643: We talk about Microsoft Game Stack

Larry Hryb: Hi, it's Larry Hryb, XBOX Live's Major Nelson. And welcome to the podcast, number 643. I think it was just Halloween, wasn't it Jeff?

Jeff Rubenstein: I think you're just ram-, I think you're just making these number up.

Larry Hryb: No, I, there, it's 643. It says right here on the screen.

Jeff Rubenstein: I should probably bring that up.

Larry Hryb: Six, now, now we, now we got a really special guest today. I'd like to introduce Mr-

Jeff Rubenstein: I was gonna ask.

Larry Hryb: James?

James Gwertzman: Hello.

Larry Hryb: James Gwertzman, right?

James Gwertzman: So excited to be here.

Larry Hryb: It's so great to have you now. Uh, uh, we were talking about the show. 643. You're gonna be with us the entire show. You work here at Microsoft.

James Gwertzman: Right.

Larry Hryb: You work on a cool product called Game Stack.

James Gwertzman: That's right. And a technology called PlayFab-

Larry Hryb: Yes.

James Gwertzman: -is part of Game Stack.

Larry Hryb: So, we're gonna talk about that later on the show. But you're a gamer. And et cetera, et cetera. But more importantly, I just talked about show 643. You joined me probably at show 300 ish.

James Gwertzman: Yeah, we walked to the lobby and had this, we both had this crazy deja vu moment.

Larry Hryb: You've been on the show before.

James Gwertzman: I've been on the show. Like, 300 episodes ago.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, he was on the show. We don't know, you, you've worked a lot in the games' industry. What, what, where did you, let's talk about your background first.

James Gwertzman: Right. So I've been in gaming for 20 years.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: And I've been in the production creative side for most of that.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: Only in the last, I don't know, four or five years have I switched over to sort of the dark side, making technology-

Larry Hryb: So engineering.

James Gwertzman: Yeah. I look at it like being a vendor providing tech for other, other studio-

Jeff Rubenstein: I didn't know there was a dark side.

Larry Hryb: Well, apparently.

Jeff Rubenstein: How long do I have to be here before you show me that?

Larry Hryb: I don't ... Well, move along. Um-

James Gwertzman: No, so I work, I had a, I, I had a, a small casual game studio called Sprout Games.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: That made Feeding Frenzy, which is a sort of old favorite.

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh, you don't need to-

James Gwertzman: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... an old XPLA game.

James Gwertzman: Yeah, that's right Shark eating Shark game.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: So we did Feeding Frenzy, and then, uh, my wife did the fish, the fun fish fact for feeding frenzy. Say that fast.

Larry Hryb: Fun fish fax feeding for frenzy.

Jeff Rubenstein: We had to retake that 14 times.

Larry Hryb: Is her name Francine.

James Gwertzman: And then, uh, we joined PopCap, and I was at PopCap for eight years-

Larry Hryb: Right

James Gwertzman: ... including during the heyday of Plants versus Zombies.

Larry Hryb: Right, I'm starting to remember that.

James Gwertzman: Right, and I got to move to Shanghai and spent five years bring Plants versus Zombies to China.

Jeff Rubenstein: So you lived in Shanghai for how long?

James Gwertzman: For five years.

Jeff Rubenstein: That is unbelievable.

James Gwertzman: That's a great place, and the fun part of that was we built a free to play version of Plants versus Zombies called, Plants versus Zombies Great Wall edition, and we had Chinese zombies, and we had Chinese, uh, um, pots, and, and the sets were actually the Great Wall. So we had this very ... No westerner has ever seen this game, it was a China only release.

Larry Hryb: I've never heard of it.

Jeff Rubenstein: Did you weaponize the Sichuan hot peppers the ones that make your-

James Gwertzman: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... tongue melt.

James Gwertzman: But we had, we had this, we had this, uh ... One of the zombies had, um, like a, like a spell on their forehead, and they would walk and rip it off, and throw it at you, and it was, it was a totally cool game, and no one ever saw it, and it was-

Larry Hryb: Well nobody ever saw it over here-

James Gwertzman: Over here.

Larry Hryb: ... a lot of people played it over there. (Laughs) Let's be clear.

James Gwertzman: And so it was our first introduction to free to play, and that was actually the game that really got me realizing how hard it was to build and run these modern games that are kind of live services.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: So that was actually the origin that eventually led to starting PlayFab, and now coming here to Microsoft.

Larry Hryb: Because you started PlayFab, and then of course Microsoft bough PlayFab.

James Gwertzman: Right back in 2014, and so I left PopCap-

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: ... started PlayFab because I realized how hard it was to build and operate these kinds of live games.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: And then we did that for four years, and then yeah, a year and a half ago, Microsoft bought PlayFab.

Larry Hryb: And that was, because, because its awesome technology.

James Gwertzman: Well because we're, we're aweso- ... No because, because the world is changing and every game studio is struggling with figuring out how do we do this?

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: And so I think that Microsoft has always been about empowering developers, empowering creators, and so here's this opportunity to build a platform-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: ... with Game Stack, which is sort of everything a developer needs to sort of build and operate a modern game. And so, it's a journey, we're just starting.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: PlayFab is sort of like, I think this is like the beating heart of this new thing we're building-

Larry Hryb: Yes.

James Gwertzman: ... but there's a lot of other technologies that we're now bringing together, and integrating together, and trying to create sort of single cohesive story, and we have our ways to go, but it's, it's ... We're off to a really good start.

Larry Hryb: But we're going to talk ... I want to talk about a little bit later in the show. But I also want to point out two more things, you actually used to work at Microsoft a long time ago.

James Gwertzman: I'm, I'm what they call a Boomerang here. This is a funny term.

Jeff Rubenstein: A not uncommon thing.

Larry Hryb: You started in, what year was it?

James Gwertzman: I started in 90 ... Well I was an intern in 93-

Larry Hryb: Okay.

James Gwertzman: Started in 95 ... I'm not, I'm not just a boomerang, I'm a book ender.

Larry Hryb: Wow!

James Gwertzman: I started my career here, and now I'm here now.

Larry Hryb: Right, that's unbelievable, and then the other thing is you also needed to know, or excuse me, you also worked with another good friend of mine Hadi Partovi.

James Gwertzman: Hadi is my wake surfing buddy. Hadi-

Larry Hryb: Hadi, Hadi was an old boss of mine, and old manager.

James Gwertzman: Oh my God! Well Hadi and I were roommates, uh, we were classmates at school-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: ... and we were roommates for three years-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: ...and we're still great friends, so that's-

Jeff Rubenstein: Did he complain about this, this guy that's working for him?

James Gwertzman: All the time. Larry

Jeff Rubenstein: He keeps referring himself in the third person.

James Gwertzman: Even now, you know we, we go on camping trips, he wakes up, "Oh Larry."

Larry Hryb: No, no, no. So, so for those who you don't know, Hadi Partovi used to work at Microsoft. He and his brother are really great guys, but they, um, Hadi worked on Internet Explorer back in the day, but he left, and he started this amazing organization called Code.org.

James Gwertzman: That's right, and I ... That's right, and Code.org, uh, for those who don't know it is dedicated to bringing computer science education to K through 12, um, originally in America, but now sort of all over the world.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: Because the big dirty secret is it we don't teach computer science in our schools despite the fact that this is really the area where the most jobs are opening, it's all in computer science.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: So, uh, so actually after ... In between PopCap and PlayFab, I actually spent six months working for code.org-

Larry Hryb: Uh, I love those guys

James Gwertzman: ... and actually run the first hour of code campaign.

Larry Hryb: Yes.

James Gwertzman: And part of the fun part is I went to friends in the game industry, so we've got Plants versus Zombies IP.

Larry Hryb: That's right.

James Gwertzman: And, uh, Angry Birds IP.

Larry Hryb: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

James Gwertzman: So the first hour of code campaign you got to play little programming challenges using PVC and, and Angry Birds.

Jeff Rubenstein: Some really cool Minecraft ones as well.

James Gwertzman: And now Minecraft has really jumped into it, so I'm super proud of how Microsoft has really leaned in here. Microsoft is actually the biggest, uh, donor to Code.org now, and so I'm really, really cool to see us investing in CS education.

Larry Hryb: But we'll talk about a lot of stuff later. We usually start the show as you know, you've got your own podcast too, and we're gonna talk about that later.

James Gwertzman: I know, right? All these cool things [crosstalk 00:06:20]

Larry Hryb: This is unbelievable. All right, here we go, let's get into it, Jeff, what are you playing right? I want to talk about that. James we're gonna ask you what you're playing as well, so Jeff so-

Jeff Rubenstein: I'm playing what everyone is playing.

Larry Hryb: Which is?

Jeff Rubenstein: The Outer Worlds.

Larry Hryb: The Outer Worlds.

Jeff Rubenstein: It's so good. I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say it right now, it's the game of the year.

Larry Hryb: What, okay.

Jeff Rubenstein: It's the game of the year.

Larry Hryb: Call in @JeffRubenstein on Twitter.

Jeff Rubenstein: I'm not the only one saying it. Like I open up my friends list, and it's just like [inaudible 00:06:40]. Some people are playing Call of Duty, which I'm hearing really good things about, especially the campaign-

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... um, and I will get to it, but not until I have done every side mission in the Outer Worlds. I'm like, I don't know, 25 hours in, there's still a ton-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... left for me to do. There's planets I haven't explored yet, so, uh, it's really good.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: I'm so glad we get to work closely with Obsidian now.

Larry Hryb: No I love those guys and girls down ... Great team down there, more importantly, I don't know what you're doing, game pass subscriber, why aren't you downloading and playing this now? Because you already have it?

Jeff Rubenstein: You already have it.

Larry Hryb: You already have it.

Jeff Rubenstein: It's, uh, on Xbox One and on Windows 10.

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: If you've got Xbox game pass ultimate, or Xbox game pass for PC-

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... and you just, you just get it, and then you do it, and then you don't do anything else because why would you?

Larry Hryb: Why would you?

Jeff Rubenstein: Like this is in the way right of me playing.

Larry Hryb: I don't even know what to say, but I mean I'm not, I'm playing it as well, so I can't really say anything else.

Jeff Rubenstein: All right, without spoilers-

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... this, this is the mark of a good game-

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... is we came into work yesterday.

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: I mean why not?

Larry Hryb: Why not?

Jeff Rubenstein: It was Wednesday we should have came in.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: So, uh, we came in, and-

Larry Hryb: But we got to do something before we go to lunch.

Jeff Rubenstein: And we're, we're, we're roughly similar distance into the game.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

Jeff Rubenstein: And we were on the planet Monarch, that's not a spoiler, you can see it on-

Larry Hryb: On the map.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... on the map. And there was like, there's sort of like, uh, an overarching situation that's happening on this planet when you get there, and, uh, I asked how you did it-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... and how you did ... And I was like, "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Larry Hryb: And you did a completely, and you did it completely different.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, I did it the right way.

Larry Hryb: Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Jeff Rubenstein: And you did it the sociopath way.

Larry Hryb: Hey!

Jeff Rubenstein: And here's the thing, it's role playing, you get to be something that you're not in real life-

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... in real life theoretically, and, um, but the fact that we had such dramatically different ways to resolve this situation-

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... is the hallmark I think of a great game.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: That we both played the same thing, and had just-

Larry Hryb: Wildly different experiences.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... entirely different experiences, and, and the writing is so good, and it even translates, even into the load screens because what I did in that situation is re-, is reflected in the load screens-

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... uh, which seem to be written by the, you know, the, the, the board.

Larry Hryb: Yes the board.

Jeff Rubenstein: And reflecting their view point, and I'd ima-, and I'm very curious.

Larry Hryb: Are you playing this James.

James Gwertzman: Not yet. So I'm ... Not to be confusing, I'm playing another game, best game the Outer Wilds, which-

Larry Hryb: Oh, yeah, which is also good.

James Gwertzman: Amazing.

Jeff Rubenstein: Another game of the year candidate.

James Gwertzman: So I, I, I am waiting to finish that before I tackle Outer Worlds because I'm worried I won't finish it because I'm in the last little home stretch.

Larry Hryb: See now, I, I played a little bit of that a few months ago when it came out, and it was great, that's the one where you land on planets, these little mini planets, and you, you gotta solve these crazy puzzles. I, I adore that game, I'd never finish [crosstalk 00:09:10]

Jeff Rubenstein: We're not smart enough.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: We have to invent something like you did.

Larry Hryb: It, it just ... Oh super.

James Gwertzman: Well I, I love puzzle games, and my ... And I only play games I can play with my kids because I don't spend enough time with them.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

James Gwertzman: So this is my 15 year old and I are playing Outer Wilds-

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: ... and right now my six year old and I are playing Zelda Link's Awakening on switch.

Larry Hryb: Also a great game.

James Gwertzman: Also a great game, really, really enjoying the visual style of, of that one.

Larry Hryb: Yeah they're both, they're both solid games, there's no-

Jeff Rubenstein: Well again, both are very prominently being named in like game of the year talk, so I think if you want to have a game of the year, if you want to be in the candida-, in the candidacy for that this year-

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... just make whatever the Outer whatever.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: With Outer Dog, great, you're on the list. The Outer Larry-

Larry Hryb: Yes, let's do it.

Jeff Rubenstein: Maybe, maybe, that's a sort of a dark horse.

Larry Hryb: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). We're playing, so that's what we're playing? Are you playing anything else? I'm trying to move the show.

Jeff Rubenstein: Apex.

Larry Hryb: I want to get to James, we've got so much to talk about.

Jeff Rubenstein: Sorry, sorry, we've got time, and we can talk games. We can, we can, we can dive deep into that.

Larry Hryb: That's right. Oh Apex

Jeff Rubenstein: I want to hear more about Apex.

Larry Hryb: Apex is a great example of games as a service-

Jeff Rubenstein: Yes.

Larry Hryb: See how I brought that back to.

James Gwertzman: Nice, nice multiplayer, live game.

Jeff Rubenstein: And is also a game of the year candidate for sure-

Larry Hryb: Yeah, yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... and is also doing some interesting stuff for Halloween if you've been playing for the last couple of weeks.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: Another live game thing, events.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yes, and there's actually quite a few of them happening right now, and-

Larry Hryb: We've got duos coming up soon for it.

Jeff Rubenstein: We do have duos that's starting, I want to say November fourth.

Larry Hryb: But you won't be around for that, you'll be on the road.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: You'll, you'll be on a cruise right?

Jeff Rubenstein: Um-

Larry Hryb: You'll be on a boat.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, how's the internet on that? [crosstalk 00:10:33].

Larry Hryb: You, you'll let us know.

Jeff Rubenstein: I mean what if I-

Larry Hryb: If you see it laggy.

Jeff Rubenstein: Would it, would it be dumb to bring my Xbox on there? But yeah, they are actually, uh, they are doing a, uh, fight or fright event-

Larry Hryb: Right.,

Jeff Rubenstein: ... which has been going on, but it's still going for few more days, so if you're hearing this now, Halloween is over, you're crashing from your sugar high, your teeth are, if you have any left-

Larry Hryb: Are dangling-

Jeff Rubenstein: Are hanging on by a string.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: You can still play some Halloween, some Halloween gameplay modes before you start hearing Christmas carols, which let's be honest-

Larry Hryb: I heard, I heard one today.

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh, that's unacceptable.

Larry Hryb: I heard one today.

James Gwertzman: No, wrong, wrong.

Jeff Rubenstein: Tonight at midnight, I'll deal with it.

Larry Hryb: I agree.

Jeff Rubenstein: You know, but anyway, really cool mode where it's the only way you can play on King's Canyon right now, and, uh, 35 people or so jump in.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: And, uh, if you, if you die, you are resurrected as like a, as a ghost version of your character who, uh, has very limited abilities, but is super fast.

Larry Hryb: Aka a zombie.

Jeff Rubenstein: Kinda, yeah fast zombie, like a 28 days later zombie, not like a shuffling, uh, you know, Day of the dead zombie.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: I think they were slower now.

Larry Hryb: They are slow.

Jeff Rubenstein: Any of our [inaudible 00:11:39] are slow. Anyway, really fun, and then either the living win, or the dead win-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... and it seems to be ... Yeah, it's kind of 50-50 when I play it, so it's a good time, and you can unlock some really cool, the wraith skin is really good.

Larry Hryb: [crosstalk 00:11:53].

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, anyway, that's good. We actually have a whole list-

Larry Hryb: Do we?

Jeff Rubenstein: ... of all of the games-

Larry Hryb: Do we, do we?

Jeff Rubenstein: ... that are doing ... Oh, yeah, we do.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Jeff Rubenstein: That are doing Halloween esque.

Larry Hryb: But by the time [inaudible 00:12:04] Halloween is over.

Jeff Rubenstein: But the events are not-

Larry Hryb: I know, I know.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... it's the point Larry, I know how the time works.

Larry Hryb: I will be very clear-

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: ... as any longtime listener of the show knows. I, I don't lean into Halloween-

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: Would that be safe to say Jeff?

Jeff Rubenstein: It's true, but you have a kid now, so embrace it.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: You can't, you can't make her hate Halloween because let me tell you-

Larry Hryb: I don't hate it.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... if you're a kid, there ain't nothing to hate.

Larry Hryb: I don't hate it.

Jeff Rubenstein: She gets to dress up-

Larry Hryb: I just tend to be out of the country. (Laughs)

Jeff Rubenstein: She gets to eat candy, and there's game modes.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Jeff Rubenstein: So anyway, Gears is doing some stuff-

Larry Hryb: Yep.

Jeff Rubenstein: Overwatch is doing some stuff as they, they usually do Elder Scrolls Online, uh, Border Lands 3, and, uh, Rocket League has a really cool, uh, Stranger Things.

Larry Hryb: Oh Stranger Things tie in, that's right I saw that, or a collab as they call it.

Jeff Rubenstein: And now it's going through to November 11th.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: So I know you want to shut it down, but guess what, we're getting Halloween creep in, it goes straight into Christmas-

Larry Hryb: All right, all right.

Jeff Rubenstein: Your two favorite things.

Larry Hryb: Christmas and Halloween?

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, together.

Larry Hryb: Oh.

Jeff Rubenstein: But mixed little bit.

Larry Hryb: Get, get your Halloween out of my Christmas.

Jeff Rubenstein: You get the black and the orange, and you get the red and the green.

James Gwertzman: Well things could be sandwiched, you got that right in the middle there.

Larry Hryb: Yeah that's right.

Jeff Rubenstein: I do, I do. We'll trip the fan [inaudible 00:13:07].

James Gwertzman: A trifecta.

Larry Hryb: Okay, good, anything else?

Jeff Rubenstein: You're really upset.

Larry Hryb: No, no.

Jeff Rubenstein: Do you want to do news, what do you play?

Larry Hryb: Uh, I mean we talked about, we talked about, uh, the Underworlds, it's really what I'm playing, and a little bit of Apex, but I'm just working my way. I had a chance to go down to Obsidian for their launch last week, I was a part of that stream, thank you for having me down, and as you know it's a, you know it's, uh, a studio that we recently purchased, Xbox game studios, so those guys and girls are working on some really cool stuff. Um-

Jeff Rubenstein: Very excited.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, they've got a lot going on, so we're really excited about that. Uh, but that's really what I'm focused on playing. Right now it's just like getting ready for everything that you and I have going on.

Jeff Rubenstein: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Larry Hryb: We've got this XO event coming over in London, are you going to London James?

James Gwertzman: No I'm skipping that.

Larry Hryb: Okay, yeah we'll be over there in London with a lot of people, there's a live show we're doing, it's going to be crazy.

Jeff Rubenstein: Let's say you can't go to London.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: That's understandable.

Larry Hryb: Understandable.

Jeff Rubenstein: You know, and it's November, it's going to be dark, it's going to be cold.

Larry Hryb: I was in my 20s until I got to London.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah same. Uh, that being said, let's say you can't go, but you want a little piece of that, you want a little piece of XO.

Larry Hryb: Give it to me, give it to me now.

Jeff Rubenstein: All right, so we have teamed up with, uh, Maharishi-

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... uh, who is a, is designer. It's a street wear label actually.

Larry Hryb: A collab.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yes, uh, the camouflage division of Hardy Blechman's London's based street wear.

Larry Hryb: Hardy Blechman?

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: Okay, that's legit.

Jeff Rubenstein: I, I guess so. I'm sure he, he's happy that he has your approval Larry. [inaudible 00:14:33]

Larry Hryb: (Laughs)

Jeff Rubenstein: And they've designed a really cool Xbox wireless controller, the DPM XO19 exclusive. This is the rarest controller I have ever seen-

Larry Hryb: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jeff Rubenstein: ... that we put out for sale. If you want it, you need to get on it quickly.

Larry Hryb: There's like a 1,000 available.

Jeff Rubenstein: Something like that. It is, uh-

Larry Hryb: Have you seen this James?

James Gwertzman: No, I'm, I'm-

Larry Hryb: Well take a look at this.

Jeff Rubenstein: Here's what it looks like.

James Gwertzman: I saw the Taco Bell like pro elite controller.

Jeff Rubenstein: Right, [crosstalk 00:14:55] so the elite controller, yeah.

Larry Hryb: That's all in the conversation.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, we'll talk about that too. So this controller, it is a sort of standard controller though, it has the grips, Bluetooth, um, but it is one of the coolest designs. This sort of oxbow I think is the river term, that's actually representing the [inaudible 00:15:12].

Larry Hryb: The oxbow, well done. Nice work.

Jeff Rubenstein: You came here for the games-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... and learned a little bit about hydrology.

Larry Hryb: Here we go.

Jeff Rubenstein: It's what we're here for. Uh, but if you look real closely, you can see the [inaudible 00:15:23], there's the shard. These are, these are-

James Gwertzman: Well I'm, I'm learning about custom controllers because from ... We just had this big gift campaign here at Microsoft-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: ... the annual gift campaign.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: And for my team to try to get, you know enthusiasm among the team, we created a custom Xbox controller skin just for PlayFab.

Larry Hryb: Yes.

James Gwertzman: And we made a 100 of them.

Larry Hryb: Oh wow!

James Gwertzman: And they were, you know, sweepstakes giveaway, the people who gave just part of this campaign.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: So that was a kind of cool ... So I'm new to the whole controller skin thing, but I'm discovering is it goes deep.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, so this is one is-

Larry Hryb: It's deep, it's a rabbit hole.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, and this is like the first that sort of crosses it, it kind of reminds me of like a sneakers drop. Like a lot of people are going to be taking Ls on this one.

James Gwertzman: (Laughs).

Jeff Rubenstein: It goes ... You gotta, you gotta, uh ... Well you don't have to wake up too early, uh, but November 14th, 2PM Pacific, 10PM BST, uh, after, right after XO19, uh, episode of Inside Xbox is there, that's when you can jump on to the Microsoft store, uh, online to try and get it, and I hope you try, and I wish you luck. There ain't gonna be a lot of them, it's going to be super collectable, if you don't get the controller, we're also working with Meta threads to make a, a series of like gear, that represent, that use that same Maharishi print-

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... uh, that's sort of the Tim, sort of camo, it looks really good, you'll be wearing it.

Larry Hryb: I will.

Jeff Rubenstein: You should wear it on Xbox-

Larry Hryb: I'm wearing it now.

Jeff Rubenstein: You always do the blazer, you're in London, change your look.

Larry Hryb: What should I wear?

Jeff Rubenstein: Either full BeefEater-

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... or this. Those are your choices.

Larry Hryb: Not a morning coat?

Jeff Rubenstein: I don't know what that is.

Larry Hryb: You're going to a wedding, you don't what morning coat is?

James Gwertzman: The long coat?

Larry Hryb: The long coats.

James Gwertzman: Yeah, I was thinking button shops, do the button [crosstalk 00:16:53].

Jeff Rubenstein: That's right, this is a wedding in Florida-

Larry Hryb: (Laughs).

Jeff Rubenstein: ... on the invitation it says no jorts, all right.

Larry Hryb: I'm sorry, that's right, you're wearing crocs for that, have fun.

Jeff Rubenstein: They are my dress crocs Larry, I thought you knew that.

Larry Hryb: (Laughs).

Jeff Rubenstein: So anyway, we'll link out to this, uh, but set your alarm now.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: Anybody who's done a sneakers drop, you know you need to be-

Larry Hryb: You know the drill.

Jeff Rubenstein: You have to have you hand hovering over the buy now button, and, uh, and I wish you luck.

Larry Hryb: Good luck, we'll have [crosstalk 00:17:17]

Jeff Rubenstein: We should do an unboxing, so you can show a real closeup.

Larry Hryb: Oh yeah, we should do that, I'll see if I can get my hands on of those.

Jeff Rubenstein: Uh, you're Major Nelson, I think we can, we can make this work.

Larry Hryb: XO is coming up in a couple of weeks, I don't know if we're going to be able to squeeze in a show with you on the road and whatnot, but we'll be over there, we'll do that, I'll have details on that on my Twitter.

Jeff Rubenstein: That's ... I mean that would be great if we could do it.

Larry Hryb: Yes, yes. What else have we got for news Jeffery?

Jeff Rubenstein: All right, let's talk about this. Xbox all access.

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: All right, so let's say we've got the holidays coming up.

Larry Hryb: We do.

Jeff Rubenstein: Let's say you, you run an Xbox 1S-

Larry Hryb: I love it.

Jeff Rubenstein: [inaudible 00:17:44].

Larry Hryb: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jeff Rubenstein: And you're thinking-

Larry Hryb: The all digital edition.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah sure, that's it, so you're thinking, "I wanna, I wanna get an Xbox 1X." Or, "I want to get a second one."

Larry Hryb: Or, "Hey,"-

Jeff Rubenstein: A second one as a gift.

Larry Hryb: "Hey, I want to get ready for Project Scarlet next year."

Jeff Rubenstein: Or that.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: Um, this is a way to do that, um, where there is essentially no upfront cost, uh, and you can be playing right out of the box for as little as 19.99 a month, for 24 months.

Larry Hryb: Can that be, can that be-

Jeff Rubenstein: It's, it's true.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Jeff Rubenstein: It's true.

Larry Hryb: Okay, we don't have fine printing radios, so you'll have to go use-

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, yeah, I'll probably speak really fast, [inaudible 00:18:18]. Uh, yeah, so, uh, yeah, and then you have the option to upgrade to Project Scarlet once it's available on holiday 2020, and it includes the Xbox, of course, whether it's an Xbox 1S, uh, an on old digital, or an X if that's what you want. Our players in Australia can get Forza Rising 4 bundle. Uh, it also include Xbox game pass ultimate.

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: So for 20 bucks, starting 20 bucks a month, and you don't have a Xbox, you can have an Xbox and well over hundred points.

Larry Hryb: You get all the things we've got, all of the best things we have to offer.

Jeff Rubenstein: All the best things. So there's a number of different ways to get that. I will link out because there's ... In Australia you go to one place, in the UK you go to a different place, you don't go to Australia, that would be super inconvenient.

Larry Hryb: [inaudible 00:18:55] don't do that.

Jeff Rubenstein: Uh, or in the US, you can get it online from Amazon, so, uh, I will link out to that-

Larry Hryb: Please.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... but if you don't have it, this is a really cool way to, to get it with like very little out of pocket, so-

Larry Hryb: We'll get you started.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... it's a thing, you should do it.

Larry Hryb: It's fun.

Jeff Rubenstein: Uh-

Larry Hryb: You know what else is happening?

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: It's go-, it's here, it's almost here.

Jeff Rubenstein: Are you talking about the elite?

Larry Hryb: Series two. [inaudible 00:19:14] Have you ... You've played with the controller, right, right James?

James Gwertzman: No I-

Larry Hryb: What?

James Gwertzman: ... I need to get my hands on one.

Larry Hryb: Really? How we ... I thought we had one. Do you have one in your bag? No I don't have one in my bag.

Jeff Rubenstein: I don't have one in my bag, it is at home next to my Xbox-

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... where [crosstalk 00:19:28].

James Gwertzman: I've been watching the videos in the halls here at Microsoft ... Here at Microsoft for those who are listening at home, we have big video monitors showing kind of cool stuff happening in our own buildings, and-

Larry Hryb: ... and in our company.

James Gwertzman: ... and just awesome video about how they make the controllers.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: So we're watching the, the intricacies of how they manufacture it, and all the testing, and it looks pretty, pretty badass.

Larry Hryb: It's, it's been called the best controller ever.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, we're not prone to [inaudible 00:19:49].

Larry Hryb: Not at all.

Jeff Rubenstein: We welsh, and we [inaudible 00:19:52], and we qualify every statement that comes out of our mouth.

Larry Hryb: Not this time.

Jeff Rubenstein: Not this time, it is the best darn controller ever made.

Larry Hryb: Ever, ever.

Jeff Rubenstein: I really mean that. I really mean that, and if you, you want to have a chance to win this, a couple of different ways-

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... to try it with.

Larry Hryb: Well you gotta go buy one first.

Jeff Rubenstein: Okay, one of them would be-

Larry Hryb: That's the easy way

Jeff Rubenstein: Of course, that's, that's ... Then you get it, and you win for the life-, you know for as long as you're playing, uh, but you're giving one away.

Larry Hryb: I am, on my blog at majornelson.com.

Jeff Rubenstein: Uh, and there's still time to, to get in. Right now, I was looking, about 6,000 people have entered, those are pretty good odds.

Larry Hryb: By the way, this is the second, I gave one away last week too.

Jeff Rubenstein: Really?

Larry Hryb: Yeah, I've got a couple to give away.

Jeff Rubenstein: Those are pretty good odds. I was looking, what else has 6000 to one odds? Uh, 6000 to one odds that Charles Barkley would win celebrity golf tournament, he actually didn't win that, but 6000 to one odds that Leicester City was going to win the premiership in 2016-

Larry Hryb: No, no.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... and they won, and they did it.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Jeff Rubenstein: So you can do it, you can win this.

Larry Hryb: All right.

Jeff Rubenstein: Another place you could do if you really want to like, you want to put in as many like entry tabs as possible, you want as many raffle tickets as possible, just go to Taco Bell-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... get the five buck box.

Larry Hryb: Now have you been ... You been to Taco Bell? You said you the promo.

James Gwertzman: I saw the promo-

Larry Hryb: I have not been to-

James Gwertzman: The viral promo on this thing.

Larry Hryb: I have not been to Taco Bell yet, I know Jeff you go once year.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah [crosstalk 00:21:05].

James Gwertzman: Brilliant social promotion I've ever seen.

Larry Hryb: It's crazy isn't it?

James Gwertzman: These unboxing videos, and the people actually get it, they, they win it, and they get it [crosstalk 00:21:13].

Jeff Rubenstein: It's more fun thing to [inaudible 00:21:16], "Hey guys, do you want Taco Bell and like a really good Xbox?" No one says no.

James Gwertzman: You're bringing joy to peoples lives.

Jeff Rubenstein: No one says no. Every 10 minutes, every 10 minutes someone is walking away with ... and the greatest thing is, there's an ongoing thread on Xbox One sub Reddit-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: I think the best Reddit on ... I'm really going all [inaudible 00:21:30], the best Reddit on sub Reddit on Reddit, really good people there, and they have an ongoing thing, and these people win, they go there, and like, "I won, I won." And it's real.

Larry Hryb: Because not only are they giving it away every 10 minutes, but once you win, you like get your prize like-

James Gwertzman: The day later. Yeah it's amazing.

Larry Hryb: Right away they just-

James Gwertzman: And then you open the box and-

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, this is not six to eight weeks for delivery.

James Gwertzman: Instant.

Larry Hryb: Instant. You don't want to wait for your Tacos, and you don't want to wait for your console.

Jeff Rubenstein: No, nor should you.

Larry Hryb: Nor should you.

Jeff Rubenstein: Nor should you. Uh, so go in, uh, we'll link out to where you can with that, or you can, uh, enter to win that on majornelson.com.

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: A few other things we should talk about here real quickly.

Larry Hryb: Please.

Jeff Rubenstein: Uh, just to tie a bow on Halloween, really big sale. I think it was something-

Larry Hryb: Oh the-

Jeff Rubenstein: The Shocktober,

Larry Hryb: Shocktober.

Jeff Rubenstein: Shocktober. It was either gonna be Shocktober spectacular, there's really only two ways you can go with that, you know.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, Shocktober.

Jeff Rubenstein: A couple of really good deals. Uh, Border Lands 3-

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: Depending on the version that you have, either 20 or 25% off, and then ... I'm just calling out a couple of really good ones.

Larry Hryb: Go look at the list, it's affordable.

Jeff Rubenstein: Tom Clancy's, uh, Ghost Reckon Break Point, really new-

Larry Hryb: New game, I already [crosstalk 00:22:29].

Jeff Rubenstein: 30% off. So, um-

Larry Hryb: What are you waiting for?

Jeff Rubenstein: And then if you want to go crazy, you can get The Witcher 3 for 70% off because why would you not if you don't have it already.

Larry Hryb: Oh God, that game.

Jeff Rubenstein: You should know-

Larry Hryb: I love that game.

Jeff Rubenstein: You should know what this team is capable of before CyberPunk comes out in the spring, and if you start playing The Witcher now, you may-

Larry Hryb: You may finish, but you may not

Jeff Rubenstein: ... have some time for CyberPunk. Uh, it took me a year, it took me a year.

Larry Hryb: One of those quests will take you months.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, so there's a lot of those we'll link over to majornelson.com because there's literally pages upon pages of sales-

Larry Hryb: Deals, and stuff, and news.

Jeff Rubenstein: And those things ... Those sales are still going for another couple of days depending on when you hear this.

Larry Hryb: Those are the news headlines. Of course as Jeff said, you can get it all at the blog at majornelson.com, follow me on Twitter and I'll have some details there as well, so Voila!

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: Do we have anything else or we want to jump and talk to James here?

Jeff Rubenstein: I want to give a quick shout out-

Larry Hryb: Yes, to? Oh, After Party.

Jeff Rubenstein: To After Party, our good friends at Night School studio.

Larry Hryb: Shawn and company.

Jeff Rubenstein: Who occasionally show up on Inside Xbox, or even on Majornelson.

Larry Hryb: Sometimes late.

Jeff Rubenstein: Sometimes very late.

Larry Hryb: ... and winded.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, time zones not always our friend. Uh, so After Party, we love this guys, uh, and it is available, it's part of Xbox Game pass-

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... so you may already have this game.

Larry Hryb: Right, again, game pass.

Jeff Rubenstein: Again, uh, on, on, uh, console.

Larry Hryb: The best feel in gaming today.

Jeff Rubenstein: You know these people they made [inaudible 00:23:43] also available in game pass, really cool game, great, I don't think any game has mastered dialogue, or any studio better, uh, conversation than Night School studio, some really good voice actors. Janina Gavankar who-

Larry Hryb: Yeah, good, good friend of the show.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, she actually has a new show starting up.

Larry Hryb: Yeah I need to get her on this podcast, she's great people.

Jeff Rubenstein: That would be great, I would be here for that.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Jeff Rubenstein: So, yeah, that's, that's ... I'll call that game of the week. We also announce games with gold and a few other things, uh, but we can just link on over to, uh [crosstalk 00:24:11].

Larry Hryb: Yeah just go, go to the, uh, the podcast page on this page, and you'll have all the details. Jeff are you gonna put the links in?

Jeff Rubenstein: I'm gonna do them right now.

Larry Hryb: You're gonna do them right now? Because we're gonna talk to James because I want to talk about his stuff that he's working on with PlayFab, and this thing called Game Stack, the mysterious Game Stack because it sounds like [crosstalk 00:24:27]. So, so yeah, that's what a lot of people may not know is that if you know the Game Stack ... A lot of people in technology they, they talk, talk about the stack which is all-

James Gwertzman: Tech stacks.

Larry Hryb: Which is all technology stacks, right, which is like all the parts of things, right Jeff? Did you know that?

Jeff Rubenstein: Um, all right, here's the roles here. You've been here for 19 years Larry?

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: Okay, you've been in the games industry for 20 years and you invented a thing, I am playing the role of the consumer of the gamer who doesn't know nothing. So what I'm gonna want to know, is, is as you're talking about-

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... stacks and bits, and, and things that-

Larry Hryb: Bops.

Jeff Rubenstein: Bops, bops are the ... Oh my God! The bops, uh, explain to me as a gamer, what does this mean? What does this mean? [crosstalk 00:25:09] Why does this make my experience better?

James Gwertzman: Sure, so, so, so tech stacks have gone back for like forever, and the idea of a tech stack is you, you build software in layers. You know there's like an operating system ... Well if you have hardware-

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: ... and you have like an operating system that deals with like memory management and like your devices. And then you have a database, or you have a language you're writing in, and you sort of build up these layers, and finally we have your program, your game, your application.

Larry Hryb: O-one would argue finally on top of that you have the gooey, right?

James Gwertzman: Right, the shell ... There's a UI shell the, of the OS.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah Larry and I, okay.

James Gwertzman: Okay, so that's like a tech stack.

Larry Hryb: Yep.

James Gwertzman: What's changed in gaming now, now that the-, we were just talking how games are now services, games like Fortnite are these always on, you know-

Larry Hryb: Changing.

James Gwertzman: Changing, ever changing, ever updating, uh, services, what you need in your stack has now changed.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: It's no longer enough to just deal with, you know, drawing polygons on the screen or managing your memory, you've gotta worry about things like game analytics and telemetry, so that you the developer aren't flying blind, you actually know what's going on in your game so you can make changes and updates based on what's actually being played.

Larry Hryb: Because back in the day, you know developers would build a game ... And funny because I was talking to Obsidian about this, and they would ship it out on maybe 10 or 20 floppies-

James Gwertzman: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: ... or CDs.

Jeff Rubenstein: What?

Larry Hryb: Back in the day.

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh my God!.

Larry Hryb: But I'm just saying, as they, as they shipped it and they kind of moved on to the next product, you'd now-

James Gwertzman: You'd ship it, and all you cared about frankly was if it sold on the store shelves.

Larry Hryb: Right, that's it.

James Gwertzman: You didn't really care if they would play it once you got home-

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: ... because you'd made your sell.

Larry Hryb: You're, you're down.

James Gwertzman: Now, you ... The download is often like instantaneous, and free-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: ... in many cases, and so if that's not enough, you've got to actually be like engaging, people have to actually enjoy and keep coming back, and you know, season after season after season, and so to do that, you have to know what's actually going on.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: So analytics is like one of these layers in all these stacks.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

James Gwertzman: Another layer is managing all the in game commerce because you know we're increasingly shifting the business to breaking up, and letting people customize, and pay for different experiences and subscribe to new seasons, and so-

Larry Hryb: Sure.

James Gwertzman: ... managing all that stuff is a, is a layer of the stack.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: Along with user generative content, so games like Minecraft have millions now of, you know skins and levels, and things that your players have created and uploaded, so that's, that's like managing is a level of the stack.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: You've also got to deal now with managing your social stuff.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: So how do you invite your friends, and how do you track invitations, and do you let someone post on Twitter, you know Facebook, or whatever their, their social link. So all these additional kind of layers now make up what goes into a modern game way beyond just the raw technology. And so Game Stack is this interesting thing where it's not just raw tech, it's sort of expanding it to include services that go beyond just the game itself, and to the experience of now running and operating these modern games.

Larry Hryb: Because, because back in the day, like we talked about, it used to be like, "Okay, you got your game engine." We, most people know what game engine is. Then you build on top of the game engine, your game and your experience, and then you kind of ship it, and you're done. And then that kind of changed in 20, 2003 or four so with Xbox Live where we brought on the friends list, persistent friends list, and messaging, and then of course when we launched parties et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Larry Hryb: So there's a lot of things that kind of evolved, but now as you just said, you just went up and down, just, that's only part of what we really require today.

James Gwertzman: What I think, I, I would say the game industry has gone through sort of four major epochs, and I think, [crosstalk 00:28:21]

Larry Hryb: Tell us, tell us ... Yeah, walk us through those.

James Gwertzman: So the first one was the coin op era.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

James Gwertzman: Early, early days, coin op, you know had a very, you know, start and stop, you know, and, and that was all about your 25 cents, and all the games were designed around getting and putting your quarters.

Larry Hryb: Or put your quarter on top of the machine to wait.

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh, I mean Mortal Kombat.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: That's right, that's right. So that was like, you know the first one.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

James Gwertzman: Then the second one of course was then like, the game was ... We call it packaged goods, but that lasted for, that lasted for a good two decades.

Larry Hryb: And that's just your cartridge or your CD.

James Gwertzman: Buy a game, buy a game in a box on the store, take it home, play it, and maybe you get 10 hours of gameplay, or 20 hours of gameplay.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: Some, some fix consumable thing, and then you'd go back another thing.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: And that, we're still there, I mean there are still-

Larry Hryb: Sure that happens.

James Gwertzman: I was just ... Link's Awakening is a, is a classic example of a, of a packaged goods game. And nowadays you're downloading them online as much as you're buying them in stores.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

James Gwertzman: But it's a, it's a discreet thing. Then we had this sort of game as service era, and that was in mostly mobile, you know, these, these, you know live games, games where you're, you know often started with things like FarmVille, and these social media games, and we, you know, went into now. A whole bunch of games are now services where you, you would be continually be updated.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

James Gwertzman: And a lot of people think that's sort of where we are now, that most games are going to services, and I think we are, but I actually think now things like Fortnite have now pushed us into now the fourth era, where I think we're just entering the fourth-

Larry Hryb: And ex-

James Gwertzman: ... epoch of the gaming.

Larry Hryb: Explain to us what the fourth era is.

James Gwertzman: I think it's game as community.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

James Gwertzman: Where the game has gone beyond now just a game, and it is now a broader, all encompassing, I mean some people call it hobbies, but to be honest, the game is your, it's an ong-, it's a community, and, and the game is more than just playing the game. Nowadays gamers are playing games, they're streaming, they're watching the streams, they're contributing, they're dancing, they're buying your content. You know the ways in which you engage, has really radically changed.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: And I would actually argue that things like marketing, used to be the goal of marketing was just to go and get you to either buy the game or download the game, now marketing is seen as part of the entertainment, the entertainment starts in many cases when you first discover it. So whether you're watching a stream or going to a packs, or going to one of these conferences, you know shows, you're, you're ... What we're doing right now, the marketing is sort of the entertainment experience, and, and so this notion of what gaming has become, has become so much better.

James Gwertzman: And I think where we're gonna go from here is we're gonna start to see worlds being reused for more and more different game experiences in one world.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: And so, take like Fortnite, Fortnite is, you know every season they're sort of reinventing a little bit what the game is set within this sort of broader world. I look at like Red Dead Redemption, and the sheer amount of money that was spent building that massive world for Red Dead Redemption 2-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: ... there should be a dozen games built in there. I mean other, other developers should be able to take that world, and start to build their own experiences in there, and start to actually say, "I'm gonna treat this as a, as almost like an engine, a platform for other game experiences."

Larry Hryb: Now, one would argue that we look at what you just described, or things of course your mentioned Fortnite, we've seen Apex, but Minecraft has been doing it for, for a long time.

James Gwertzman: Absolutely, 10 years.

Larry Hryb: Or RoadBlocks even, right?

James Gwertzman: Perfect example.

Larry Hryb: Right? You know you look at those, and those are great examples of games that are changing, but there, there are different of games because Minecraft and RoadBlocks, those are like sandboxes.

James Gwertzman: Well RoadBlocks and Minecraft are actually like ... The crazy thing is, we're starting to talk to developers now building businesses as game developers where their platform is not the Xbox or the phone, their platform is RoadBlocks and Minecraft.

Larry Hryb: Now when you think about the Game Stack, where does that sit in the Game Stack? Like usually when you would write, you'd write down to the metal, in other words you'd write for the operating system, but now you're kind of up a little higher in the Game Stack because you're writing for this application, i.e, the game.

James Gwertzman: Right, well, and, and I would say-

Larry Hryb: Feel free to contribute if you need Jeffery.

Jeff Rubenstein: I, I'm a little out of my depth here Larry.

Larry Hryb: (Laughs).

Jeff Rubenstein: Other than the part where you said Minecraft because I liked that one, that's good.

James Gwertzman: No but I think, I think, I think the, the Minecraft, the RoadBlocks, like the game engine-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: ... so it fits in the same layer, so it's an above operating system, above hardware, but below all these new little new layers we're adding on, below analytics-

Larry Hryb: Sure.

James Gwertzman: ... below telemetry, below commerce, below, uh, uh, content management, below live events. All these things are things you can build on top of your game even if your game is running on a RoadBlocks or a Minecraft, or IOS or whatever your, your device [inaudible 00:32:33].

Jeff Rubenstein: So we're seeing in Minecraft is, it's not just like a top down, like this is what Mojang wants you to play, but there's also like another market place where, like the community essentially is building things and putting them up there-

James Gwertzman: Right, right.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... is this, is this sort of in the same sphere here?

James Gwertzman: Absolutely. So that's what's cool about RoadBlocks and Minecraft, is they are ... So I think of Minecraft, and, and, and RoadBlocks as like the YouTube of gaming, so, so when YouTube first came out, it was like cat videos, and it was like, "Okay, this is crap, you know this is not, this is not real video." You have Hollywood over here making $100 million blockbusters, that's really movies and YouTube is-

Jeff Rubenstein: And this other thing has that Larry on it-

Larry Hryb: Hey.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... pretty regularly.

James Gwertzman: And YouTube is like, you know, there's millions of them, and they're tiny and they're not relevant, they're, they're all kind of throw aways, but what we've been seeing is a real shift. I mean, I mean I look at TikTok for example, you know we're starting this, the rise now of new forms of video, whether, whether they're YouTube videos or 15 second TikTok videos which are becoming a, a narrative form in their own right.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

James Gwertzman: And I would argue that for the, for my kids, they watch way more video content on YouTube than they do in theaters or on television.

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh yeah, my kids don't know how to change the channel.

Larry Hryb: Of course.

James Gwertzman: And so I look at RoadBlocks the same way, I think RoadBlocks and Minecraft are doing in someways to gaming what YouTube did to video where you still have triple A, you still have, you know the big Xbox out of worlds, and these massive titles we're talking about.

Larry Hryb: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

James Gwertzman: But then you also have my six year who is, is equally happy playing, you know the Nintendo games with me, or going on RoadBlocks and playing games that a lot of people might look and say, "These aren't real games."

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: But to the next generation, they are real games-

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: ... and I actually think we're starting to the expansion now. When we talk about gaming as going to everyone, and there's 2.6 billion gamers in the world now, the nature of gaming is really changing, that's a great thing. I think it's great to have so many di-different diverse experiences, our job here with Game Stack is to make sure we provide the tools and services and technologies so that any game developer, no matter whether you're a 12 year kid, or a three person garage shop, or you know, EA has the tools to build amazing experiences, and not have to reinvent the wheel, and reinvent this entire stack of, of, of technologies.

Larry Hryb: Now, we, we talked ... So let's get back to the Game Stack thing, because we all, we all agree that games are kinda going through this change, and things are as live as the service, but there's a lot of ... Your team works on a lot of these components that some games use one or two of, some use three, some use all, some maybe just don't use any at all, right? Is that accurate?

James Gwertzman: Totally accurate.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, and ... So I was also open to the fact that you know, you deal with developers on the side, you know I've got you on this podcast because I love pulling, pulling back the curtain, kind of showing people behind the scenes like yourself, even though you have your own podcast, and we'll talk about that in a minute, but just letting people know that, hey, because I know that there maybe the future, the next writer or developer for the Red Dead or the next winner, the next big game idea may come out of somebody listening to this podcast, and you, we've got a stack of tools that they can use, right?

James Gwertzman: Right, and, and it's all free, you can go to ... Well not all free, I mean, you, you can start for free, and it's something you'd pay for.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

James Gwertzman: But you can, the goal, the, the, we're not trying to limit it for anyone. You don't have to sign a special NDA to get access to these tools. You can go to our website, Game Stack, uh, at Microsoft, so search for it.

Larry Hryb: We, we'll put a link for it.

James Gwertzman: And then you can find in there links to all the different technologies Microsoft has to help game developers.

Larry Hryb: But it's also really important to point out is that sometimes ... You can go to gamestack.com by the way, I just looked it up. Um, the, the other thing you can do is, is, like, "Hey, it doesn't have to be an Xbox game, right?" I mean you work, there's a lot of people, there's a lot of mobile people using it, right?

James Gwertzman: That's, that's right. So, so, so when PlayFab ... Here's funny thing, when PlayFab came over to Microsoft, at the time we were ... 85% of the games we were powering were mobile games.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: So, and we had, you know, I think we had almost 100 million monthly active players across all the different games we were powering-

Larry Hryb: That's a lot of people.

James Gwertzman: ... mostly mobile. Since we've come to Microsoft, we've now sort of doubled down, and are now broadening our support, and going deep on Xbox, and PC, and, but we're still, but we're still supporting, uh, PlayStation, we're still supporting Nintendo Switch.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: We're probably the only group in all of Microsoft that has a Stadia, you know access to Stadia STK because we're looking at ... Because we have customers asking us to, "Hey, you know, we are building a game, and we want to support, you know Stadia, so we need PlayFab for that."

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: And so we need to be where the developers are, and that by the way is one of the biggest shifts I would say. You mentioned I started at Microsoft, you know, whatever 25 years ago.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: Microsoft is such a different company now because Microsoft-

Larry Hryb: Oh, right.

James Gwertzman: ... the very fact that I am building a service for Microsoft that is going to support Switch and PlayStation, and IOS and Android, and even, you know Stadia, at the same time that we're still supporting Google, I'm sorry still supporting, uh, Xbox, and our devices-

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: ... I think it's wonderful, and it really shows how the entire industry is opening up, and I think we're starting to recognize that all these different layers all have to sort of interact with each other if we're going make gamers ... Support gamers in the way that they want to be supported.

Jeff Rubenstein: I think you touched on something there, which is like, this is an expansion of where gaming can be and where it can go to. This isn't ... I, I like playing single player games, and it's not, "This is making them go away." Or, or, "Hey, everything is gonna be like Fortnite and it's gonna be that."

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: But that, that is opening for another group, the, you know, or some of us that want to play games like that, it's sort of like a, a broadening I think of, of what gaming is and what it can be.

James Gwertzman: Yeah, it's an, it's an end.

Jeff Rubenstein: It's an end scenario, that's a perfect way of putting it.

Larry Hryb: So when I look at, you know when we look at the game development over the past year, and I've been in the games industry for a long time, there's these areas that your team builds tools to help, one of them would probably say, "You know hey, we don't have two years to build something, we need to build it now." So really getting things going quickly, right? And that's something that your team does, right? Kind of accelerating the development.

James Gwertzman: Accelerating development, making it much faster to build something out.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: Um, I think the, the place where you see that most affected is, you just mentioned Hal-, all of these Halloween events, right?

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: So you have all these games now, building special events for Halloween, and, and you think about that, that's gotta happen quickly, you've got to be able to build those, and get them out there, and get the tested, and localize them in 20 languages, and put them out for, for players to get access to, and then, and then soon as that's done, it's time for the Christmas one, and then the New Year's one-

Larry Hryb: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

James Gwertzman: ... and then Valentine's day, and so-

Larry Hryb: So that leads to the next one which is, not only do you help them develop quickly, but really to be more agile.

James Gwertzman: Way more, and, and that's, that's probably the biggest shift that is really at the root of this. So we, we talk about a thing called Live ops. Live ops-

Larry Hryb: Live operations.

James Gwertzman: Now that's [inaudible 00:38:48] for my podcast, the art of Live ops.

Larry Hryb: We'll talk about that in a second.

James Gwertzman: But Live ops is this notion that you now have to operate the game post launch.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

James Gwertzman: You know, you build it, you ship it, and now comes live ops, and that's all the things you do to keep the game going-

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: ... in some cases for years.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: And the thing about live ops is, you ... [inaudible 00:39:05] The game, game design used to be like being a movie director. You know you're the movie, you have the vision, I've got this game I'm gonna create, I'm gonna create my masterpiece-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: ... and put it out in the world, and you the gamer will like it.

Larry Hryb: And this is it.

James Gwertzman: And, and that's, and that's ... There are still plenty of games like that, but what's changing with live ops games, is because the player is now, you know, continually being engaged, and because we have all this telemetry, and we know what's going on, I would argue the player is now sort of sitting at the design table alongside the designers.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

James Gwertzman: And it's a way, even though the design ... You know, we're not literally calling up game developers-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: ... players and say, "Hey, what would you like to see this week?

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: The developers and designers are, are acting as if that's really case. And so you're starting to get this way more collaborative thing where the player is at the center of the experience much more than ever before.

Larry Hryb: And also you enable, again Game Stack also enables that type of collaboration.

James Gwertzman: Right because what's happening is, in two ways, one is, is, is the telemetry, seeing what's going on in a game, so that every time you do a new season or a new update or an event, you can start to tweak and change, and, and, and, and revise the experience, but also through just services that let games if they want to, open up to the creator so that you can upload content, you can create [crosstalk 00:40:15].

James Gwertzman: Yeah, making that easy and not, uh, uh, a really complicated exercise in database management or something is another part of what we're doing. So any game can [inaudible 00:40:23].

Larry Hryb: Yeah, and that's interesting because if you think about it, games, certainly games have different experiences, but some of their core needs, they're basically the same, how do I share content? How do I connect players with one another? How to create a session? How do I do matchmaking, these are all things under the covers-

James Gwertzman: Right.

Larry Hryb: ... that regardless of what you're, you know what type of game you're playing, you kind of need these core-

James Gwertzman: That's the anti, that's like, that's like the basic, that's table sticks, right?

Larry Hryb: Yeah, exactly.

James Gwertzman: You've got to have this stuff.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: And that's exactly, and again going back to the why we started the company, that's exactly where we came from, we saw, the, the, the, the layer, the number of things you had to do just to be like viable, like just to be like, you know even remotely ... First of all was going up, you had to have leader boards, you had to have content updated-

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: ... you had to have this engine, and as that kept going up, it wasn't enough to just have your engine anymore, you had to have all these other services, and if you're not, you know, if you're not EA, it's hard to afford all this kind of stuff.

Jeff Rubenstein: Is this how, so at E3 we saw a game that was made by one person, I think it Way of the Woods, like they had a deer, is this like, is that how like one person can make a game these days?

James Gwertzman: Yeah, exactly. And, and, and we're not ... By the way this is not ... I mean, this is, this is not just because of things like [inaudible 00:41:31], Unity and Unreal, you know get equal billing here because they know what engines, the engines of today are so far advanced compared to the engines of, you know 20 years ago.

Jeff Rubenstein: It's kind of interesting because I remember like, uh, actually we were both ... You were in there, uh, quite a bit, in Game Over-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... which was a, a documentary of digging up the ET cartridges.

Larry Hryb: Right, we were in that Jeffery.

Jeff Rubenstein: The, the, if you, depending on how, how good you can pause, you know, in a really quick shot, uh, enhance, there's a lot of just enhance. Uh, that, that game was made by one guy, it was, Howard, I think it was Howard Scott Warshaw made E.T.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, right.

Jeff Rubenstein: And then it was like, I can't imagine one person making a game, but we're kind of now with all these different tools, sort of a useful circle [crosstalk 00:42:15].

James Gwertzman: It was at the end. A Red Dead Redemption of course, no-

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah 100 of people.

James Gwertzman: ... but then you can have a small game, yes, and, and it's because the tools have been so democratized now-

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: ... and I think Unity really kicked of the democratization of development by making so many client side tools available, and now I think things like Microsoft, Game Stack, and PlayFab are coming in now and saying, "We're doing the same thing on the backend side, the same thing on those services side," to go beyond just drawing polygons on the screen and dealing with your, you know, animation loops, and sound files. Now we're also doing the same thing for the content and telemetry, and the commerce, and all of the other things that you need to be viable.

Larry Hryb: It's interesting because we talked a lot about Fortnite a little bit. Um, Fortnite I think is a classic example of ... I remember when that game came out, and I played, do you remember playing that Jeff? I think I was-

Jeff Rubenstein: Back when it was save the world mode only.

Larry Hryb: Right, and I was like, "This is terrible." And that's a great example of a game the team went back, and they worked, I think it was like six or eight weeks because of the feedback from the community, and they shipped this, then they shipped essentially this media phenomenon called Fortnite-

James Gwertzman: Right, right.

Larry Hryb: ... which is still, which is still cooking along. I mean that's, that's amazing how you can take this game like, "Oh, it didn't work, let's completely-" As you know we've all watched Silicon Valley, let's pivot, and let's do something completely different.

James Gwertzman: Well and you, and you mentioned agility, and that's exactly it.

Larry Hryb: Yes, yeah.

James Gwertzman: The modern tools, modern technologies let you update and, and revise, and change all in, almost realtime-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: ... so you can, you can, you can ... Yeah, that's doable.

Larry Hryb: That's kind of ... So Game Stack, so your team runs this, I'm just looking at it now because I'm looking at the website. You've got developer tools, which are you know coding, and creation and dev ops, and-

Jeff Rubenstein: And, and some of these things, I was just looking through it, like you see it when the game starts of, like Havoc engine-

James Gwertzman: Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: I've been seeing that for a long time, and that's all part of this.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: Well Mic-, the thing, Microsoft, what we're trying to do again, Microsoft has had ... So we have 30 years of legacy in game deve- ... I mean Flight Simulator-

Larry Hryb: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

James Gwertzman: ... I remember playing Flight Simulator on the P.C back when I was a kid.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, yeah right? The original dark mode.

James Gwertzman: I mean just a little known fact that the first game from Microsoft predated windows, it was Olympic Decathlon.

Larry Hryb: That's right.

James Gwertzman: Olym- ... I remember it.

Larry Hryb: That's right.

James Gwertzman: [inaudible 00:44:16] yeah, exactly, so you younging, you can-

Larry Hryb: Well see. So anyway, but, but the developer-

James Gwertzman: So no, we've been making games for a long time.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: And as a company, we have a lot of technologies for games.

Larry Hryb: Yes.

James Gwertzman: We've got obviously all the experience building Xbox, we've got things like the Havoc engine, we have PlayFab-

Jeff Rubenstein: DirectX.

James Gwertzman: DirectX, all these technologies, and, and we've not always been great as a company about having these things be all kind tightly integrated, we often have a lot of separate things that are set apart, but we're trying to fix that, we're trying to bring these all together, and say, "Look game developer, we have all these great stuff for you, let's make it really easy to figure out you need for you game and tie it all together."

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: And, uh, and that's what we're trying to do now with Game Stack, is pull these things together. It's a journey, but we're, we're making good progress.

Larry Hryb: But I mean there's ... So we talked about the developer tools, and the games, and then there's, then there's the backend, which a lot of people, you know you just baseline think of something like Xbox Live, but their server hosting of course we use Azure.

James Gwertzman: Voice chat, text chat.

Larry Hryb: Voice chat, store your data, you know your identity-

James Gwertzman: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: ... simple as that, like how am I gonna sign in? How are people gonna know that I'm Major Nelson?

James Gwertzman: And not, and not just Xbox Live, but also support Steam-

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: ... and support PlayStation, and Switch.

Larry Hryb: All those other things.

James Gwertzman: All those other things, Facebook.

Jeff Rubenstein: So let's say-

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... you're hearing, you're, you're, you've got an idea for a game-

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... you're just starting, you're a student, whatever it might be, what's the best way to get started?

James Gwertzman: You need to learn an engine because you're not gonna get very far without an engine, and Unity I would say is the best one to start with. So I'm a big fan of Unity for, for getting started, and the thing is because of the, this thing called the internet, there are so many YouTube videos now-

Larry Hryb: Oh boy are there.

James Gwertzman: ... and tutorials that you can actually get started now with way less friction than ever before, so you need an engine. But then you go to Game Stack, and you start to think about what's next? I want to be able to update my content, I want to be able to add the telemetry, I want to be able to add the ... And that's where we sort of have all these additional resources for you to, to dig into.

James Gwertzman: And the other thing about the Game Stack is the, the other thing we're trying to do here is, is, it's not an all or nothing, it's not ... You mentioned earlier you can kind of pick and choose the services.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: It's not, not only is not just a sort of Chinese menu, it's a bring your own bottle type menu where if you want to, you can swap out any one of the levels for not just another technology, but even yourself, your own.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

James Gwertzman: Because that the thing, the modern gaming, this, I want an office shelf one, but this one, "Oh, this is special for my game, this one I need to build myself."

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: And so that's where we also give the ability to go in the ability to go in there and say, "I'm going to build this with Azure or even AWS, or other kind of cloud tech." Build your own backend tech, and have it working seamlessly with the other things we provide off the shelf.

Larry Hryb: There's a lo- ... I mean you, you guys are building a lot of ... Again, you talked about you're working with PlayStation, of course Xbox, Stadia, I mean, every, you're working with every, and all the mobile, mobile type game, so this is not, if you're interested in building a game, then you need to go take a look at some Game Stack stuff.

James Gwertzman: [inaudible 00:46:53] it's almost like the operating system is changing. The operating system is no longer just like Windows or whatever, the operating system now is this thing that lives on the cloud somewhere, and so when you think about all the services you can expect from the cloud, all the things we've been talking about, to me that's sort of the next generation operating system, it's sort of this thing that is so much bigger than ever before, and it give you basically all the services you need to ... So, so ultimately you can focus on, going back to your example of the, the guy with the dream, or the kid with the dream.

James Gwertzman: You've got your idea for a game, focus on that. Let's not make you distract yourself with all these other things you gotta worry about like managing your subscriptions and dealing with your comm- [inaudible 00:47:31].

Larry Hryb: Yeah, you're making game development available to anybody.

James Gwertzman: Anybody.

Larry Hryb: Why, you know how come you haven't made you game yet Jeffery?

Jeff Rubenstein: Well I mean-

Larry Hryb: I mean seriously.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... it turns out like Tic Tac Toe is already ... I don't really need a program for it.

Larry Hryb: So your game, and I'm going to put a call out to anybody who wants to help Jeff build this game, I think you need to build the game called Florida Man. (Laughs).

Jeff Rubenstein: It's called GTA.

Larry Hryb: Okay. (Laughs) It's been built.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: Done. Um, but it's yeah, so anyway, so long story short is if you're smarter than, you know this side of the table, which Jeff and I are sitting as opposed to your side.

James Gwertzman: No, no.

Larry Hryb: Then you, you if you're smarter than, than, than this side, then you know you can really build a game and you should start ... Look, don't ... And I would talk to, I have talked to a lot of game developers over the years including yourself, (laughs) is you know just start with the idea, and start figuring it out, and just, you'll have a vision, but you don't need to get there on day one.

James Gwertzman: And in fact, in fact now I think about, you know start with Minecraft and RoadBlocks, like don't even switch to Unity.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: You know because the thing with RoadBlocks is that's a game engine now-

Larry Hryb: Yeah it is.

James Gwertzman: ... and, and actually PlayFab has actually partnered with RoadBlocks, we announced it last year-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: ... at the RoadBlocks Dev Con. Uh, our analytics solution, all of our kind of data telemetry is actually available for RoadBlocks, so part of what we're doing here is bringing all these called pro tool level services-

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: ... into environments of RoadBlocks, so that even if you are just build, you know just building a RoadBlocks games, first of all, these games can have tens of millions of players, and like some of the ... If you took the top RoadBlocks games and put them on the Apple Store alongside, they'd be in the top 100 apps.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: So even though RoadBlocks is not toy games, two games with tens of millions of players, and, and revenue.

Larry Hryb: [crosstalk 00:49:03] I know developers that have made a lot of money, you know-

James Gwertzman: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: ... making stuff within RoadBlocks, it's impressive.

James Gwertzman: And Minecraft, I know ... Same thing with Minecraft.

Jeff Rubenstein: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: There are people making millions of dollars building stuff for Minecraft, so there are ... These are real, legit platforms now, and I think we're starting to see the kind of professionalization of development and things like Minecraft as well

Larry Hryb: There's a lot going, you've got, um, you've got, uh, some, some, you got your own podcast, let's talk about that. So go ahead here, I'm gonna let you plug away at it.

James Gwertzman: Well so, so, live ops, we just talked about what live ops is, is such a new field, no one really talks about it. You can go to games conferences, and there's so many talks on how to optimize your graphic pipeline, and how to build better art, and how to make your sound effects better, no one is really talking about live ops, and so-

Larry Hryb: That's why games have been, uh, stalling on the first, on the day, and day, you know when they launch for the past two years.

James Gwertzman: That's right, and no, no, this is hard stuff, and it's so new, no one is really talking about.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: And so I've been, I've been, I've had the luxury because of PlayFab, I've had the luxury of talking to, you know dozens of, of the kind of top people-

Larry Hryb: On all the different platforms.

James Gwertzman: On platforms. And so I'm out there having conversations all the time, and we get to, you know, often at games conferences, often at over beer you have these great conversations, where like, "We should, we should like open this up and bring this to everyone." And so the idea behind this podcast series was, "Let's start to open sort of what is live ops, and open up this education."

James Gwertzman: So over the past year, one of my colleagues and I Chrystin Cox who is amazing by the way, she used to live op for Nexon, and she used to do live ops at Disney, and she was most recent, most recent at Arena.net, she has made sort of a career out of doing live ops professionally, she's amazing. She and I have been interviewing, uh, experts-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: ... from all different games and platforms and genres, and we're rolling out this podcast series now, and it's super ... I'm, I'm learning, every time I do one of these interviews, I learn new things about where live ops is going.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: So I, I love it because selfishly it's an excuse to go talk to brilliant minds in, in the absolute cutting edge of live ops-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: ... and often times the ideas we get from this podcast, I get to take home and go build into Game Stack, and build into PlayFab, but we're also opening them up so anyone can anyone can go and download these, and listen to them, and-

Larry Hryb: Because, because it's important to know, if you don't have a live op strategy, then you're, you're really, you're missing a ton of opportunity.

James Gwertzman: That's right. And we're talking to companies like Zinga, and, you know, we talked, we talked to the guys who made Hitman, we talked to, uh, folks at [inaudible 00:51:10], we talked to some of the sort of the legends of the game, Ralph Koster actually was our podcast-

Larry Hryb: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

James Gwertzman: Ralph Koster created ultimate online back in the day, worked on Star Wars Galaxy, and so he has this sort of track record of being one of the sort of most famous MMO designers. And a lot of the actual MMOs pioneered a lot of these live ops techniques long before, you know the mobile devices came out, and, and sort of made them more mainstream.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, that's what people forget is that it kind, it's kind, what's-

Jeff Rubenstein: Muds and moos.

Larry Hryb: What's old, yeah, muds and moos, what's old is new again.

James Gwertzman: Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.

Larry Hryb: You just don't have to dial up with a modem.

Jeff Rubenstein: So you're making all these tools, you're helping all these people be able, people, companies, a, tremendous breathe of, uh, folks be able to make games or make their games better or more successful, do you want to make another game?

James Gwertzman: I, I kinda do.

Larry Hryb: Oh, this is really-

James Gwertzman: Oh, no, no.

Jeff Rubenstein: What are you kicking around? We'll workshop it right now.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, let's, let's-

James Gwertzman: Workshop right now?

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: So, okay, I'm gonna ... Full confession-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: ... I'm a puzzle game guy.

Larry Hryb: Okay, that's fair.

James Gwertzman: And I'll tell you something, I'll tell you a secret that no one, that very few people know about-

Larry Hryb: All right.

James Gwertzman: ... in my house-

Larry Hryb: Yes.

James Gwertzman: ... I did a big remodel recently.

Larry Hryb: Yes.

James Gwertzman: I've got a secret library, I've got a library with nine hidden compartments that is like a real world Mist.

Jeff Rubenstein: So, so it's a library I can go into, but there's nine hidden compartments.

James Gwertzman: It's, it's almost like a skip the room game, but it's my library-

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh.

James Gwertzman: ... and, and instead of trying to escape, you're trying to unlock a hidden, uh, a final tenth hidden compartment.

Larry Hryb: And what's in the final hidden compartment.

James Gwertzman: No you have to, no you have to come over and try to-

Larry Hryb: Oh no, I know how this ends up, no.

James Gwertzman: Take three or four hours to try get to-

Jeff Rubenstein: Do you, it's not a Resident Evil game-

Larry Hryb: (Laughs).

Jeff Rubenstein: ... it's a puzzle game.

James Gwertzman: Oh no, so, so I love puzzles, and, and that's how much I love puzzles-

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: ... and so, uh, I love the room, and I love to, uh, and so I would, I would to really go deep into sort of the puzzle game genre, but do it collaboratively.

Larry Hryb: [inaudible 00:52:48] you brought me back at that, that's a first CD rom game.

James Gwertzman: So I don't think, I would love to do [crosstalk 00:52:54] collaborative multiplayer sort of Mist style puzzle game, because the other thing, one other thing I'll say is ... I look at Fortnite, and I look at the, the ... What's amazing about these games is how they bring people together-

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: ... and the engagements, interactions, and right now the verbs in those games, Fortnite verbs are basically kill and build-

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: ... and I would love to see a lot more verbs. You know what if we build these collaborative games where, um, well you have games like fish ... Animal Crossing was great, you had fishing-

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: ... and you had trading, and you had ... I'm just exploring different verbs, I'll leave it at that.

Larry Hryb: What about, what about ... You know Jeff and I recently, a couple of weeks ago we, uh, we did an event with our team where we had to do an escape room.

James Gwertzman: Oh yeah.

Larry Hryb: What about an escape room like that, I don't (laughs) ... A virtu-, a virtual escape room.

James Gwertzman: Well escape room started with, with games like this.

Jeff Rubenstein: Right, right it is I mean-

James Gwertzman: Those key games in Japan.

Larry Hryb: Exactly, exactly, so just bring it all back around.

James Gwertzman: Yeah, no, I think, that's right, but, and those are fun because of multiplayer, friends, time pressure.

Larry Hryb: It wasn't fun being in a dark room with the lights out, Jeff I'll tell you that.

Jeff Rubenstein: (Laughs). I'd bang into things, ow. There was a lot of screaming.

Larry Hryb: There was. A lot of uncomfortable moments.

Jeff Rubenstein: We, uh, we made it.

Larry Hryb: Yeah we did.

Jeff Rubenstein: We made it.

Larry Hryb: How many, how many minutes left?

Jeff Rubenstein: Actually on that one we had about 27 minutes to go.

Larry Hryb: Yeah you guys [crosstalk 00:54:06].

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh we were on a different team,

Larry Hryb: We were different, he cleaned out clock out.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah we really, he had finished with like 39 seconds left, we had 20-

Larry Hryb: We were proud, having a smoke.

Jeff Rubenstein: We were very lucky, "Like what if we hit all the buttons at the same time?" I think we just broke it, and they were like, "You win."

Larry Hryb: All right, so Game Stack, so I want, I should get you, I should get you on the show again.

James Gwertzman: Fine, I would love to.

Larry Hryb: This is, I mean this, it was great because I want-

James Gwertzman: We should, we should have a regular check in, like where is the latest of Live Ops because it's changing so fast. [crosstalk 00:54:27]

Larry Hryb: What's going on, what's going on with Game Stack, you guys are adding stuff to it all the time, and as you said, there's, there's a lot there, and then of course, I don't want to, at, at the bottom ... You know you talked about the stack, and really the bottom of the stack in terms of the lowest level is Azure.

James Gwertzman: For us is Azure, right, right.

Larry Hryb: Which is, which is the cloud service that runs a lot of things.

James Gwertzman: Because we've, we've built a lot of games like on Azure-

Larry Hryb: Sure.

James Gwertzman: ... and you don't, don't need to know that if you're using it-

Larry Hryb: You don't care.

James Gwertzman: ... you're just consuming services.

Larry Hryb: If you want to play PlayStation games on Azure maybe.

James Gwertzman: And, and, and we're multi-cloud, so we actually, there are a couple things that still run on AWS-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: ... and you can actually extend it and use it if you want to, so we're, we're not-

Larry Hryb: You're agnostic.

James Gwertzman: We're agnostic, we're not Azure only-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: ... but we use Azure for a lot of our stuff-

Larry Hryb: Sure.

James Gwertzman: ... and that's at the bottom of the stack there.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: Um, yeah-

Larry Hryb: But there's a lot of other things as well.

James Gwertzman: Are you gonna be in GDC?

Larry Hryb: Uh, yeah I am, I'll be-

James Gwertzman: We should do a check in at GDC.

Larry Hryb: I, I'm in, I'm in. Game Developer Conference.

James Gwertzman: We're gonna, we're gonna have a huge booth there, and we're gonna be rolling a lot of ... GDC, of course who are at home, GDC is the Game Developer Conference at the annual big event for game developers.

Larry Hryb: It's, a lot of people don't think it's is, is, you know for lack of a better sexy as like E3 because that's when all the games get announced-

James Gwertzman: Right.

Larry Hryb: ... but frankly it's way more important because this is where a lot of the technology gets announced.

James Gwertzman: Well they never come together, I mean this is, this is, the thing with ... So the cool thing about game development is it is a family-

Larry Hryb: Yes.

James Gwertzman: ... and I don't think people realize how non competitive it is, at the level of the creators, and it is part of why I love games it is such a family, it is such a collaborative creative experience.

Larry Hryb: Right.

James Gwertzman: And so I go to GDC every year, and it is like a family reunion, I mean you get ... There are people I only see every year GDC, it's sort of a four or five day endless nights, and late night parties, and hotel suits, it's just this whole thing of getting together with your friends.

Larry Hryb: It's a great place to meet people and make contacts as well.

James Gwertzman: Absolutely, so if you're new, and going back to your, your, your sort of the kid who wants to make a game, come to GDC-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

James Gwertzman: ... you know sign up for a volunteer, and be a volunteer and be a volunteer and get to sit in on the, on the confe-, on the lectures and learn because the thing with people, it is amazing the stuff people will share at GDC. People get up and give talks on cutting edge latest stuff they're doing, and they share-

Larry Hryb: And problems they've solved.

James Gwertzman: Problems solved, and they, and they share what they're doing, so, so, and so folks like us, making technologies for game creators, we'll have a big show, we'll have a big booth there, we're gonna be rolling out the latest ... I know my whole team is al-already thinking, "What are we gonna launch at GDC? What are we gonna ... The demos we're gonna put together, what we're gonna show off." So there's a lot of cool stuff, come for that.

Larry Hryb: We're gonna wrap it up here James, I know you have to go, Jeff you have to go, and our listeners have been with us for about an hour, so we're gonna let them go, but they can, how do they find your podcast.

James Gwertzman: Uh, just search for Art of Live Ops on wherever you get podcasts-

Larry Hryb: I'll put it-

James Gwertzman: ... Apple, Spotify-

Larry Hryb: I'll put that, uh, put a link in the, uh, show notes will you Jeffery? If you could.

Jeff Rubenstein: I can do that.

Larry Hryb: If you could. Uh, and then how do they find you on Twitter?

James Gwertzman: And on twitter it is, uh, at G-W-E-R-T-Z, @Gwertz.

Larry Hryb: I will, I'll make sure we put that in the, uh, in the show notes as well. Anyway, great James, I really appreciate talking to us about the, uh, the Microsoft Game Stack, all the different things. I'm sure you guys have a ton of questions, if you do shoot me an email at [email protected], hit James up on Twitter.

James Gwertzman: Hit me on Twitter I'll, I'll get them answers.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, we'll make sure that we can, we can help you out. And I know that somewhere out the next great game idea is happening, and we want to, we want to help you.

Jeff Rubenstein: Major's Escape Room.

Larry Hryb: No, I want Florida Man.

Jeff Rubenstein: Again-

James Gwertzman: Mash it up.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... that's kind of every game. (Laughs)

James Gwertzman: Escape Room Florida.

Larry Hryb: All right, we're gonna wrap it up, Jeff, any fin-final words, final words before we go.

Jeff Rubenstein: Happy Halloween Larry.

Larry Hryb: Thank you. Wel- ... I'm gonna say welcome to November, and don't forget to turn your clocks-

Jeff Rubenstein: Back.

Larry Hryb: ... forward, back.

James Gwertzman: Back, forward?

Larry Hryb: Back.

James Gwertzman: Add the hour, add an hour.

Larry Hryb: Some places do it, some places don't, you'll figure it out. James thank you again, we'll, uh, link off to your show, and then we'll have you on again maybe at or before GDC.

James Gwertzman: That would be great.

Larry Hryb: All right, goodbye everybody, talk to you later.