A few months ago, I had posted here asking about startups, and appreciated the responses given. It helped me look deeper into an opportunity that came up, and guided my decision to join.

With the Game Developers Conference starting next week, the company I joined will be showing the service is alive and running. Gone are the selective beta gates, and instead we are letting anyone within reach of our servers to try it out. But what is it exactly?

Gaikai is a service that is basically remote desktop for high end applications, like video games. A client connects to our servers, and the server runs the game, collecting input from the client and streaming the video and audio back to the client. We aren't the first in this space, but we have a different approach then our main competitor. Instead of selling games direct to end users, and having them always play via the service, our approach is one of a demo service. We want to enable game companies and other high end application producers to allow end users to try a demo without friction. Instead of requiring a large file download, install process, and possibly a high spec machine, our tech enables a company to just embed the demo in their web page. This allows someone to try a demo for free nearly instantly, and then they can make a more informed buying decision.

One of the important questions from the startup thread was about business feasibility. Having worked in the games industry for 5 years, the demo issue is a big problem. As games get more complex, it becomes harder to package up something that represents the full experience while also keeping file download sizes small. There is a surprising number of users who will sign up for an MMO trial, but never make it in game to give it a go. With the Gaikai service, file sizes no longer matter to the end user, and it's a much quicker turnaround time from interest to actual hands on game time. Seeing the tech in action during my interview proved to me it could be done well. So right there I knew there would be interest, and Gaikai would have customers in the form of game companies.

The other part of feasibility is of course the ability to eventually turn a profit, and ensuring there is enough initial investment to keep the service alive until that day arrives. Gaikai's approach is to tap into the existing marketing budgets of games. We charge based on per minute usage of the service, and the costs are competitive to running banner ads on major sites. The team has run the numbers, and seems to have found the right balance between how many servers are needed and what can be reasonably charged for the service. The initial two rounds of investments have been completed, and some big names were involved, including Intel and Limelight networks. So far, things look solid on this front.

David Perry is our CEO, and he's been around the industry for a long time. He brings a lot of good business sense to the table for us, and also knows the right ways to run a development shop. He cofounded the company with two technical people, one of them being the creator of the base tech that powers the Gaikai service. It's a good blend of technical knowledge and business sense at the top, and after interviewing with them, it was clear to me they had a pretty stable startup.

If you want to give our service a try, we have a few ways of doing so:

1. EA is running a beta of a Sims 3 trial
2. Gaikai is running a short gaming related survey before allowing access to a Dead Space 2 demo
3. Linden Labs is running a trial of Second Life
4. Gaikai.com also has Mass Effect 2

#1 and #2 will show our testing process (bandwidth, available plugins to use, proximity to a data center), and is the best way to go to see if you can use the service currently. Numbers 3 and 4 represent how the service will work as more customers roll it out. The idea there is that the same tests happen silently in the background while a user is browsing a site, and if the tests pass, the user is presented with an in page popup inviting them to play. If conditions aren't right for the instant service, the user is never notified they missed something, and will proceed with the normal way of evaluating a game.

For more insight on the company and our future plans, David posted more info to his blog.

There is also a recent episode of The Jace Hall show where Jace interviews David Perry. It's on youtube here. The Gaikai part is at the beginning, and resumes at the 4:26 marker. Fair warning, the overall show is not safe for work. Oddly, it also has Jace over at my former employer playing DC Universe Online.

Moderators, this seems to be spam.

Hey, I have to pay for this BBS somehow

In all honesty, I'm pretty excited about the possibilities with tech like this, and the job melds my joy of games, and enterprise scale technology. The longer I'm here, the more I feel like I made the right move. I was pretty happy at my former job, but this one has opened me up to a lot more unique experiences. I know we have a few other gamers here, so I'm curious to see what their impressions are.

Now to hope it makes it big. Having EA out of the gate is already pretty major. I'm looking forward to where things go from here.

I also need to find a more interesting place to live. While I'm happy at work, suburbia is not the most exciting place to be.

I hope you've got this pinned up in your offices somewhere

Peter

Is this like onlive ?

Awesome, glad you ended up at Gaikai.

I was beta-ing OnLive for a while, which I considered quite awesome, but the problem is that they didn't have many *games*. And then they went live, and then no new games showed up. I played through Borderlands and that was *it*. They were supposed to get Dragon Age Origins, and it never materialized. So I'll have to check out the game selection on Gaikai and see what's up there.

Exactly. Just a different company with a different game selection. Hopefully a larger one.

Tried Mass Effect 2 Demo, ran well.
Tried Sims demo, got "Error, we broke the internet" message and Gaikai exited before I got a chance to try it.

That happened to me when I tried to full-screen the Mass Effect demo.

I tried the sims demo but they told me my connection wasn't fast enough. 10 down 1 up according to a couple speed test sites.

It gave me the "broke the internet" error only after it had already pre-approved my connection speed.

I am not a gamer so I didn't really play the demo once it started. Little problem with not knowing the key mapping.

I tried the Dead Space 2 demo. Everything seemed to work fine. During the prolog, Comcast dropped my bandwidth, and the playback glitched, but the server seemed to adjust and carry on. That might have sucked if I'd been actually gaming and gotten slagged during the glitch.

Edit: The survey was a bit fun. One of the questions asked me to admit that I filled in required personal data with garbage to avoid entering personal data. I did so admit. The at the end, the survey required an email address, I of course put in [email protected]

haha, I had forgotten about that comic. It's going up on my wall Monday


Similar concept, but a different business model. Our goal is to enable game publishers, and retailers a way to embed instant demos into their web sites. After playing, you would need to still buy the game at a shop or online.


The tests that run look at the practical bandwidth and latency stats to the data centers we think are near you. It's possible you are either too far away, or the internet routing from your provider to our servers is not as optimal as it could be.

Every time someone attempts to play (either via the direct beta test sites like the Sims 3, or just taking the silent test on Gaikai.com) metrics are gathered to decide where to build out a datacenter next. It's also used to try and address any odd routing we notice off our network. The service is still technically in beta,

When Engadget talked about the service back in closed beta, they also were allowed to publish one of the heatmaps we generate from those stats.

The map is out of date now, but gives you an idea of how we are moving forward. They pulled in some pretty experienced people from the industry to make sure each aspect of the service is done well.

Interesting map. The huge gap in the middle is curious though.

The midwest is very sparsely populated, and also tends to have very poor internet options. I didn't really understand how sparse until I had a vacation out to New York, and then drove out to Ohio with Rob R. He also made comments about it when I picked him up from the Denver airport and drove back to Colorado Springs.

Even taking that into account, the way the drop off line goes almost straight north/south is curious. Maybe the mid-west is sparser then I think it is...


...So it is, wow:


It is as if the settlers gave up half way across and flew the rest of the way. Thanks for the education Tom.

Looks pretty much like any population density map.

It also a lot more vertical, being the area of the Continental Divide.

The early settlers didn't think much of farming on top of big rocks.

Okay, first: that's not the midwest. The midwest is Ohio to Kansas and points north. The area you're talking about is more accurately the Great Plains, though even that is not a perfect descriptor.

As to why it's so sparsely populated, read about the Dust Bowl.

Depends on where you turn for the definition of midwest. The official census definition is where the Ohio to Kansas part comes in, but I know plenty of people who think of eastern Colorado, and Oklahoma to be part of the "midwest", more from a cultural standpoint.

Bitt, my knowledge of US geography is admittedly dreadful. Can you point me towards a map that has areas like the mid-west, great plains etc labeled?
Which reminds me I need to get my map of the states back on the wall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_of_the_United_States is a good resource for looking up what people might mean when they say rust belt, or the now rarely used frontier strip.

http://www.architectureschools.com/m/regions.gif

Here's one with different names for the regions to make it more confusing for you

http://www.mapsofworld.com/images/usa-regional-map.jpg

I think the regions are kind of arbitrary.

Thanks Tom & Matt.

Why would you play computer games, when you can hang out in a corn field!!!!

Specially since you can play baseball with legendary baseball players.

"Out past the corn fields where the woods got heavy, out in the back seat of my 60's Chevy."

The first one doesn't even list the Pacific Northwest as a seperate region- it just lumps it all in with California boooo. It also makes questionable decision and puts Missouri in with the South- also very iffy and likely to inflame nerves. Missouri was a border state during the Civil war for a reason...

Yeah I don't see how Minnesota is Mid-West either. It's north east of the center of the county.