:12SPEAKERlike, Gears of War was more peer-to-peer.
35:14SPEAKERLike, a lot of the multiplayer games
35:16SPEAKERon the 360 in particular were peer-to-peer.
35:19SPEAKER- Well, I mean--
35:20SPEAKER- And now it's swinging back the other way again.
35:23SPEAKER- I think part of it is the...
35:28SPEAKERIt's hard to know which came first with live service,
35:30SPEAKERthe chicken or the egg, right?
35:31SPEAKERWas it, hey, we wanna keep making money
35:32SPEAKERfrom this thing we spend $100 million on indefinitely?
35:35SPEAKEROr is it, hey, we want people
35:38SPEAKERto play these things indefinitely so we can,
35:40SPEAKERyou know, what do we have to do
35:41SPEAKERto make that work on the backend?
35:43SPEAKERAnd I don't actually, I haven't studied that enough
35:45SPEAKERto know where it started.
35:49SPEAKERIt's, but those are basically your choices, right?
35:53SPEAKERLike, that's where you start.
35:54SPEAKERAnd then you have to think about, like I said, regions.
35:57SPEAKERYou think about, hey, where can I get access to VMs?
36:01SPEAKERWhere can I get access to dedicated bare metal machines?
36:04SPEAKER'Cause often, the right answer
36:07SPEAKERisn't just spinning up a bunch of AWS instances
36:10SPEAKER'cause that's fixed cost per hour.
36:11SPEAKERIt's much cheaper to just put a giant-ass, beefy machine
36:14SPEAKERthat can run a whole bunch of server instances
36:17SPEAKERin one data center and then have VMs that supplement it.
36:22SPEAKERAnd you base your hardware by,
36:25SPEAKERbased on what your player floor is,
36:28SPEAKERyour lowest point during the day,
36:29SPEAKERand then you spin up VMs
36:30SPEAKERto kind of supplement that during the day.
36:32SPEAKER'Cause your cost on the server machines
36:34SPEAKERis much cheaper per hour.
36:36SPEAKEROn a dedicated hardware, it's much cheaper per hour,
36:39SPEAKERbut there is a lot of upfront cost
36:40SPEAKERthat gets amortized over the entire life
36:42SPEAKERof that server and the life of the game.
36:44SPEAKERAnd of course, as always,
36:46SPEAKERdifferent games have different requirements.
36:47SPEAKERTwitch shooters need, like Twitch shooters actually run
36:50SPEAKERon high-end consumer CPUs and data centers
36:53SPEAKERa lot of the time because the rate
36:55SPEAKERat which they can send data is tied
36:57SPEAKERto the CPU performance of a single thread, single CPU.
37:01SPEAKERSo they run 14900Ks
37:04SPEAKER'cause they're the fastest clock speed processor,
37:06SPEAKERand that's what people are gonna have
37:08SPEAKERso that you can maximize the rate
37:10SPEAKERthat you send packets to the players.
37:11SPEAKER- So this is that technical detail
37:13SPEAKERabout dedicated servers I was alluding to earlier.
37:15SPEAKER- Oh, yeah.
37:16SPEAKER- You feel like you've got in the notes here,
37:17SPEAKERlike they literally do not run these dedicated servers
37:20SPEAKERon Xeons or Threadrippers or Epycs
37:23SPEAKERbecause they have a bajillion cores,
37:25SPEAKERbut they are lower clock speed
37:26SPEAKERbecause they have so many cores,
37:27SPEAKERand that's anathema to what you're talking about here.
37:30SPEAKERDo you know, like, for example,
37:32SPEAKERlike 14900K has eight performance cores.
37:35SPEAKERDoes that mean you could run eight different dedicated servers
37:37SPEAKERone per core, and can you,
37:39SPEAKERI mean, then you run into OS scheduler issues.
37:41SPEAKERI don't know if you could peg a dedicated server
37:43SPEAKERto each core reliably or not.
37:45SPEAKER- I don't know enough about it.
37:47SPEAKERI learned this when we were talking about
37:48SPEAKER13900, 14900K problems on the full nerd a few weeks ago
37:51SPEAKER'cause our guest was,
37:53SPEAKERWendell had been talking to data center people
37:56SPEAKERand they were having 14900K failures in the data center,
37:59SPEAKERand specifically cited this kind of game server.
38:02SPEAKER- Interesting.
38:04SPEAKER- The MMOs, on the other hand,
38:06SPEAKERhave clusters that are wildly different capabilities, right?
38:09SPEAKERSo you might have one really massively threaded server
38:13SPEAKERthat is like your login server,
38:16SPEAKERone that runs the database,
38:17SPEAKERthat controls all your items and stuff like that,
38:19SPEAKERthat run at different update tick rates
38:22SPEAKERthan, say, the world servers,
38:23SPEAKERwhich are still gonna run at, like,
38:25SPEAKERorders of magnitude lower tick rates
38:27SPEAKERthan a Twitch shooter or something like that.
38:30SPEAKER- Right.
38:31SPEAKER- And, of course, the cost for the higher tick,
38:35SPEAKERthe more network you're using,
38:36SPEAKERso presumably the more you're paying for that as well
38:38SPEAKER'cause that's part of your payment, too,
38:40SPEAKERdepending on the data center
38:41SPEAKERand your setup with your provider.
38:43SPEAKER- Yeah, and tick rate is an update rate,
38:45SPEAKERI guess we should say, for people who don't know.
38:47SPEAKER- Yeah, so a certain, usually on a non-Twitch game,
38:51SPEAKERit'll be five or 10 updates a second, maybe,
38:55SPEAKERon a game like Counter-Striker Valorant,
38:57SPEAKERit'll be 10,000 in some cases,
38:59SPEAKERdepending on what level you're playing at.
39:03SPEAKERSo yeah, hardware perf on the client side
39:05SPEAKERalso impacts matchmaking,
39:06SPEAKERand the heuristics have to accommodate that, right?
39:09SPEAKERSo they're looking at your region,
39:11SPEAKERthey're looking at which servers are available,
39:14SPEAKERthey're looking at the hardware perf of the machines,
39:16SPEAKERthis is especially important in P2P stuff,
39:18SPEAKERbecause if you have, say, a PC client
39:21SPEAKERthat has fiber and a really fast CPU,
39:24SPEAKERbut they don't have an SSD,
39:26SPEAKERthey're running on a hard drive, that probably is a no.
39:30SPEAKERAnd also, as a game, you have no real good way
39:33SPEAKERof knowing that other than by measuring
39:34SPEAKERthe performance of the game.
39:35SPEAKER- Interesting, 'cause you can't just solicit
39:38SPEAKERhardware specs willy-nilly, I guess.
39:40SPEAKER- I mean, you can, but people get upset
39:42SPEAKERabout that stuff, and it requires admin access, usually,
39:44SPEAKERand when your games start prompting UAC prompts,
39:47SPEAKERpeople get upset.
39:49SPEAKERSo you do things like look at the frame rate,
39:51SPEAKERand track the load times of the game,
39:53SPEAKERand track the time from when it's launched
39:56SPEAKERto when you first get to the menu,
39:57SPEAKERand stuff like that, to kind of suss out
39:59SPEAKERwhether this PC is probably good for hosting,
40:03SPEAKERor maybe not so much.
40:04SPEAKERAnd then, like I said, you also cut off things
40:06SPEAKERlike the PS3 and the Xbox One, and older consoles
40:10SPEAKERthat aren't gonna have, like maybe Xbox Series S
40:12SPEAKERdoesn't get to host, because it's a little slower
40:14SPEAKERthan the X, stuff like that.
40:19SPEAKERIt was really, really important in the early
40:21SPEAKERkind of cross-gen days of this current generation,
40:25SPEAKERwhen everybody was releasing games on all the platforms,
40:28SPEAKERand like 99% of the players were on old hardware,
40:32SPEAKERand it's why we saw so many dedicated server games
40:34SPEAKERin the first part of this generation,
40:35SPEAKER'cause you couldn't rely on consoles to host.
40:41SPEAKERThe SSD thing is like all about load times,
40:44SPEAKERif like the player is, even if a player's connecting
40:48SPEAKERto an SSD host, and their game takes a minute to load
40:53SPEAKERversus three seconds on the SSD,
40:57SPEAKERthey might time out, 'cause often the timeouts
40:59SPEAKERare 60 seconds, 30 seconds, something like that,
41:03SPEAKERin the post-SSD era.
41:06SPEAKERLoad times, this load time thing is one of the reasons
41:10SPEAKERthat most battle royales have that one minute pre-warmup.
41:13SPEAKER- Interesting.
41:14SPEAKER- Is because it takes a long, it actually takes a long time
41:17SPEAKERto get that many players into a game.
41:19SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fair.
41:20SPEAKERAlthough it's interesting, you also see this in,
41:24SPEAKERTetris 99 is the example I'm thinking of here.
41:26SPEAKERThey actually, have you played that game?
41:28SPEAKER- I love it, I play it all the time.
41:29SPEAKER- Right, they have like a similar hopper kind of thing
41:32SPEAKERat the beginning, like basically similar to kind of
41:34SPEAKERpunch everybody in the face island in PUBG,
41:37SPEAKERexcept it's just a bunch of rectangles
41:39SPEAKERas people's Tetris board loads in, but even there,
41:42SPEAKERit takes quite a while to populate 99 people.
41:45SPEAKER- But also there's time in matchmaking,
41:47SPEAKER'cause all 100 of those people didn't hit play now
41:49SPEAKERat the same time, right?
41:51SPEAKERSo one of the things in this Call of Duty paper
41:52SPEAKERthat was interesting is they talk about working
41:55SPEAKERin like a one minute loop, so they kind of pull up
41:58SPEAKERall the people who press play in a one minute period,
42:00SPEAKERand then they kind of heuristically sort them.
42:03SPEAKERBut if you think about it, that sorting problem,
42:06SPEAKEReven if you're just looking at ping and platform
42:08SPEAKERand input and the kind of basic stuff,
42:11SPEAKERis wildly complicated.
42:12SPEAKERI think it said it was 800 quadrillion possibilities
42:16SPEAKERfor 12 player lobbies with the number of players
42:21SPEAKERthat they were talking about, and it wasn't a lot,
42:23SPEAKERit was like 10,000 players or something,
42:24SPEAKERit wasn't a lot of players.
42:25SPEAKERSo it's like, it's too computationally expensive
42:28SPEAKERto solve the problem because the number of outcomes
42:31SPEAKERis so high to get everybody best.
42:32SPEAKERSo you're just looking for good enough across the board.
42:35SPEAKERAnyway, crashes.
42:38SPEAKERThis is another one that I didn't really appreciate at all.
42:41SPEAKERWe're not talking about game crashes.
42:42SPEAKERWe're not talking about the host disconnecting
42:44SPEAKERbecause they crashed.
42:45SPEAKERWe're talking about multiple potential players
42:47SPEAKERvying for the same spot on a server,
42:49SPEAKERwhich generally speaking, you don't have a server
42:51SPEAKERdoling out all of those tickets and saying,
42:54SPEAKER"Okay, you go here, you go here, you go here."
42:55SPEAKERIt's first come, first serve.
42:57SPEAKERAnd with a game that's popular,
42:59SPEAKERthe number of players happening,
43:01SPEAKERyou can have two people hit it exactly at the same time
43:02SPEAKERand then both get a fail if you do it wrong.
43:04SPEAKER- Right, collision is maybe another word we could use here.
43:08SPEAKER- Yeah, collision is fair.
43:10SPEAKERIt's not as big a deal in the 100 player game
43:12SPEAKER'cause you just make a, like I said,
43:14SPEAKERa longer lobby period and it's just part of the deal.
43:16SPEAKERBut in a two player game,
43:17SPEAKERif you have 18 people fighting for one spot,
43:20SPEAKERyou end up with the same thing that happened
43:21SPEAKERwhen we used to play Quake on TNTs in the whiskey basement,
43:24SPEAKERwhich was we had 1,000 people trying to join those games
43:27SPEAKERand the server just completely wigged out
43:30SPEAKERbecause it couldn't cope with 1,000 people
43:32SPEAKERtrying to join the game.
43:36SPEAKERThis is another place where the middleware
43:37SPEAKERusually assumes that the developer's gonna solve
43:39SPEAKERthis problem based on the needs of their game.
43:41SPEAKER'Cause like I said, in a 100 player game,
43:42SPEAKERyou don't need it probably, it's probably fine.
43:44SPEAKERIn a two player game, it's vitally important.
43:48SPEAKERAnd usually you have some like layer of heuristics
43:50SPEAKERthat kind of sorts everybody by ping
43:53SPEAKERand then sorts by server capability
43:55SPEAKERand then sorts by player input
43:56SPEAKERand all the different characteristics you determine
43:58SPEAKERare important for your game.
44:00SPEAKERAnd then you hit what I like to think of
44:02SPEAKERas the Chicago problem, which is the guy in Chicago
44:05SPEAKERwith a pretty good computer hooked up to fiber
44:08SPEAKERwho has a relatively low ping to everybody in North America
44:11SPEAKERbecause he's right next to a data hub.
44:13SPEAKER- Sure.
44:14SPEAKER- And he's still gonna be the number one choice
44:17SPEAKERfor this some enormous subset of players.
44:21SPEAKERAnd you have to figure out a way to deal with that.
44:23SPEAKERAnd sometimes it's just, when it fails,
44:24SPEAKERyou just seamlessly fail over to the next person in line.
44:28SPEAKER- Gotta move to Chicago.
44:30SPEAKER- Look, there's a reason a lot of professional streamers
44:32SPEAKERlive in the Midwest.
44:33SPEAKER- Wait.
44:34SPEAKER- Competitive guys.
44:35SPEAKER- Wait, is that an actual consideration?
44:37SPEAKER- Yeah.
44:38SPEAKER- Wow.
44:38SPEAKER- It's also cheap.
44:39SPEAKERSo that helps too.
44:40SPEAKER- Of course, of course.
44:41SPEAKERBut I just, I love the idea that Call of Duty pros
44:43SPEAKERare all vying for houses in Nebraska or whatever
44:47SPEAKERbecause they are getting lower pings to more people.
44:50SPEAKER- There you go.
44:52SPEAKERHow you handle the fail states here
44:53SPEAKERis a communication problem that's really important, right?
44:56SPEAKER'Cause if you do something like, say, match not found,
45:00SPEAKEReverybody's gonna think, oh, there's nobody playing
45:03SPEAKERthis game, this game sucks, I'm gonna go leave
45:05SPEAKERa nasty Steam review and call it a dead game,
45:07SPEAKERwhich we're gonna talk about in a minute.
45:08SPEAKERAnd then nobody's gonna play your game anymore
45:10SPEAKERand it's gonna go away and you're gonna have to go
45:12SPEAKERget a job working at Sears selling dishwashers.
45:16SPEAKERYou either need to be extremely explicit
45:18SPEAKERwith what's happening and say, hey, this match is full,
45:20SPEAKERwe're going on to the next one.
45:22SPEAKEROr you need to be intentionally vague
45:24SPEAKERin a way that isn't lying to your players
45:25SPEAKERbut implies that your problem is that shit's too busy
45:30SPEAKERand not busy enough.
45:33SPEAKERAnd stuff like obscure error codes,
45:35SPEAKERnot to just slam Bungie on a week that their stuff is bad,
45:39SPEAKERbut obscure bunch of error codes that you have to go look up
45:42SPEAKERare a terrible solution and I hate them.
45:44SPEAKER- Yes, I played a lot of Destiny at a time
45:47SPEAKERwhen you were seeing, I've actually got a list
45:49SPEAKERof error codes in front of me.
45:50SPEAKERCacao, Coconuts, Calabrese, Guitar.
45:54SPEAKERLike three guesses what any of those mean.
45:57SPEAKER- It means you go to Google and you type destiny
45:59SPEAKERand then that weird word and you probably get a result
46:01SPEAKERthat's most certainly somebody on Reddit complaining
46:03SPEAKERabout the game not working.
46:05SPEAKER- Error code coconut might occur as a result of ISP issues,
46:08SPEAKERpacket loss, complications with various hardware,
46:10SPEAKERwifi glitches or other issues
46:11SPEAKERthat can cause connection instability.
46:12SPEAKERWell, thank you.
46:13SPEAKER- But the unfortunate thing about that error code
46:15SPEAKERand that message is it's really useful
46:17SPEAKERfor somebody who's non-technical.
46:18SPEAKERBut if you have somebody who understands
46:19SPEAKERhow to deal with the router,
46:21SPEAKERthey can't actually troubleshoot the problem
46:23SPEAKER'cause you haven't given them the information they need.
46:26SPEAKERSo yeah, the other thing is if you give time estimates,
46:29SPEAKERyou'd goddamn well better be faster or accurate,
46:33SPEAKERbut never slower 'cause people get real upset about that.
46:36SPEAKERAnd I think you wrote in, is it okay to just lie here?
46:39SPEAKER- Yeah, that might be a little aggressive.
46:41SPEAKERI guess what I should have written is like,
46:42SPEAKERis it okay to sort of like be a little fuzzy with the truth
46:46SPEAKERor kind of bend the truth or like, you know what I mean?
46:49SPEAKER- So there's a real toxic game scene thing
46:53SPEAKERabout dead games now to the point that,
46:56SPEAKERI'm just gonna talk about this later,
46:57SPEAKERwe're gonna talk about it now,
46:58SPEAKERto the point that like people are calling single player games
47:00SPEAKERdead games as if that matters
47:01SPEAKERin a game that you play only with yourself.
47:04SPEAKERI think it's okay to not,
47:06SPEAKERlike if you have a situation
47:08SPEAKERwhere you're not finding a good match for them,
47:10SPEAKERyou should never ever say
47:11SPEAKERyou're not finding a good match for a player.
47:13SPEAKERYou should either not say anything or say,
47:19SPEAKERyeah, like we haven't found you,
47:20SPEAKERlike, hey, your computer is awesome, you should host, right?
47:24SPEAKERAnd I think that's the better option probably.
47:27SPEAKER- Yeah, that's a tough problem to solve
47:29SPEAKER'cause it's thinking about it as a player,
47:30SPEAKERlike watching it matchmake endlessly
47:32SPEAKERis just about as frustrating as having it say,
47:34SPEAKERno match is found.
47:36SPEAKER- Yeah.
47:37SPEAKER- So there's not a good outcome there
47:38SPEAKERor not a good solution.
47:40SPEAKER- But also the feeling you get from going into Helldivers
47:43SPEAKERand clicking on those in-game joins on the menu,
47:47SPEAKERwhich they don't really explain,
47:48SPEAKERbut people figure out over time,
47:50SPEAKERand like getting, hey, this one's already full,
47:52SPEAKERthis one's already full.
47:53SPEAKERThat's bad, but that's not as bad
47:55SPEAKERas not seeing those in-game joins on the map
47:57SPEAKERand not having games in progress that you can join.
47:59SPEAKER- Yep, sure.
48:00SPEAKER- So anyway, for what it's worth,
48:01SPEAKERI think Helldivers does a really good job of this.
48:03SPEAKERThis is a hard problem.
48:06SPEAKERAnd even here, just at the end of the technical stuff,
48:09SPEAKERwe've broken down by region,
48:10SPEAKERwe've broken down by where it's hosted,
48:12SPEAKERwhether it's a server or peer-to-peer,
48:14SPEAKERwe've broken down by hardware,
48:17SPEAKERwhether your machine's capable,
48:20SPEAKERand we've handled fail states.
48:21SPEAKERSo we already have like three or four,
48:23SPEAKERmaybe up to 10 different buckets of discrete chunks
48:28SPEAKERof your matchmaking pool that are split up already
48:31SPEAKERbased on your regions.
48:32SPEAKERAnd then we get to the social stuff,
48:34SPEAKERwhich is when we get to talk about skill,
48:36SPEAKERwhich is the thing that this Call of Duty PDF is incredible.
48:41SPEAKERFirst, we should talk about the difference
48:42SPEAKERbetween in-game ranks and ladders
48:44SPEAKERand skill-based matchmaking,
48:46SPEAKER'cause I think a lot of people think
48:47SPEAKERthat that number next to your name in a game
48:50SPEAKERis indicative of your skill level,
48:53SPEAKERwhen in reality, almost universally,
48:56SPEAKERanything that's visible to the player
48:57SPEAKERis just indicative of time spent.
49:00SPEAKERSo for example, in Fortnite, you have a series of quests,
49:03SPEAKERand I think Fortnite lifted the Riot system
49:05SPEAKERfrom League of Legends pretty much,
49:06SPEAKERpretty much and adapted it to a shooter.
49:09SPEAKERBut you have quests that you complete every day,
49:13SPEAKERevery week, every season.
49:15SPEAKERSome are timed to special events.
49:16SPEAKERThere's a bunch of ways to get XP
49:18SPEAKERby doing things in the game.
49:20SPEAKERAnd those things that you do in the game
49:21SPEAKERare almost exclusively things you would probably do anyway.
49:25SPEAKERGenerally, there's enough XP that if you play
49:28SPEAKERthe number of hours a day or week
49:30SPEAKERthat the studio wants you to play,
49:33SPEAKERyou'll complete the battle pass goal or whatever it is
49:36SPEAKERin the time that the battle pass exists
49:39SPEAKERwithout having to ever engage with the system at all
49:41SPEAKERin an intentional way.
49:43SPEAKER- Grinding, in other words.
49:44SPEAKER- Not even grinding, just playing.
49:45SPEAKER- Well, yeah, I mean.
49:47SPEAKER- Grinding implies intentionality, right?
49:49SPEAKERIf you just go in and like the quests are,
49:52SPEAKERopen a chest and kill someone with a assault rifle
49:56SPEAKERand drive a car 500 meters and swim,
49:59SPEAKERand all the things that you just do playing Fortnite,
50:01SPEAKERI don't think that counts as grinding.
50:03SPEAKERI think that's just playing the game and having fun.
50:05SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess not.
50:06SPEAKERI guess it feels like one can give way
50:08SPEAKERto the other pretty quickly though.
50:09SPEAKERLike I definitely see people talking about like,
50:11SPEAKER"Oh, well, I can't play other games right now.
50:12SPEAKERI have to keep playing Fortnite
50:13SPEAKERuntil I finish this battle pass 'cause I only have a week."
50:15SPEAKER- It's a fine line.
50:17SPEAKERAnd also, like I said, those estimates are based
50:20SPEAKERon you playing a fixed amount of time per month.
50:22SPEAKERAnd for Fortnite, the more time people play,
50:25SPEAKERthe more money they make 'cause the more time people play,
50:27SPEAKERthe more money they spend on skins and yada, yada.
50:29SPEAKERIt's the same way most free-to-play games work
50:31SPEAKERor most PC free-to-play games work.
50:34SPEAKERSo all of these numbers
50:39SPEAKERare expressions of that time spent.
50:41SPEAKEREven stuff like ranked ladders in a game
50:44SPEAKERthat has a progression and demotion kind of thing.
50:50SPEAKERLike if you look at "Valorant" or games like that
50:55SPEAKERwhere you can rank up and you go from like bronze
50:58SPEAKERto platinum to platinum to diamond to whatever.
51:01SPEAKERAnd if you have a couple of bad games, you drop down,
51:04SPEAKERthere's still an enormous amount of that
51:05SPEAKERthat's time spent playing the game.
51:07SPEAKERYou might have a placement match at the beginning
51:12SPEAKERthat lets you bypass the first like 10 or 15 hours
51:14SPEAKERof that grind, but you're still gonna have to grind
51:17SPEAKERfrom gold to platinum, from platinum to platinum two
51:20SPEAKERand on and on and on.
51:23SPEAKERTypically, the skill-based stuff isn't exposed
51:26SPEAKERto the player at all.
51:27SPEAKERLike their estimation of your skill is not shown at all
51:30SPEAKERto a player, which is why this Call of Duty paper
51:33SPEAKERis interesting 'cause they're talking about it
51:35SPEAKERin a way that most studios don't.
51:37SPEAKERIt's designed to match you, the goal,
51:40SPEAKERand this is from the Call of Duty papers,
51:41SPEAKERthis is also what everybody else says,
51:43SPEAKERis that they're designed to put you in matches
51:46SPEAKERwhere you're gonna have competitive games, right?
51:50SPEAKERIf it's a two-player versus game,
51:52SPEAKERyou should win half and lose half, which feels right to me.
51:56SPEAKER- Yeah, until one of those things starts going out
51:58SPEAKERof proportion and then it kind of corrects itself, right?
52:01SPEAKERLike eventually you'll start winning more as you get better
52:03SPEAKERand then as you rank up, you'll start playing better people
52:07SPEAKERuntil you're back to 50/50 again.
52:08SPEAKER- Yeah, and also, you shouldn't wanna always play people
52:13SPEAKERwho are worse than you, who are worse than you
52:15SPEAKER'cause you definitely learn more as a player
52:17SPEAKERby competing against people who are doing new things
52:20SPEAKERand showing your brain new things
52:22SPEAKERthat you can do to other people, right?
52:25SPEAKERNow, if the game's not legible enough
52:26SPEAKERthat you can see what they're doing
52:27SPEAKERand you're just dying out of the blue,
52:29SPEAKERthat's frustrating and a bad experience too,
52:30SPEAKERso that's a whole different problem.
52:34SPEAKERPre-built parties wildly complicate the use
52:37SPEAKERof skill-based matchmaking 'cause how do you take,
52:40SPEAKERlike I play with two friends who I play Fortnite
52:42SPEAKERwith all the time and sometimes my daughter jumps in with me
52:44SPEAKERwho plays Fortnite twice a month.
52:46SPEAKERShe's not a great, she's a very good 11-year-old
52:50SPEAKERFortnite player, but she is not competitive
52:52SPEAKERin the same way that we are.
52:54SPEAKERAnd the way Fortnite seems to work
52:57SPEAKERis it just sums up everybody's totals
52:59SPEAKERand so we get matched in with people
53:01SPEAKERwho are significantly lower skill than us,
53:03SPEAKERwhich is a pretty good experience for her
53:05SPEAKER'cause she has a really exciting game
53:06SPEAKERand we have a relatively easy game
53:08SPEAKERthat we're probably more likely to win,
53:10SPEAKERbut without feeling like an absolute cakewalk, right?
53:15SPEAKERAnd she has a good time.
53:17SPEAKERSo it's like the place that the Call of Duty thing,
53:19SPEAKERpaper specifically talks about is erring on the side
53:22SPEAKERof giving new players a path to develop mastery.
53:26SPEAKERSo not beating down the new players,
53:29SPEAKERit turns out is an important thing
53:30SPEAKERif you wanna continue growing the player base
53:32SPEAKERand keeping the new players coming into the game
53:35SPEAKER'cause that always happens
53:36SPEAKER'cause people stop playing games and move on
53:37SPEAKERand you always have to have new people coming in.
53:40SPEAKERThey talk about how they measure your skill,
53:43SPEAKERwhich is kills per match, kills per death,
53:46SPEAKERbut not suicides 'cause they don't want you
53:48SPEAKERto be able to kill yourself with grenades a lot
53:50SPEAKERand smurf down to a lower rank,
53:53SPEAKERand kills per enemy death across the whole match.
53:57SPEAKERSo that's to kind of keep people
53:58SPEAKERfrom joining in the last two minutes
54:00SPEAKERand getting a lucky grenade with five people on one point
54:04SPEAKERand suddenly spiking up their skill
54:07SPEAKERbecause they had one really high performance moment,
54:10SPEAKERbut that wasn't indicative of their overall perf.
54:14SPEAKERAnd it's about resiliency toward gaming the system,
54:17SPEAKERbut still being mobile enough
54:19SPEAKERthat if you do get better, then you can react.
54:21SPEAKERAnd if you have a hot streak for three weeks
54:23SPEAKER'cause you got a new mouse,
54:25SPEAKERyour skill ranking should reflect that, right?
54:27SPEAKER- And it seems like there are a shocking number of people
54:29SPEAKERwho want to game their ranking as much as they can.
54:31SPEAKERI mean, I think, I'm pretty sure Valve
54:34SPEAKERjust straight up started banning people
54:35SPEAKERwho made smurf accounts in Dota, for example,
54:38SPEAKERlike a disturbing number of people out there
54:40SPEAKERwho just want to dunk on people who are helpless.
54:43SPEAKER- Well, and it's really, really bad
54:46SPEAKERfor the health of the game if you do that, right?
54:48SPEAKER'Cause what happens when you have new players come in
54:51SPEAKERthat join the game and they just,
54:52SPEAKERand this is the thing that happened with PUBG,
54:54SPEAKERlike this, I think I said this in the "Next Lander" podcast,
54:56SPEAKERbut this COD paper is basically a,
54:58SPEAKER"Hey, here's how PUBG fucked up
55:01SPEAKER"written across 35 pages," or something.
55:05SPEAKERBecause what happens, and they describe this as,
55:07SPEAKERwhen they turned off skill-based matchmaking
55:09SPEAKERin the cohort that they tested with Call of Duty,
55:12SPEAKERpeople in the top 10% stayed longer,
55:15SPEAKERin the top 10th percentile, rather, stayed longer of skill.
55:18SPEAKERAnd every other skill percentile quit earlier
55:21SPEAKERand quit mid-game and stopped coming back
55:24SPEAKERto the game as often.
55:25SPEAKERSo they lost players as a result of turning off
55:29SPEAKERskill-based matchmaking across 90 percentiles.
55:31SPEAKERSo what that means is, over time,
55:34SPEAKERthe people that are in the 10th percentile
55:36SPEAKERat the start of this filter down to the 30th percentile
55:39SPEAKERof this new, harder-core player base.
55:43SPEAKER- A much smaller player base.
55:44SPEAKER- Yeah, and eventually you go from having
55:45SPEAKER3.2 million players playing on Tuesday night,
55:49SPEAKERwhere every game feels like the Wild West,
55:52SPEAKERand you see Shroud once in six months,
55:54SPEAKERand you're like, oh shit, man, I just saw Shroud,
55:55SPEAKERthat's awesome, I got killed by this famous guy,
55:58SPEAKERto being in the same game with Shroud every night
56:00SPEAKER'cause there's only three games going at a time,
56:03SPEAKERand you just get your ass beaten over and over again,
56:05SPEAKERyou're like, fuck this, I'm gonna go play cards.
56:07SPEAKERAnd they're like, we saw this in the period of time
56:12SPEAKERthat we ran this test, and if you let this go
56:14SPEAKERand continued and loosened the restrictions
56:16SPEAKERon matchmaking so that you match with people
56:19SPEAKERfurther away from your skill,
56:21SPEAKERit's gonna accelerate even faster.
56:23SPEAKERSo you might have fun briefly, but it's not gonna last.
56:27SPEAKER- Yeah, it's bad for everybody at the end of the day.
56:29SPEAKERIt's bad for high-skill players, low-skill players,
56:32SPEAKERand the overall health of the game.
56:34SPEAKER- 'Cause when you're only playing against
56:35SPEAKERthe other high-skill players, it turns out
56:36SPEAKERyou're still gonna be a low-skill player against somebody,
56:39SPEAKERand you'll find them quickly.
56:40SPEAKER- Yes, exactly.
56:42SPEAKER- So yeah, there's a couple other things
56:43SPEAKERthat people matchmake against, platform and input.
56:46SPEAKERSo generally, you try to put console people
56:48SPEAKERwith console people, and you put keyboard and mouse people
56:50SPEAKERwith keyboard and mouse people,
56:51SPEAKERand gamepad people with gamepad people.
56:53SPEAKERI think a lot of games even still have a toggle
56:56SPEAKERthat say, "Hey, don't matchmake me with the other guys."
57:00SPEAKER- Oh, does that go by both ways, typically?
57:02SPEAKER'Cause the stereotype, I mean, this is ancient,
57:04SPEAKERbut the stereotype was gamepad can't hold a candle
57:07SPEAKERto mouse and keyboard, so often it was just like--
57:10SPEAKER- I got bad news, Brad.
57:11SPEAKER- Oh, I know, I know, that has changed dramatically.
57:13SPEAKER- Yeah, I think they leave it so that people
57:15SPEAKERhave the option to turn it off and wait longer for games.
57:17SPEAKER- Sure.
57:18SPEAKER- If they care.
57:19SPEAKERI think most, typically this is a situation
57:22SPEAKERwhere the defaults are usually cross-plays on,
57:24SPEAKERand playing with people on other controllers is on,
57:29SPEAKERand if you choose to turn it off,
57:30SPEAKERthere are gonna be matchmaking consequences.
57:32SPEAKER- Yeah, this is just me not being able
57:34SPEAKERto get past the classic horror story
57:35SPEAKERabout Quake 3 and the Dreamcast.
57:38SPEAKER- Oh yeah, I can't even imagine.
57:39SPEAKERThat one guy with the mouse and keyboard ruled everybody.
57:42SPEAKER- Yes, that was the word.
57:44SPEAKER- But the auto-aim stuff on gamepads is good to the point
57:47SPEAKERthat in games that are competitive
57:49SPEAKERacross both console, gamepad and mouse and keyboard,
57:53SPEAKERpeople play with gamepad, more pros play with gamepads
57:56SPEAKERtypically than mouse and keyboard these days.
57:58SPEAKER- I believe that, and not just auto-aim,
57:59SPEAKERalso acceleration curves and dead zones
58:02SPEAKERand kind of the nuance in the way that analog six control
58:06SPEAKERhas gotten tremendously better.
58:08SPEAKER- And having analog movement is incredibly powerful
58:10SPEAKERin some games, stuff like that.
58:11SPEAKER- Yes, that is the one place where console,
58:14SPEAKERyou don't just, blanket advantage that controllers have
58:18SPEAKERas visual movement on a keyboard is a bit limiting at times.
58:22SPEAKER- Yep.
58:23SPEAKERAlso some platforms limit cross-play based
58:26SPEAKERbecause of parent and child safety preferences.
58:29SPEAKERSo if you have a kid account, you can't do cross-play
58:31SPEAKERunless your parents opt you into it
58:32SPEAKERon a game by game basis on the Xbox.
58:34SPEAKERThanks for that, by the way, Microsoft.
58:37SPEAKERThere's a new thing that people are starting
58:38SPEAKERto do more matchmaking with though
58:40SPEAKERthat I think is interesting,
58:41SPEAKERwhich is kind of social and play style stuff.
58:43SPEAKER- Yeah, there was some stuff in here specifically
58:45SPEAKERlike some of the data points or metrics
58:48SPEAKERthat this turns on that I would not have even guessed
58:51SPEAKERwere being tracked, which pretty interesting.
58:54SPEAKER- Yeah, so like you should assume
58:55SPEAKERthat everything's being tracked at this point,
58:57SPEAKERespecially on live service games.
58:58SPEAKER- And this is not like a data privacy.
59:01SPEAKERNobody's trying to take a stand here
59:02SPEAKERabout how you loot in a battle royale, for example,
59:05SPEAKERwhich is one of the examples that you've listed here.
59:06SPEAKERYou know, you've put like voice yes or no,
59:09SPEAKERmakes perfect sense.
59:10SPEAKERLike that's just a binary, are they doing it or not?
59:13SPEAKERBut then you've got stuff in here
59:14SPEAKERand class preferences is another one
59:16SPEAKERwhere it's very easy to say like, oh, this player
59:18SPEAKERprefers healers over tanks, but you've got stuff
59:21SPEAKERlike the speed that you run through the maps
59:23SPEAKERor how you loot in battle royales.
59:25SPEAKERAnd that's the kind of stuff that frankly,
59:27SPEAKERI think is fascinating.
59:27SPEAKERLike I, not for me, like what do they know
59:29SPEAKERabout me standpoint, but just a general, genuine curiosity.
59:33SPEAKERI would love to know more of the type of granularity
59:36SPEAKERthat they are pulling out of like fuzzy player behaviors.
59:39SPEAKER- Well, so you can collect a lot of stuff now.
59:41SPEAKERIt's kind of expensive.
59:42SPEAKERIt's another one of those things that like your data
59:46SPEAKERcollection over time can cost a lot of money
59:49SPEAKERif you retain the data too long,
59:50SPEAKER'cause it's enormous data sets with a big player base.
59:52SPEAKER- Sure.
59:53SPEAKER- But like the speed you run through the maps,
59:55SPEAKERit turns out is really important in co-op games.
59:58SPEAKER'Cause if you're a player in like the Anacrusis
1:00:01SPEAKERor Left 4 Dead, and you just like start at the beginning,
1:00:04SPEAKERyou run for the exit as fast as you can,
1:00:06SPEAKERyou play that game a hundred times,
1:00:07SPEAKERyou know exactly the route every time
1:00:08SPEAKERand know all the branches and all that stuff.
1:00:11SPEAKERIt is awful to play those games.
1:00:13SPEAKERIf you like to kind of take your time and fight
1:00:15SPEAKERand do that stuff, it feels terrible playing that game
1:00:18SPEAKERwith a speed runner 'cause somebody is gonna get hosed
1:00:20SPEAKERby the game's director.
1:00:21SPEAKERIt's just gonna keep throwing bad guys at you
1:00:23SPEAKER'cause you're too far apart, right?
1:00:25SPEAKERThe looting style in a battle royale.
1:00:27SPEAKERIf you are a player who likes to get out
1:00:30SPEAKERand grab whatever AR, it doesn't matter,
1:00:33SPEAKERand grab some armor and go find some people to kill,
1:00:36SPEAKERand your other teammates like to go
1:00:39SPEAKERand find exactly the loadout that they want
1:00:40SPEAKERwith all the right attachments
1:00:41SPEAKERand all the right kind of grenades
1:00:44SPEAKERand carry a spare can of gas just in case the car runs out,
1:00:47SPEAKERit's gonna be an awful experience playing
1:00:49SPEAKERlike those groups together.
1:00:50SPEAKERSo you tend, you kind of,
1:00:53SPEAKERthis is a game by game basis thing, right?
1:00:55SPEAKERYou have to figure out which aspects of player behavior
1:00:58SPEAKERare gonna be negative.
1:00:59SPEAKERSome of these can be not game behavior.
1:01:01SPEAKERLike if you have, I wanna say Siege does this,
1:01:07SPEAKERValorant does a really good job of this.
1:01:09SPEAKERThey match people, new players,
1:01:12SPEAKERwith people who have a reputation
1:01:14SPEAKERfor helping new players understand the game better.
1:01:16SPEAKERAnd as a result, instead of,
1:01:19SPEAKERthe Counter-Strike/Valorant split here is really interesting.
1:01:21SPEAKERCounter-Strike, you don't know which corner to hold on Dust.
1:01:24SPEAKERYou're gonna get yelled at by somebody
1:01:25SPEAKERwho's gonna use a bunch of slurs
1:01:27SPEAKERand is gonna just be generally shitty.
1:01:29SPEAKERAnd in Valorant, a really nice,
1:01:30SPEAKERwhen I did that and I didn't know the map,
1:01:31SPEAKERso the really nice 14-year-old was like,
1:01:32SPEAKER"Hey, you should put smoke here instead of here."
1:01:35SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Oh, thank you.
1:01:35SPEAKER"That's incredibly, what a nice experience this has been."
1:01:38SPEAKER- That's a very heartwarming story to hear.
1:01:40SPEAKERI mean, surely they're not just profiling voice chat
1:01:43SPEAKERto figure that out though, right?
1:01:45SPEAKER- So they let you give accolades at the end of the game.
1:01:46SPEAKER- Oh, sure, sure. - Often they'll be like,
1:01:47SPEAKER"Hey, this person was helpful."
1:01:49SPEAKEROr, "This person sucked ass."
1:01:50SPEAKERAnd they don't pair the suck asses with the new players.
1:01:55SPEAKER- Fair.
1:01:57SPEAKER- Now, Ubi with Siege goes a step further.
1:02:00SPEAKERAnd they started out a long time ago,
1:02:02SPEAKERwhen you do a harassment report on somebody,
1:02:04SPEAKERthey'll dump the last 30 or 60 seconds of voice chat
1:02:06SPEAKERinto that report.
1:02:08SPEAKERSo if somebody dropped a bunch of slurs
1:02:09SPEAKERor is misogynistic or whatever,
1:02:13SPEAKERthat's against their code of conduct,
1:02:14SPEAKERthen they would just use those people from the game,
1:02:17SPEAKERwhich is like, props to them.
1:02:19SPEAKERThis is good, like it's gotta be expensive to run
1:02:21SPEAKERand expensive to moderate,
1:02:22SPEAKERbut like those games are much more pleasant to play
1:02:25SPEAKERas a result if you're a normal human being.
1:02:26SPEAKER- Yeah, the first thing I envisioned
1:02:28SPEAKERwhen you were describing that process
1:02:29SPEAKERis how many people there must be having to review
1:02:32SPEAKERall that stuff and how much time it must take.
1:02:34SPEAKERSo yeah, I'm sure that is not a cheap proposition.
1:02:36SPEAKERSo yeah, kudos to them for making that investment.
1:02:39SPEAKER- Well, I mean, so no,
1:02:42SPEAKERI'm sure that those all are happening
1:02:43SPEAKERoffshore someplace.
1:02:44SPEAKER- Yeah, that's a whole other issue.
1:02:47SPEAKER- Yeah, but it's also a thing that we're starting to see
1:02:51SPEAKERa lot of accessibility features
1:02:53SPEAKERlike automatic speech to text in games,
1:02:56SPEAKERso that if you're playing say Roblox and have voice on,
1:02:58SPEAKERyou can see the text come through
1:03:00SPEAKERand that lets them filter the text
1:03:01SPEAKERfor the people who don't wanna have voice on.
1:03:03SPEAKERLike, this is gonna get better.
1:03:05SPEAKERWe're gonna hear people complaining about free speech
1:03:08SPEAKERand they're the people that famously in that Wall Street,
1:03:12SPEAKERin that study from 2015 that found that the only people who,
1:03:16SPEAKERmost of the people who harass women in games online
1:03:18SPEAKERare people who are shitty at games.
1:03:20SPEAKER- Right, like legitimate actual losers.
1:03:24SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:03:24SPEAKER- Like that's the most obvious thing in the world.
1:03:27SPEAKERThat's like the last thing you needed to hear
1:03:28SPEAKERconfirmed by data, but it's also so satisfying to see that.
1:03:32SPEAKER- The sociologists came out and were like,
1:03:34SPEAKERyeah, this is typical primate behavior.
1:03:36SPEAKERThe ones that are less desirable tend to be louder
1:03:38SPEAKERbecause it makes them more desirable and blah, blah, blah.
1:03:40SPEAKER- Right. - Anyway.
1:03:41SPEAKER- To be clear, I'm sure that is cold comfort
1:03:42SPEAKERfor people being harassed,
1:03:43SPEAKERbut like there is some amount of satisfaction
1:03:46SPEAKERin knowing that like, hey, these people
1:03:47SPEAKERare actually pathetic.
1:03:48SPEAKER- It still sucks.
1:03:50SPEAKERIt sucks for everybody.
1:03:51SPEAKERIt's awful 'cause if you see somebody harassing somebody,
1:03:55SPEAKERyou should call them out and you should fucking report them
1:03:57SPEAKER'cause it's bad behavior and it makes games smaller, right?
1:04:00SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:04:02SPEAKER- So yeah, but you can match all sorts of stuff.
1:04:04SPEAKERI think Overwatch had this,
1:04:08SPEAKERhad a huge problem matchmaking people with classes
1:04:10SPEAKERbecause people tended to switch classes in the game
1:04:13SPEAKERand that would mess up the balance of the game
1:04:14SPEAKERand it would go from one person having a bad game
1:04:17SPEAKERto having what was six people in Overwatch originally,
1:04:20SPEAKERI think.
1:04:20SPEAKER- I think that's right. - On a side.
1:04:22SPEAKERSo 12 people would have a bad game.
1:04:24SPEAKER- Yeah, I think that's--
1:04:25SPEAKER- If you like made all maze or something like that.
1:04:28SPEAKERSo they rolled out the role queue,
1:04:30SPEAKERwhich let them simplify their matchmaking
1:04:31SPEAKERpretty significantly and give people
1:04:34SPEAKERbetter estimated times on groups.
1:04:36SPEAKER- Yeah, and I like sticking with Blizzard here.
1:04:39SPEAKERLike World of Warcraft is an early example
1:04:40SPEAKERof this kind of thing.
1:04:41SPEAKERLike trying to find a dungeon finder,
1:04:43SPEAKERtrying to find specific classes
1:04:44SPEAKERfor your Scarlet Monastery raid or run.
1:04:47SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:04:48SPEAKER- Like, hey, we need a DPS for this thing
1:04:50SPEAKER'cause we can't find one.
1:04:51SPEAKER- Yeah, it's really, really interesting.
1:04:53SPEAKERThen the newest thing is the more nuanced stuff, right?
1:04:57SPEAKERThe social matchmaking that's more about
1:04:59SPEAKERthe kind of tone that you use in your voice
1:05:01SPEAKERand stuff like that, and, you know,
1:05:05SPEAKERare you playing, like when you play a Dota,
1:05:10SPEAKERare you a jungler?
1:05:12SPEAKERProbably you don't need two junglers on a team.
1:05:14SPEAKER- Yes, that is correct.
1:05:16SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:05:17SPEAKER- You don't need two junglers on a team
1:05:19SPEAKERif I understand Dota, right?
1:05:20SPEAKERYes, that is in fact the case.
1:05:21SPEAKER- Yeah, so like you think about,
1:05:25SPEAKERand I guess it's getting more complicated
1:05:27SPEAKERthan just that is the thing, is you're able to say,
1:05:30SPEAKERokay, this person likes,
1:05:31SPEAKERwhen you're playing Counter-Strike,
1:05:33SPEAKERand this isn't something Valve's doing, I don't think,
1:05:34SPEAKERbut they're able to say,
1:05:36SPEAKERokay, this person likes to watch long A on Dust,
1:05:39SPEAKERand that's the place that they play 99% of the time,
1:05:42SPEAKERso we're gonna put them on a team
1:05:43SPEAKERwith people that like to cover B, right?
1:05:45SPEAKER'Cause then you're not gonna have 14 people
1:05:48SPEAKERon a 20-person team going to long A
1:05:51SPEAKERand all standing there like dumbasses
1:05:52SPEAKERwhile the terrorists just stroll into B.
1:05:57SPEAKER- And then the last part of the social thing
1:06:01SPEAKERis that pre-built party composition comes up here again,
1:06:04SPEAKERbecause there's a million ways to matchmake
1:06:08SPEAKERand mix the skill, and they all have downsides.
1:06:12SPEAKERThere's no right answer here,
1:06:13SPEAKER'cause if you're in a really competitive game,
1:06:15SPEAKERyou don't wanna actually bring lower-level players
1:06:18SPEAKERup to the competitive tier,
1:06:20SPEAKER'cause it's gonna A, cause your higher-tier players to drop,
1:06:24SPEAKERand it's gonna cause your lower-tier players
1:06:26SPEAKERto just get their asses kicked over and over again.
1:06:28SPEAKERIt's not gonna be fun.
1:06:30SPEAKERSo that's why you see limits on like,
1:06:32SPEAKERyou can only play with people within five ladder tiers of you
1:06:36SPEAKERor whatever on some ranked ladder-type games.
1:06:40SPEAKEREven though that isn't the matchmaking tier,
1:06:43SPEAKERthere is also a direct correlation
1:06:45SPEAKERbetween time spent and skill in the game generally,
1:06:47SPEAKERalthough that plateaus after a while.
1:06:48SPEAKER- Sure.
1:06:51SPEAKER- And at the same time, performance in one queue
1:06:54SPEAKERisn't necessarily indicative of performance
1:06:56SPEAKERin a different queue, so if you have a battle royale,
1:06:58SPEAKERI apologize for using battle royales all the time,
1:07:00SPEAKERthat's what I play a lot of,
1:07:02SPEAKERyou have a great solo player who wins 30% of their games,
1:07:08SPEAKERlike an incredible shot, really smart decisions,
1:07:11SPEAKERgood solo instincts.
1:07:12SPEAKERIf they come into a squad game,
1:07:14SPEAKERespecially something like Fortnite,
1:07:15SPEAKERwhere the time to kill is long
1:07:17SPEAKERand you have to concentrate fire
1:07:18SPEAKERfor multiple people to finish off enemies,
1:07:21SPEAKERand that great solo player wanders off,
1:07:23SPEAKERthey're not gonna be able to kill anybody
1:07:25SPEAKERbefore they get killed, because in a 2v1,
1:07:28SPEAKERthe two almost always win, regardless of skill.
1:07:31SPEAKER- Just attrition.
1:07:32SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, so you have to maintain
1:07:35SPEAKERdifferent skill ratings for different queues.
1:07:37SPEAKERSome games even do party comps,
1:07:40SPEAKERso if you have a regular foursome,
1:07:41SPEAKERa regular fivesome in Counter-Strike,
1:07:43SPEAKERyour fivesome will have a skill rank.
1:07:45SPEAKER- Interesting.
1:07:46SPEAKEROn the back end, they're actually hashing
1:07:49SPEAKERa single rating for that specific combination of players.
1:07:52SPEAKER- And again, I'm spitballing,
1:07:53SPEAKERI don't know that Counter-Strike does this,
1:07:54SPEAKERbut I do know that games do this, yeah.
1:07:57SPEAKER- And again, that's not something
1:07:58SPEAKERthat is exposed to those players at all.
1:08:00SPEAKERYou know, it's not like, hey, you're a squad now,
1:08:03SPEAKERlike you should play together more,
1:08:04SPEAKERlike it's all quietly happening behind the scenes.
1:08:06SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I think for what it's worth,
1:08:08SPEAKERI've said, I've mentioned chess did the ELO thing
1:08:12SPEAKERspecifically because they wanted to make it feel
1:08:15SPEAKERlike it was fair and open for everybody.
1:08:17SPEAKERI think there's good reason
1:08:18SPEAKERnot to expose this number to players,
1:08:20SPEAKERjust because if you give the kind of people
1:08:22SPEAKERwho play games access to a number,
1:08:24SPEAKERthey're gonna do things that they can
1:08:26SPEAKERto manipulate that number in a way that makes them happy.
1:08:29SPEAKERAnd what makes an individual player happy probably isn't,
1:08:31SPEAKERlike this is a communal thing.
1:08:33SPEAKERThe overall health of the matchmaking pool
1:08:35SPEAKERis going to, by necessity, make some players unhappy, right?
1:08:41SPEAKERBut if you don't take care of that matchmaking pool,
1:08:44SPEAKEReventually there won't be any players for the game at all,
1:08:46SPEAKERor won't be enough players for the game at all,
1:08:48SPEAKERand then you get into the dead game situation again.
1:08:50SPEAKER- But also, I mean, that's also just the nature
1:08:52SPEAKERof competition, right?
1:08:53SPEAKERLike everybody is going to be unhappy at some point
1:08:56SPEAKERif you were playing something where you might lose,
1:08:58SPEAKERlike it's just part of the experience.
1:09:00SPEAKER- Yeah, if you're in it for a power fantasy,
1:09:02SPEAKERdon't play competitive games.
1:09:06SPEAKER- Like play a bot game, you know?
1:09:08SPEAKER- Or play Fallout, like Bethesda RPGs are really good
1:09:11SPEAKERat scaling up the enemies to be exactly as difficult
1:09:14SPEAKERas you're capable of dealing with, that's a great solution.
1:09:17SPEAKER- Yes, real quick before we wrap up,
1:09:19SPEAKERwe should probably shout out the originator
1:09:21SPEAKERof this entire thing, we've talked about ELO a lot,
1:09:24SPEAKERyou know, it originated in chess, and gosh,
1:09:27SPEAKERI couldn't even tell you, I'm trying to very quickly scan,
1:09:29SPEAKER1950 it looks like.
1:09:31SPEAKERI tried to find out what ELO stood for.
1:09:34SPEAKER- It doesn't.
1:09:34SPEAKER- It's really tough to find anything
1:09:36SPEAKERbut Electric Light Orchestra when you Google it.
1:09:38SPEAKERAlso, it's actually the last name
1:09:40SPEAKERof the guy who came up with it.
1:09:41SPEAKEROur pod, ELO, ELO, is his last name.
1:09:44SPEAKERSo I don't know exactly how you pronounce that, but.
1:09:47SPEAKER- I think we should just call it ELO.
1:09:49SPEAKER- ELO, yes, yes, anyway.
1:09:51SPEAKERInteresting little factoid.
1:09:53SPEAKERThat is not an acronym, it's actually the guy's last name.
1:09:55SPEAKER- Yeah, and the idea is that his main idea was
1:10:00SPEAKERthat the chess performance of each player in a game
1:10:03SPEAKERcould be assigned a normal, a number,
1:10:06SPEAKERbased on their performance with other players
1:10:08SPEAKERin similar games and their numbers
1:10:10SPEAKERand so on and so forth down the line.
1:10:12SPEAKERAnd then everything else, there's a bunch of other things
1:10:15SPEAKERthat have come off of this from like TrueRank,
1:10:18SPEAKERa true skill, which is the Microsoft Xbox 360 era.
1:10:22SPEAKER- Yes, I think that term was in use back then.
1:10:25SPEAKER- I think they still do true skill,
1:10:26SPEAKERbut I don't think they talk about it very much anymore.
1:10:28SPEAKER- Although they did, Microsoft's acquired
1:10:30SPEAKERso many other services that may have been supplanted by now.
1:10:34SPEAKERI'm not sure.
1:10:35SPEAKER- Yeah, so the point is it's a relatively simple math thing
1:10:38SPEAKERand most places start with ELO
1:10:40SPEAKERor something that despawned off of ELO
1:10:42SPEAKERand then go from there.
1:10:45SPEAKERBecause there are, hey, if you don't play for two weeks,
1:10:49SPEAKERshould your skill rank degrade?
1:10:52SPEAKERI don't know, that's a whole conversation to have.
1:10:55SPEAKERI'm probably as good at Fortnite now
1:10:57SPEAKERas I was the last time I played five days ago,
1:10:59SPEAKERbut if I played every day, I'd probably be better.
1:11:02SPEAKERWho knows?
1:11:03SPEAKERIt's a really fascinating, I was surprised.
1:11:07SPEAKERI thought I knew a lot about matchmaking
1:11:08SPEAKERand I started reading about it this week
1:11:10SPEAKERand was pleasantly surprised by how deep the topic was.
1:11:14SPEAKER- Yeah, interesting convergence of technology and sociology.
1:11:19SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, and again, it's the best kind of thing.
1:11:22SPEAKERIt's the thing that you think about none
1:11:24SPEAKERand turns out to be massively complex underneath
1:11:26SPEAKERto give you a positive user experience,
1:11:28SPEAKERwhich is really nice.
1:11:29SPEAKER- And at the end of the day, honestly benefits everybody.
1:11:31SPEAKERI mean, let's not delude ourselves here.
1:11:35SPEAKERThis work is mostly being done
1:11:36SPEAKERto support the health of these games
1:11:37SPEAKERso they keep making a lot of money,
1:11:39SPEAKERbut it does happen to both foster the health
1:11:41SPEAKERof the overall community and keep the game going
1:11:43SPEAKERand also provide a better experience
1:11:45SPEAKERfor everybody who's not an asshole
1:11:46SPEAKERthat just wants to stomp 12-year-olds all day.
1:11:49SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, if you want to stomp 12-year-olds,
1:11:51SPEAKERyou should have a 12-year-old
1:11:52SPEAKERand then you play with other 12-year-olds.
1:11:53SPEAKERIt's the perfect solution, kind of expensive.
1:11:56SPEAKERBut should we talk about the alternatives?
1:11:57SPEAKER'Cause there are a couple of alternatives.
1:11:59SPEAKERSome people do server browsers still in 2024.
1:12:01SPEAKER- Are they really?
1:12:02SPEAKERWhat was the newest game that came out that have a server?
1:12:05SPEAKERI would love to know. - I assure you,
1:12:06SPEAKERthey're boomer shooters with server browsers.
1:12:11SPEAKERThat means cross-play is probably out
1:12:12SPEAKERunless the developer does something really clever.
1:12:14SPEAKERBut if you're a small studio
1:12:16SPEAKERand you're rolling out an early access multiplayer thing,
1:12:19SPEAKERI think server browsers is a perfectly viable way to go.
1:12:21SPEAKER- Sure.
1:12:22SPEAKER- I think starting there and then rolling out matchmaking
1:12:24SPEAKERwhen people ask for it.
1:12:26SPEAKER'Cause the thing that happens is when you roll out matchmaking
1:12:27SPEAKERpeople are like, "Man, I wish we had a server browser."
1:12:29SPEAKERIf you roll out a server browser, people are like,
1:12:30SPEAKER"Man, I wish we had matchmaking."
1:12:32SPEAKERThey're never gonna be happy.
1:12:33SPEAKERYou just have to suck it up and pick one.
1:12:36SPEAKER- Yeah, does a server browser necessitate dedicated servers?
1:12:38SPEAKEROr, I mean, I guess there's no reason you can't list
1:12:41SPEAKERpeer-to-peer hosted games.
1:12:43SPEAKERAlthough then somebody just kind of has to sit there
1:12:45SPEAKERwith their matchmaking idling long enough
1:12:47SPEAKERfor it to show up in a browser.
1:12:48SPEAKER- Yep, that's the problem.
1:12:50SPEAKER- Probably most likely you're gonna be using
1:12:52SPEAKERdedicated servers on a browser.
1:12:53SPEAKER- If you have joined in progress.
1:12:56SPEAKER- Sure, that makes more sense.
1:12:57SPEAKER- Like, "Helldivers" arguably has a server browser.
1:13:00SPEAKERIt's a pretty limited scope one 'cause it only shows you
1:13:01SPEAKERthe games that it thinks are gonna be good for you.
1:13:04SPEAKERBut when you open up a map on a planet,
1:13:06SPEAKERit shows you games in progress.
1:13:08SPEAKERBut then you can also hit the button that says,
1:13:09SPEAKER"Hey, just put me in a game that looks good."
1:13:10SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:13:12SPEAKER- I think they handle the, "Do I wanna host,
1:13:15SPEAKERor do I want to, do I wanna..."
1:13:20SPEAKERI mean, okay, first off, they don't have hosts
1:13:22SPEAKERin "Helldivers," they, once you go to the planet,
1:13:24SPEAKERyou're on a dedicated server shard.
1:13:27SPEAKERBut they do a really good job of,
1:13:29SPEAKER"Do I wanna start a new game, or do I wanna join a game
1:13:31SPEAKERin progress with their UI design?"
1:13:33SPEAKERSuper smart.
1:13:34SPEAKERThe other thing is, GTFO launched without matchmaking
1:13:37SPEAKERor a server browser.
1:13:38SPEAKERThey just said, "Hey, man, you can only play
1:13:39SPEAKERwith your friends."
1:13:40SPEAKER- I think I had completely forgotten that,
1:13:41SPEAKERand we did stream some of that when it was new
1:13:43SPEAKERin early access.
1:13:44SPEAKERAnd I remember, I guess, now that I think back on it,
1:13:46SPEAKERI felt that that was incredibly bold.
1:13:49SPEAKER- It was a scary choice.
1:13:51SPEAKERI saw that, I was like, "These people are insane."
1:13:53SPEAKER- Yeah, but I mean, everything about that game,
1:13:55SPEAKERit was and is insane, in a great way, right?
1:13:58SPEAKERThey just, they flat out were just telling people like,
1:14:00SPEAKER"Hey, this is extremely hard.
1:14:02SPEAKERIf you're not down to get people together and coordinate,
1:14:06SPEAKERand then still probably lose, don't play this game."
1:14:08SPEAKERI think they were very upfront about what that game was
1:14:12SPEAKERand whether you should play it or not.
1:14:13SPEAKER- Yeah, 100%, and like, for what it's worth,
1:14:16SPEAKERI think the, "Hey, if you don't have three friends,
1:14:19SPEAKERdon't buy our game," it's kind of bold,
1:14:21SPEAKERbut also it solves a lot of their early problems,
1:14:23SPEAKERbecause like, "Hey, the game is too hard,"
1:14:25SPEAKERis not a thing anybody could say they didn't warn you about
1:14:27SPEAKERbefore you bought the game.
1:14:28SPEAKER- Yeah. - Right?
1:14:30SPEAKER- It feels like one of those cases
1:14:31SPEAKERof defying conventional wisdom
1:14:32SPEAKERin a way that's actually very smart.
1:14:34SPEAKER- Yeah. - Sometimes the conventional
1:14:35SPEAKERwisdom is not as wise as you think.
1:14:37SPEAKER- It solves some of the problems with early access
1:14:38SPEAKERfor multiplayer games too,
1:14:40SPEAKERwhich is a whole, that's a topic for another day.
1:14:42SPEAKER- Yeah, did you play much GTFO?
1:14:43SPEAKERI haven't really played it since it was early
1:14:45SPEAKERin its early access phase,
1:14:46SPEAKERand I always wanted to go back to it.
1:14:48SPEAKER- Oh man, I will play that with you anytime.
1:14:49SPEAKERI like that game a lot, but you need a foursome.
1:14:52SPEAKER- Yes, we should play some GTFO.
1:14:53SPEAKERI really liked what I played of it.
1:14:55SPEAKER- If only one of us had a channel
1:14:58SPEAKERwhere you play video games with each other.
1:14:59SPEAKER- If only. - If only.
1:15:00SPEAKER- Like weekly on Fridays with people
1:15:02SPEAKERin a group setting frequently.
1:15:04SPEAKER- Do people always vote on that?
1:15:05SPEAKERIs this, can we juice the vote here?
1:15:07SPEAKERIs that what you're saying? - Once a month.
1:15:08SPEAKER- Oh, once a month, okay. - Three Fridays
1:15:10SPEAKERout of the month, we can do whatever the hell we want.
1:15:11SPEAKER- Oh, nice. - Play some GTFO.
1:15:13SPEAKER- Well, I'm available often on Fridays, so let me know.
1:15:18SPEAKERI think that's as good a place as any
1:15:19SPEAKERto wrap it up, probably. - Yeah.
1:15:21SPEAKER- Unless you have anything.
1:15:22SPEAKERWe were gonna talk about dead game stuff.
1:15:24SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, you touched on it earlier.
1:15:25SPEAKERI mean, we do have to shout out
1:15:26SPEAKERthis PAL World community manager,
1:15:28SPEAKERwhich I think this headline just started going around
1:15:30SPEAKERliterally in the last day or two.
1:15:31SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah. - It doesn't serve anyone
1:15:33SPEAKERto push gamers who play the same game day in and day out.
1:15:36SPEAKER- Truer words. - Sounds like something
1:15:37SPEAKERthat somebody with a dead game would say.
1:15:39SPEAKER- Well, but I mean, God, Brad, just.
1:15:43SPEAKER- Joking, being very facetious here,
1:15:45SPEAKERbut I mean, I fully agree with them though.
1:15:47SPEAKERI mean, obviously plenty of people
1:15:49SPEAKERare getting plenty of satisfaction
1:15:50SPEAKERout of playing the same game 24/7, you know?
1:15:53SPEAKERLike obviously those games are very successful for a reason,
1:15:55SPEAKERbut every game doesn't have to be that.
1:15:57SPEAKER- I bought "Final Fantasy III" when I was like 15 years old
1:16:00SPEAKERbecause I knew it was gonna last me 100 hours, right?
1:16:03SPEAKERAnd I had money for one game that year
1:16:05SPEAKERand I was like, I'm gonna, that summer I was like,
1:16:07SPEAKERI'm gonna play some "Final Fantasy III."
1:16:09SPEAKERThe modern era and the volume of games that we get
1:16:13SPEAKERand the number of sales we have
1:16:15SPEAKERare such that everybody has this enormous pile
1:16:17SPEAKERwhere they have like 10-year-old games
1:16:19SPEAKERthat they never touched probably.
1:16:20SPEAKERIt's okay to go back and play those sometimes.
1:16:22SPEAKERYou know, like playing these games,
1:16:24SPEAKERI feel like if you're playing a game
1:16:25SPEAKERthat doesn't feel like work, it's fine.
1:16:27SPEAKERPlay as much as you want.
1:16:29SPEAKER- And like, I played 5,000 hours of PUBG
1:16:31SPEAKERbetween 2017 and 2022 because I enjoyed,
1:16:36SPEAKERlike I really, really enjoyed PUBG.
1:16:38SPEAKERIt was spectacularly fun.
1:16:39SPEAKERIt was a game that like, it took me 150-some hours
1:16:42SPEAKERto get the first win in, I think.
1:16:44SPEAKERLike think about that, it's never gonna happen again.
1:16:47SPEAKERBut like this point is really good.
1:16:50SPEAKERAnd like, just to be clear, when people are saying
1:16:52SPEAKERthat this power of game is a dead game,
1:16:54SPEAKERit still has tens of thousands of people playing
1:16:56SPEAKERat any given moment 24 hours a day.
1:16:58SPEAKER- You've seen a lot of the same sentiment
1:17:00SPEAKERaround Helldivers in the last month or two.
1:17:01SPEAKERAnd some of that I think is residual angst
1:17:04SPEAKERor resentment over the account creation kerfuffle.
1:17:08SPEAKERAnd people just looking to stick a knife in a game
1:17:10SPEAKERthat they now feel bitter toward.
1:17:12SPEAKER- Look, did they mismanage that?
1:17:13SPEAKERAbsolutely.
1:17:14SPEAKERCould they have done it better?
1:17:15SPEAKERProbably not, 'cause it seems like that was
1:17:17SPEAKERa platform/publisher decision and not a developer position.
1:17:21SPEAKERSo it sucks to be them.
1:17:23SPEAKERBut if you are, Helldivers is a game you need four people,
1:17:27SPEAKERthree other people to play.
1:17:28SPEAKERSo if you don't have three friends,
1:17:30SPEAKERthen yeah, Helldivers is probably a dead game.
1:17:33SPEAKERBut if you have three friends who have $30,
1:17:34SPEAKERyou can play Helldivers anytime you want
1:17:36SPEAKERand can wrangle up your three friends.
1:17:38SPEAKERWhich it turns out, is the progression in Helldivers
1:17:42SPEAKERa little grindy?
1:17:43SPEAKERYeah, absolutely.
1:17:44SPEAKERSo are you gonna get all the guns and stuff if you do that?
1:17:47SPEAKERMaybe not.
1:17:47SPEAKERBut are you gonna have fun playing with your three friends?
1:17:49SPEAKERYeah, absolutely.
1:17:51SPEAKERAnd I continue to shout out the people
1:17:54SPEAKERthat were posting Dead Game on, what do you call it?
1:18:00SPEAKEROh, Starfield.
1:18:01SPEAKERBethesda RPG, the space one.
1:18:02SPEAKERStarfield, yeah.
1:18:03SPEAKERIt's a single-player game, man, it doesn't matter.
1:18:05SPEAKERYes, yes, we have really lost the plot here.
1:18:08SPEAKERI mean, it seems like there was a,
1:18:11SPEAKERI feel like this Call of Duty white paper happened
1:18:14SPEAKERbecause there was a limited amount of audience
1:18:16SPEAKERthat was complaining about skill-based matchmaking,
1:18:19SPEAKERand then they did the science to back up their hypothesis,
1:18:23SPEAKERwhich was, this is gonna be bad for the game.
1:18:26SPEAKERFound out it was bad for the game.
1:18:27SPEAKERI think that this is the same situation.
1:18:29SPEAKERLike, the people yelling "Dead Game,"
1:18:30SPEAKERthey're just hurting the game.
1:18:32SPEAKERLike, there's no upside to that,
1:18:33SPEAKER'cause all people do is come in and see the reviews,
1:18:35SPEAKERand the reviews are like, "Dead Game,"
1:18:36SPEAKERlike, well, shit, I'm not gonna buy that.
1:18:37SPEAKERI want a game that's alive.
1:18:39SPEAKERYeah, and the point that the community manager
1:18:41SPEAKERfor PAL World, John Buckley is his name,
1:18:43SPEAKERwas making is that not every game is in a position
1:18:46SPEAKERto pump endless content out to keep people coming back
1:18:49SPEAKERday after day for years on end.
1:18:50SPEAKERPAL World is an example of that, you know?
1:18:52SPEAKERAnd like, it's fine and natural and healthy
1:18:54SPEAKERfor games to ebb and flow when they have new stuff
1:18:57SPEAKERto offer their players, and it's fine for people
1:18:59SPEAKERto go play other games and then come back later.
1:19:01SPEAKERThat's exactly right.
1:19:02SPEAKERLike, the Arrowhead folks almost killed themselves
1:19:04SPEAKERdumping out four mission packs in the first four months
1:19:07SPEAKERof that game of Helldivers.
1:19:09SPEAKERLike, looking at what a content pipeline has to look like
1:19:12SPEAKERto keep players engaged, even Epic, who has Fortnite
1:19:16SPEAKERand is making bazillions of dollars every year,
1:19:19SPEAKERdoes, I think, three big updates or four big updates
1:19:22SPEAKERa year to the map.
1:19:23SPEAKERThey do a bunch of content in between that's, like,
1:19:25SPEAKERcosmetic and stuff you unlock by doing battle passes,
1:19:30SPEAKERand they do a bunch of side quests and stuff like that.
1:19:32SPEAKERBut for the most part, it's four big updates a year,
1:19:34SPEAKERand they have thousands of people working on that game.
1:19:37SPEAKERSo it is something that a normal person can play every day
1:19:43SPEAKERor a streamer can play for 10 hours a day
1:19:45SPEAKERis just an incredible amount of content
1:19:47SPEAKERto expect a team of developers to make.
1:19:49SPEAKER- Yeah, it's just another unrealistic expectation
1:19:52SPEAKERto keep on the pile of unrealistic expectations
1:19:54SPEAKERthat is dragging down the game's business right now.
1:19:56SPEAKER- Yeah, thanks, Unreal.
1:19:58SPEAKERAnd on that note, I guess it's time for us to wrap it up.
1:20:01SPEAKERAs always, "Bradwell Metatek Pod"
1:20:03SPEAKERis a listener-supported show.
1:20:05SPEAKER- It's true.
1:20:06SPEAKER- That means we wouldn't be here without you, the listeners.
1:20:08SPEAKER- Yeah, I can attest to that.
1:20:10SPEAKER- As always, if you wanna find out about the Patreon
1:20:13SPEAKERand you wanna find out how to support the show,
1:20:14SPEAKERyou can go to patreon.com/techpod.
1:20:16SPEAKERAgain, that's patreon.com/techpod,
1:20:19SPEAKERwhere for $5 a month, five big ones,
1:20:21SPEAKERfive smackers, five dollary-dos, five dollarinos, five bucks.
1:20:27SPEAKER- Simoleons?
1:20:28SPEAKER- Simoleons, that was a good one.
1:20:30SPEAKERYou too can get access to the fabulous Tech Pod Discord,
1:20:34SPEAKERwhich is full of nerds who, if you like this podcast,
1:20:38SPEAKERthey like this podcast.
1:20:39SPEAKERYou already have one thing in common.
1:20:40SPEAKER- That's right, that's right.
1:20:41SPEAKERI'm sure you could find a lot more.
1:20:42SPEAKER- Yeah, there's a lot more in there.
1:20:44SPEAKERThere are people playing, probably people playing
1:20:47SPEAKERa bunch of dead games, it's nighttime,
1:20:49SPEAKERso they're probably playing dead games
1:20:50SPEAKERin the voice channels right now.
1:20:53SPEAKERAnd yeah, and you get access to the Patreon exclusive episode
1:20:55SPEAKERwhere we talk about stuff and things.
1:20:57SPEAKERThis month, we had a real wide-ranging conversation
1:21:00SPEAKERearlier this week, so I think it was a banger.
1:21:04SPEAKER- Yes, yes we did.
1:21:06SPEAKERI had my first Costco hot dog.
1:21:07SPEAKER- I'm just flummoxed by the idea
1:21:10SPEAKERthat you'd never had a Costco hot dog
1:21:12SPEAKERand you've lived here for this long.
1:21:13SPEAKER- I mean, we've even been to Costco a bunch of times
1:21:15SPEAKERand we always just kind of got our stuff and left.
1:21:17SPEAKER- The original, the founder and original CEO of the company
1:21:21SPEAKERtold the new CEO that if he changed the price
1:21:24SPEAKERof the hot dog and soda, he would literally murder him.
1:21:27SPEAKER- Yes, yes.
1:21:28SPEAKER- He threatened death.
1:21:28SPEAKER- It's a hell of a hot dog, too.
1:21:29SPEAKERI respect his position.
1:21:30SPEAKERI mean, it's like $1.50 for a hot dog
1:21:33SPEAKERand it's a good-sized hot dog, you know?
1:21:35SPEAKERThey're practically giving those things away.
1:21:37SPEAKER- The thing that I learned from the Discord, actually,
1:21:39SPEAKERis that they sell those hot dogs in the store uncooked
1:21:42SPEAKERso you can take them home and cook them yourself.
1:21:44SPEAKER- Really?
1:21:44SPEAKER- But they don't sell the buns, so it's a problem
1:21:48SPEAKER'cause it's such a big hot dog,
1:21:49SPEAKERit's gonna be dangling off the side of your bun
1:21:51SPEAKERin a kind of sad and weird way, so.
1:21:53SPEAKER- Yes, I mean, I found the proportion of dog to bun
1:21:56SPEAKERto be quite pleasing.
1:21:58SPEAKER- It is literally the best deal in hot dogs
1:22:01SPEAKERas far as I can tell.
1:22:03SPEAKER- The $1.50 hot dog is one of the last remaining pillars
1:22:05SPEAKERholding up our society.
1:22:06SPEAKER- Look, if I could change one thing about it,
1:22:07SPEAKERI'd put a little more snap on it,
1:22:09SPEAKERbut other than that, it's perfect.
1:22:11SPEAKERBut yeah, as always, we always thank
1:22:13SPEAKERour executive producer tier patrons,
1:22:15SPEAKERgive them an extra special thank you.
1:22:17SPEAKERSo, thank you to Andrew Slosky, Jordan Lippett,
1:22:20SPEAKERBunnyfiend, Paddle Creek Games, makers of Fractured Veil,
1:22:24SPEAKERTwinkle Twinkie, David Allen, James Kamik,
1:22:26SPEAKERand Pantheon, makers of the HS3 high-speed 3D printer.
1:22:30SPEAKERThank you all so much.
1:22:31SPEAKER- Yeah, thank you.
1:22:32SPEAKER- And that will do it for us this week.
1:22:34SPEAKERJust assume that I had a pithy rejoinder
1:22:37SPEAKERfor the end of the podcast here,
1:22:39SPEAKERand we will see you all next week.
1:22:41SPEAKER- Bye, everybody.
1:22:42SPEAKER(upbeat music)