Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm a senior writer with
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. I like to talk about
Speaker 1: things that go buzz in the night, you know, like
Speaker 1: robots and stuff. And today I thought we explore the
Speaker 1: world of alien Ware. This is a company that's been
Speaker 1: making specialized gaming rig computers since the mid nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: and I thought it might be cool to see where
Speaker 1: it got its start and where is it going now.
Speaker 1: A little bit later in this episode, I'll be talking
Speaker 1: with Frank Azor, general manager of alien Ware, one of
Speaker 1: the co founders when the early early employees of the company,
Speaker 1: and he's going to give us some background on that company,
Speaker 1: a little bit more about the philosophy and the design
Speaker 1: uh decisions, and and just kind of what makes the
Speaker 1: company tick. But let's stay set the stage a little
Speaker 1: bit so that we understand why alien Wear even has
Speaker 1: a space in the PC world. Well, games have been
Speaker 1: part of computer history for a really long time, which
Speaker 1: really shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Gaming has
Speaker 1: always been a big part of the human experience. We
Speaker 1: hone skills. Through games, we bond socially with others, We
Speaker 1: explore ideas, we test philosophies, or sometimes we just want
Speaker 1: to beat up on some sort of I don't know,
Speaker 1: Martian Robo Overlord or something. Now, back in nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: before personal computers were even a thing, there was a
Speaker 1: physicist named William Higginbotham who used an analog computer and
Speaker 1: in oscilloscope to create a game similar to what would
Speaker 1: later become Pong. And a few years later and sixty two,
Speaker 1: Stephen Russell at m I T created Space War, which
Speaker 1: was a predecessor to the Arcade miss Genes that would
Speaker 1: follow more than a decade later. These games were built
Speaker 1: on specialized hardware. We're talking like mainframe computers. You have
Speaker 1: to go ten years into the future to look about
Speaker 1: the first PC games because personal computers weren't really a
Speaker 1: thing till the mid to late seventies. For example, in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, will Crowther, who actually was one of
Speaker 1: the people who worked on the arpa net that was
Speaker 1: a predecessor to the Internet. It was a network that
Speaker 1: that ended up pioneering the technologies that would power the Internet. Well,
Speaker 1: he wasn't just busy helping make computers talk to each other.
Speaker 1: He was also developing a text based game in four
Speaker 1: tran called Colossal Cave Adventure for the PDP ten main frame,
Speaker 1: which is not exactly a PC I grant you, but
Speaker 1: other programmers began to work on the project in order
Speaker 1: to pour it over to different computer systems, including personal
Speaker 1: computer systems, and these text based games were kind of
Speaker 1: like a role playing game. It would spell out what
Speaker 1: is going on in any given room. You would get
Speaker 1: a paragraph of text and it would describe your surroundings
Speaker 1: and things that are in the area, and you would
Speaker 1: have to type in whatever it was you wanted to do. So,
Speaker 1: for example, you might say, there's the description says you
Speaker 1: are in a room, there is an old chair in
Speaker 1: the corner, and a door leads out to the north,
Speaker 1: and you might say sit in chair. And if the
Speaker 1: programmers had thought about that, then you would get a response.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it would be something such as you sit in
Speaker 1: the chair, that's a load off, or the chair collapses
Speaker 1: under your weight. You're now sitting on a pile of lumber,
Speaker 1: or whatever the result maybe and you would just go
Speaker 1: turn through turn. Not exactly the cutting edge in technology
Speaker 1: by today's standards, but it was an early attempt at
Speaker 1: creating games for computers. And there are a lot of
Speaker 1: these text based games in the day. I remember things
Speaker 1: like the Zork series or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
Speaker 1: and of course the Leather Goddesses of Phobos and yes,
Speaker 1: that's a real game, you can look it up. Before long,
Speaker 1: a host of programmers began to build graphics based games.
Speaker 1: They began to create things that weren't just text related.
Speaker 1: You could control little characters or perhaps control a vehicle
Speaker 1: of some sort. It was all very primitive at the time.
Speaker 1: The graphics were very basic, and so were the sounds.
Speaker 1: Display resolution and processor power and sound ability was replacing
Speaker 1: really hefty limitations on what a game developer could do.
Speaker 1: Not that it stopped people from pushing the envelope. There
Speaker 1: have always been game developers who have been creating games
Speaker 1: that push hardware to its limits, and so it was
Speaker 1: even in the early days. But those limits were much
Speaker 1: lower back then. And then Moore's law just kept on
Speaker 1: plugging away. You know that observation that generally speaking today
Speaker 1: we interpret it as computers get about twice as powerful
Speaker 1: every twenty four months, as they were before. So in
Speaker 1: two years the computers that you buy are twice as
Speaker 1: powerful as the ones from two years previous, and two
Speaker 1: years in the future they will be twice as powerful
Speaker 1: as the ones that are here today. Well, that was
Speaker 1: still going along, and so you were getting increasing amounts
Speaker 1: of processing power. But if you start off small, then
Speaker 1: doubling doesn't mean you get a huge amount, right, not
Speaker 1: at the beginning. It over time, yes, But let's say
Speaker 1: that you know you can lift twenty pounds, and then
Speaker 1: you train and train and train and train, and now
Speaker 1: you can lift twice that you can lift forty pounds.
Speaker 1: Forty pounds in the grand scheme of things, still isn't
Speaker 1: that much. But then you train and train, and then
Speaker 1: it's eighty pounds, and then a hundred sixty, and then
Speaker 1: pretty soon you're talking about really, really big numbers. Well,
Speaker 1: in those early days of personal computers, we weren't talking
Speaker 1: big numbers so well, developers were creating games that could
Speaker 1: wish hardware to its limits. It was still pretty modest.
Speaker 1: Then something big happened, and it happened in the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: and that big something was three D graphics. Now that
Speaker 1: was not three D in the you need special glasses
Speaker 1: in order to play this game sense, but rather that
Speaker 1: the rendered objects on screen appeared to have three dimensions
Speaker 1: to them. They appeared to have depth, and that was
Speaker 1: a lot different from what had been there. It used
Speaker 1: to be that games all like just two dimensional characters,
Speaker 1: there was no third dimension to them. Games like Doom
Speaker 1: and Quake started to support these three dimensional graphics, and
Speaker 1: you needed hardware to support that capability. In the early days,
Speaker 1: it was the CPUs job to do all of that
Speaker 1: three D rendering. Now, obviously the CPU has to do
Speaker 1: a lot, so pushing three D rendering onto the CPU
Speaker 1: as well made it work even harder. So if you
Speaker 1: companies began to explore options with expansion cards that would
Speaker 1: take on some of the work that the CPU would
Speaker 1: have to do. Video cards had been around since the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, but none of them were really true three
Speaker 1: D graphics cards. Those would come in the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: and one of the earliest of those was the Verge
Speaker 1: pc I expansion card from S three. Verge spelled v
Speaker 1: I r g E stood for Virtual Reality Graphics Engine,
Speaker 1: so they had pretty high aspirations back in those mid nineties.
Speaker 1: We're talking like right here, so this would be during
Speaker 1: the first attempt to bring virtual reality out into the
Speaker 1: public consciousness. This was the one that ultimately crashed in
Speaker 1: on itself and and ultimately had it set virtual reality
Speaker 1: back by about a decade because people were so disenchanted
Speaker 1: by it that no one was really willing to pour
Speaker 1: any money into it for quite some time. Well. The
Speaker 1: first card, this verge pc I expansion card, had four
Speaker 1: whole megabytes of memory and a clock speed of sixty
Speaker 1: six mega hurts. Now at the time that was impressive,
Speaker 1: but by today's standards, it wouldn't even measure up to
Speaker 1: a bargain ben graphics card. What it did do, however,
Speaker 1: was created a new era, the era of the hardcore gamer,
Speaker 1: because now you could actually get a supplemental card on
Speaker 1: your computer that would allow you to play these advanced
Speaker 1: games um and there had never been anything like that
Speaker 1: really before. And tons of other graphics cards followed, both
Speaker 1: from S three that was the company that made the
Speaker 1: verge pc i'm a card, and lots of other manufacturers
Speaker 1: as well, So there are some pretty big names that
Speaker 1: got serious traction in those days. You had a t
Speaker 1: I was way before the radion days, and they introduced
Speaker 1: the Rage three D card. I remember when that came out.
Speaker 1: Three D f X launched the Voodoo one, which was
Speaker 1: incredibly influential. I'll have to do a full episode about
Speaker 1: three D f X sometime in the future. That that
Speaker 1: wholes stories a little weird. The Voodoo one also did
Speaker 1: something the other early three D cards did not do.
Speaker 1: It focused solely on rendering three D graphics. Other early
Speaker 1: cards would fuse three D graphics rendering with two D
Speaker 1: graphics rendering, so you'd have both of them handled by
Speaker 1: the same graphics card. But with the Voodoo one, you
Speaker 1: actually had to have a second graphics card just to
Speaker 1: handle the two D graphics. It would work alongside the
Speaker 1: Voodoo one in order for you to get the full functionality.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't stop with the Voodoo one either. Nvidio
Speaker 1: got into the game, literally in this case, with a
Speaker 1: launch of the n V three in nine. Later, still
Speaker 1: in nine, a Canadian company called Matrox decided to wade
Speaker 1: into the fray and they had their own three D
Speaker 1: acceleration cards, and Intel tried to compete in this new
Speaker 1: space with the I seven forty graphics cards, though the
Speaker 1: product failed to get much traction in the marketplace, and
Speaker 1: it didn't get very many positive reviews either. For the
Speaker 1: most part, the graphics card market dominated by a T
Speaker 1: I in Vidio three D f X, and S three
Speaker 1: in those early years, So this creates some level of
Speaker 1: confusion for people who want to pursue PC gaming. Let's
Speaker 1: take myself as an example. I was playing PC games
Speaker 1: back then. I wasn't a console gamer at this time,
Speaker 1: in the mid to late nineties. I was a PC gamer,
Speaker 1: but my PC was just a basic PC. I didn't
Speaker 1: have like a dedicated graphics card. And once these games
Speaker 1: started to get this advanced and there was really more
Speaker 1: or less a requirement for you to get a three
Speaker 1: D graphics card, it was hard for me to figure
Speaker 1: out what I should do next. There were so many
Speaker 1: different cards on the market, and they all had different abilities,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't really sure what any of them were.
Speaker 1: And and they also many of them had proprietary approaches,
Speaker 1: which meant that you could buy a game that requires
Speaker 1: the three D graphics accelerator card and you have one
Speaker 1: of those cards in your computer, but you have one
Speaker 1: from a different manufacturer, and because it's not compatible, you
Speaker 1: can't play the game even though from a raw power standpoint,
Speaker 1: you'd be fine. It's your card is completely capable of
Speaker 1: churning out the the output that you would need. But
Speaker 1: because of that proprietary approach and the incompatibility issue, the
Speaker 1: game still won't run on your machine. This was really frustrating. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, before that, before the graphics cards and sound
Speaker 1: cards really became a big deal, you just had to
Speaker 1: really worry about the motherboard and the CPU, plus any
Speaker 1: expansion cards you might want in order to hook up
Speaker 1: gear to your computer. But now you suddenly had to
Speaker 1: take those three D graphics cards into account, and this
Speaker 1: was a non trivial task. You had all these competing
Speaker 1: products on the market, and you didn't necessarily know which firmware,
Speaker 1: which which proprietary approach rather would be the best one.
Speaker 1: You might go out and buy a card that today
Speaker 1: had support for most of the games that are on
Speaker 1: the market, and then a year from then it might
Speaker 1: turn out that all the games that are coming out
Speaker 1: don't support that format anymore. They go to one of
Speaker 1: the competitors. So it's a very confusing and frustrating time.
Speaker 1: It meant that game developers also we're going through this,
Speaker 1: They had to decide which graphics cards were they going
Speaker 1: to support with their their games, Because every time you
Speaker 1: add on another graphics card to support, you add on
Speaker 1: time that it takes, and money and and other resources
Speaker 1: that it takes to develop the game so that will
Speaker 1: run on that platform. So from a game developer standpoint,
Speaker 1: having lots of different incompatible formats out there, it's frustrating
Speaker 1: because you have to make those decisions. If you try
Speaker 1: to support everything, it's going to take you longer to
Speaker 1: get your game out, which means it's going to be
Speaker 1: more expensive to you. It means you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: sell more copies of it in order to get a
Speaker 1: return on your investment. And if you choose to not
Speaker 1: support everyone, then you have to figure out which card
Speaker 1: makes the most sense to support, which one is going
Speaker 1: to get you the most potential sales. It was not
Speaker 1: a great time to have to make these decisions. It
Speaker 1: was really kind of uh difficult. So it was a
Speaker 1: total bummer if you were a gamer and you felt
Speaker 1: like you had made bad decisions, or just that you
Speaker 1: had made a decision that turned out later on to
Speaker 1: become bad. Like at the time it wasn't bad, but
Speaker 1: later down the road it did. Building a PC got
Speaker 1: more complicated and the games kept coming out, and so
Speaker 1: that opened up an opportunity for a company to come
Speaker 1: along and serve that market. So instead of building identical,
Speaker 1: identical beige boxes with like standard specs to them, this
Speaker 1: company would design gaming rigs with gamers in mind. So
Speaker 1: the company would offer up various options for gamers to
Speaker 1: choose from. So it wasn't even just like here are
Speaker 1: three different computer models. There were a lot of options
Speaker 1: for gamers to choose which come opponents they wanted included,
Speaker 1: and that would obviously affect everything from the performance of
Speaker 1: the PC to its ultimate price. Now, all of the
Speaker 1: actual work and building the rig would be done by
Speaker 1: the company. The gamer wouldn't have to do it, so
Speaker 1: that takes that responsibility off the gamers shoulders. That company
Speaker 1: was alien Ware. But here's a little bit of trivia.
Speaker 1: It wasn't originally called alien Ware. In fact, it wasn't
Speaker 1: originally meant to be a PC gaming rig company. The
Speaker 1: original name of the company back in nineteen was Psychi,
Speaker 1: and it was based in Miami, Florida still is. In fact,
Speaker 1: to this day, alien Ware is still in Miami. The
Speaker 1: founder was Nelson Gonzalez, and he started the company with
Speaker 1: a ten thousand dollar personal credit loan. He didn't set
Speaker 1: out to make gaming rigs right away either. He was
Speaker 1: just going to build personal computers. But then he noticed
Speaker 1: that many of the people he knew, like his friends
Speaker 1: and family, were coming to him for advice on how
Speaker 1: to make a personal computer run certain games that either
Speaker 1: were are performing on their current machine or not even
Speaker 1: working at all. And Gonzalez understood the complexities of the
Speaker 1: PC space at the time and helped get those computers
Speaker 1: in shape. You know, his friends and family. He helped
Speaker 1: them out and he made sure that they could run
Speaker 1: the latest games and they didn't have these compatibility issues.
Speaker 1: So he then developed a business plan, and that business
Speaker 1: plan was direct selling to customers. It was a a
Speaker 1: very transparent sort of approach where customers could come straight
Speaker 1: through to purchase these PCs, which increasingly became gaming rigs.
Speaker 1: He was still making regular PC computers at the time,
Speaker 1: but he was finding more and more of his time
Speaker 1: dedicated to building out these gaming rigs for a gamers
Speaker 1: in He convinced his friend Alex Aguila to join him
Speaker 1: at his company, and by the end of ninety seven,
Speaker 1: the two decided it was time to pivot the business
Speaker 1: and focus solely on building PC gaming rigs. They said
Speaker 1: farewell to the standard PC business and went all in
Speaker 1: on gaming now. As I said at the top of
Speaker 1: the show, I had the opportunity to talk to the
Speaker 1: general manager of alien Ware, Frank Hazor, and we had
Speaker 1: a nice conversation. So we'll listen in on that interview
Speaker 1: right after we take this break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: First of all, thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 1: I very much appreciate your time. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Appreciate it. And I would like to to start at
Speaker 1: the beginning. I find that's always a good place and
Speaker 1: talk about the earliest days. We're talking about alien Ware,
Speaker 1: a brand that has really established itself as the forefront
Speaker 1: for especially for high performing gaming rigs. But how did
Speaker 1: it all get started? Well, it starts with an idea,
Speaker 1: UM pretty simply. UM. We were very passionate gamers at
Speaker 1: the time and UM mostly playing on PC, some on console,
Speaker 1: and a lot of really great games were coming out
Speaker 1: on the PC. UM around that time, we were working
Speaker 1: with Doom, Doom too, UM Quake, UH, and these games
Speaker 1: were really pushing the performance boundaries of what PCs were
Speaker 1: able to do then, and there was also really hard
Speaker 1: to get to work correctly on PCs. Back then, we
Speaker 1: had a sixteen bit Doss operating system, thirty two bit
Speaker 1: Windows operating system. Graphics cards were just starting to emerge
Speaker 1: on the market for consumers, and there was two D
Speaker 1: cards and three D cards, so it was really hard
Speaker 1: to get these games to work correctly. So are our
Speaker 1: CEO UM had started a PC company and I was
Speaker 1: just trying to build like regular PCs at the time,
Speaker 1: and a lot of friends kept coming him and saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: I want to play these games and I want to
Speaker 1: play with you. Guys, can you help me tweak my
Speaker 1: machine to do it or build me one to do it?
Speaker 1: And he would help them out, and little by little
Speaker 1: it just started forming into a business, and he reached
Speaker 1: out to one of his friends, Alex, and Alex joined him,
Speaker 1: and then they reached out to another friend. That friend
Speaker 1: introduced me to them, and uh and an alien work
Speaker 1: was born. So this is a great point that you make,
Speaker 1: this idea of of how in those early days when
Speaker 1: PC games were really starting to enter in a new
Speaker 1: level of sophistication, I mean PC gaming obviously had been
Speaker 1: an element since the birth of the personal computer, but
Speaker 1: around the mid nineties is when we really started to
Speaker 1: see it blossom and and push the boundaries of what
Speaker 1: computers were capable of doing. It really was a complicated
Speaker 1: system to to try and keep up with the demands
Speaker 1: of the latest games. You had all these different cards,
Speaker 1: some of which might not be compatible with certain motherboards,
Speaker 1: which to the to the uninitiated, to people who don't
Speaker 1: build computers, that creates a real barrier, right. It creates
Speaker 1: that level of intimidation of getting into PC gaming, something
Speaker 1: that still really exists today, and there may be people
Speaker 1: out there who do not realize that not all processors
Speaker 1: are compatible with all motherboards, and you may have issues
Speaker 1: with certain graphics cards, and so to create a business
Speaker 1: around solving those issues so that the consumer doesn't have
Speaker 1: to think about it obviously has a great deal of appeal.
Speaker 1: What sort of um what are some of the things
Speaker 1: that gamers need to think about when they are talking
Speaker 1: about gaming rigs. You know, we're talking about you know,
Speaker 1: graphics processing. What what are the sort of metrics you
Speaker 1: guys look at when you're building out your machines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: piece of gaming was absolutely very complicated initially. Fortunately it's
Speaker 1: gotten a lot simpler over time on the software we'd have.
Speaker 1: We've had solutions like Steam and UM and origins Solution
Speaker 1: e A uses Origin for their games, and what they've
Speaker 1: done with these digital distribution solutions is that they've made
Speaker 1: them a lot easier for us to maintain our games,
Speaker 1: to download our games, to patch them up, to deal
Speaker 1: with DRM UM and c D keys. In the old days,
Speaker 1: used to have discs, multiple discs to install a game,
Speaker 1: used to have to keep your c D key somewhere
Speaker 1: around or your game key somewhere around, and if you
Speaker 1: lost it, you were kind of s O l um
Speaker 1: and And not only was it difficult to do that,
Speaker 1: but then there was always patches that you had to
Speaker 1: go out to these obscure websites to try and download,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they were viruses built into those patches because
Speaker 1: they were malicious code that other people would bundle into
Speaker 1: the executables, And it was always hard to maintain and
Speaker 1: keep up with all the patches that are out there.
Speaker 1: It was just very difficult. So we got really really
Speaker 1: lucky with these UH innovations that companies like Steam and
Speaker 1: and the others built, UM to help simplify this whole experience.
Speaker 1: And then on the hardware side, companies like Alien where
Speaker 1: we've been in providing turnkey gaming systems for folks so
Speaker 1: that they don't have to worry about the PC itself,
Speaker 1: the technology that goes into it, maintaining the technology, servicing
Speaker 1: it if and when it fails, um when someone comes
Speaker 1: any and where they're coming to us because they want
Speaker 1: to focus on playing the games. They don't want to
Speaker 1: have to worry about the tech and then the potential
Speaker 1: headaches that come associated with it. And and that's really
Speaker 1: been what we've built our business on is selling folks. Look,
Speaker 1: if you have the time, the knowledge, and the expertise
Speaker 1: to build your own system, by all means you're always
Speaker 1: gonna build better than what anybody else. But when your
Speaker 1: time becomes a little bit more limited and your patients
Speaker 1: may be a little bit more limited, and you want
Speaker 1: to just focus on your game and not have to
Speaker 1: worry about the hardware, by that experience, that's what before.
Speaker 1: So what we've done over the years is we've done
Speaker 1: a lot of work to try and simplify making those decisions.
Speaker 1: If you look at how we sell our systems today
Speaker 1: and how we offer them customers are different kind of
Speaker 1: prefigurations for them to kind of see, okay, well this
Speaker 1: is like a mid range system, this is a really
Speaker 1: high end system. We give them the right communication that
Speaker 1: they need to know about what their systems capabilities are
Speaker 1: going to be. We tell them if this is going
Speaker 1: to be a ten A d P gaming system or
Speaker 1: if this is a four K capable rig um, and
Speaker 1: then of course if they want to customize, if we
Speaker 1: offer them the options to be able to do it.
Speaker 1: But the whole thing that what we've tried to do
Speaker 1: is we tried to simplify the gaming experience for us,
Speaker 1: to make it less intimidating, and to and to help
Speaker 1: grow that's quite frankly, which we've been very successful in doing.
Speaker 1: PC gaming is gonna or gaming in general, I should say,
Speaker 1: not just PC, but gaming is gonna grow to be
Speaker 1: a thirty billion dollar business this year um, which is
Speaker 1: pretty amazing, something that exceeded war Wildnest expectations and the
Speaker 1: approach of alien ware. Again, not to harp on it
Speaker 1: too much, but this idea of creating the solutions for
Speaker 1: the gamer, for people who haven't built a machine that's
Speaker 1: a non trivial issue. I mean we I know gamers
Speaker 1: who consider themselves console gamers, largely because they find the
Speaker 1: the idea of trying to build a gaming rig to
Speaker 1: be intimidating. They are worried that if they build one
Speaker 1: that the specs will become obsolete so quickly that it
Speaker 1: will not have justified the amount of time they put
Speaker 1: into it. They've heard horror stories about people building rigs
Speaker 1: and then you get to that magic moment where you
Speaker 1: flip the power switch and nothing happens, and you aren't
Speaker 1: really sure what it was that went wrong, and then
Speaker 1: you have to work it all out. So something like this,
Speaker 1: where you have the the gaming rigs built uh and
Speaker 1: you can even customize it in the ordering process, makes
Speaker 1: life a lot easier to get into that PC gaming
Speaker 1: world where you know you can finally find out if
Speaker 1: all those PC gamers who have been boasting for years
Speaker 1: that the gameplay and graphics are far superior to any console,
Speaker 1: you can finally find out for yourself and for anyone
Speaker 1: who has has not gone through even just as just
Speaker 1: as a a this is my dream rig experience, I
Speaker 1: do recommend actually building out a gaming rig using the
Speaker 1: the alien ware approach, because I've done that on multiple
Speaker 1: occasions and I'm just it's always my alright, if I
Speaker 1: sell a book, this is the rig I'm buying like this,
Speaker 1: that next book deal, that next whatever, that big bonuses.
Speaker 1: This is the rig because it is you could build
Speaker 1: a real beast with those those tools. So tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit more about what's the story behind the
Speaker 1: name alien ware. Did that that come from anything in
Speaker 1: particular or was it just something like a cool idea
Speaker 1: or was there an inspiration drawn from elsewhere? Because I
Speaker 1: can tell you what Wikipedia says. Be careful with what
Speaker 1: Wikipedia says, because you'd be amazed at how many founders
Speaker 1: of Adien where there are up there that we've never
Speaker 1: heard of um on Wikipedia puppy number right. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a really interesting story. You know, back in in
Speaker 1: the late nine these The X Files is a really
Speaker 1: popular show at the time. And um Nelson are our
Speaker 1: CEO and then the original founder to the company who
Speaker 1: came up with the concept of amy and ware and
Speaker 1: already the concept of sending PC gaming systems. He's a
Speaker 1: very creative individual. Um he actually created pretty much all
Speaker 1: of the art that um Anya where ever put out
Speaker 1: all of our graphics and art and industrial design with
Speaker 1: the help of Astro Studios in the for the majority
Speaker 1: of of Any Wars early years. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: he was thinking to himself once he had the idea
Speaker 1: for building this gaming company, He's thinking to himself, but
Speaker 1: we're going to kind of be building the best computers
Speaker 1: in the world. We're gonna be using some of the
Speaker 1: latest and greatest hardware to run the latest and greatest
Speaker 1: software that's out there. Games in particular, these games are
Speaker 1: the ones that are like pushing the limits as to
Speaker 1: what's possible in computing at the time and still are
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. So he was he was
Speaker 1: thinking about what he's going to call this comp aye,
Speaker 1: and he was kind of putting together hardware and software
Speaker 1: and thinking, well, we're going to be, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of state of the art advanced technologies, and he just
Speaker 1: figured Aliens, we tend to think have superior technology to
Speaker 1: what we have here. So they kind of put it
Speaker 1: all together, hardware, software, Aliens and that's pretty where the
Speaker 1: name emerged from. And the aesthetic really developed pretty early
Speaker 1: on too. I mean, obviously the very first Alien where
Speaker 1: rigs that came out, they some of them included early
Speaker 1: early desktops included colors that you just didn't see out there,
Speaker 1: things that really set them apart. But shortly after that
Speaker 1: you got away from the the standard sort of box
Speaker 1: tower design of desktops and he started getting into some
Speaker 1: really interesting um curved lines and and vents, the machines
Speaker 1: that looked like they went fast even while they were
Speaker 1: sitting still. I mean, I think the Predator desktop is
Speaker 1: still one of those that I look at and I
Speaker 1: just love that design. Was that something that came from
Speaker 1: the same group. Yeah, Um, it's an interesting history. You know,
Speaker 1: when you're a really small company, and we were a
Speaker 1: small company and we grew organically. We never took an
Speaker 1: investment in the early days. Um we we we really
Speaker 1: grew everything based on the sales that were coming in
Speaker 1: and just reinvesting little by little into the company. So
Speaker 1: we knew that we wanted we had a vision for
Speaker 1: the kind of products that we wanted to develop, and
Speaker 1: little by little we started realizing that vision. We wanted
Speaker 1: to bring this type of design that Apple at the
Speaker 1: time and still even today had brought to consumer electronics.
Speaker 1: We wanted to bring that to PCs, in particular PC
Speaker 1: games or PC gaming systems. Back then, you may recall
Speaker 1: pretty much every computer was like a beige, boring box
Speaker 1: and the only company that was actually doing any hint
Speaker 1: of industrial design was IBM because they had black that
Speaker 1: they were using UM and that was about as far
Speaker 1: as they had gone. An Apple had come out with
Speaker 1: the Imax and these really cool designs and colors, and
Speaker 1: they were adding life into these these devices, and Nelson
Speaker 1: was like, looking, we eventually want to go and build
Speaker 1: our own product from the ground up, UM, but we
Speaker 1: can't afford to do it yet. I mean these to
Speaker 1: build something like that, it's millions of dollars and we
Speaker 1: just couldn't afford it. We're such a small company. So
Speaker 1: we said to ourselves, what's the what's kind of like,
Speaker 1: what's the most we could do within what we afford
Speaker 1: at that time, And that's where we went out. We
Speaker 1: started looking for some really cool cases that existed on
Speaker 1: the market out there, out in Taiwan and in China,
Speaker 1: and then we started working on painting them so that
Speaker 1: we can give customers the ability to know personalize their
Speaker 1: experience with the really really cool paint job and color
Speaker 1: motif and everything that would just stand out in a
Speaker 1: crowd of beige computers and boring old designs, and that's
Speaker 1: really what started and we experimented with that. We thought
Speaker 1: that that would succeed. It took off massively, and thank
Speaker 1: to that, we were able to go off and create
Speaker 1: the Predator project, and that project, the Predator chassis, that
Speaker 1: case has defined the look of Amian work computers ever
Speaker 1: since that we came out with it. Our notebooks UM
Speaker 1: had a very similar design when we came out our
Speaker 1: first gaming notebook and the industry's first gaming notebook, and
Speaker 1: then even then, if you look at our products today,
Speaker 1: you'll see that there's several characteristics about them that are
Speaker 1: much more evolved and and more current and futuristic as
Speaker 1: compared to what we built with the Predator back then,
Speaker 1: and in the notebook we called the skull cap UM,
Speaker 1: but they still pay homage to that original industrial design
Speaker 1: and that and uh that legacy of identity that we
Speaker 1: established with that Predator chassis back then, I mean nowadays.
Speaker 1: To bring a product to market, for example, like one
Speaker 1: of our desktop, like the Area fifty one desktop, we
Speaker 1: spent over ten million dollars in research and development bringing
Speaker 1: that product to market, and every single element of that
Speaker 1: of that design is completely If you look at it,
Speaker 1: that's a really cool triangular design that we offer today.
Speaker 1: We just updated it to A A and D throughout
Speaker 1: River sixteen core process or. It's like the fastest desktop
Speaker 1: ever ever built before. And every element of it, you know,
Speaker 1: down to the fans that we're using, the liquid cooling system,
Speaker 1: the paint that we're using, the material composition, the architecture
Speaker 1: of the chassis and the construction of it, the shape
Speaker 1: of its unique. It's never been done before, So you know,
Speaker 1: we're we're pushing the limit even more and more and
Speaker 1: more and innovating more than we've ever done. And thankful
Speaker 1: it's it's it's all thanks to our customers for believing
Speaker 1: in us, trusting us, and investing in us that we've
Speaker 1: been able to continue to push these limits. And with
Speaker 1: that particular design, that triangular one. I got a chance
Speaker 1: to see that at E three and it is an
Speaker 1: amazing piece of technology. It's very clever. I like the
Speaker 1: design where it allows for more efficient cooling of the
Speaker 1: various elements. Obviously, now that we're in a time where
Speaker 1: overclocking is becoming more and more of a stand or
Speaker 1: approach from a lot of power gamers out there. You've
Speaker 1: got multiple high powered graphics processing units in there, you've
Speaker 1: got to have a good heat management system or else.
Speaker 1: I mean, we all know heat and electronics are not
Speaker 1: best buddies. They do things break down quickly if they
Speaker 1: get too hot. So seeing that design and seeing that approach,
Speaker 1: I thought was very interesting, very clever, And for those
Speaker 1: out there who aren't familiar with the process for building
Speaker 1: out these sort of things you're talking about, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: early designs, going into prototype models, going into production models,
Speaker 1: going into manufacturing models, and and this is a very
Speaker 1: long process for any piece of of any kind of
Speaker 1: product that comes out on mass production. So it's one
Speaker 1: of those, uh processes that I think behind the scenes
Speaker 1: that a lot of people just don't think about when
Speaker 1: they see something brand new on the shelf. They don't
Speaker 1: realize the number of hours that go into any given
Speaker 1: product for that to be out there. So I appreciate
Speaker 1: you kind of enlightening us on that. And I also
Speaker 1: want to point out that early reviews of Alien where
Speaker 1: really gave it a big boost as well. In fact,
Speaker 1: there was a magazine article that that ended up getting uh,
Speaker 1: a really great push for Alien where when the reviewer
Speaker 1: said that if there were any way he could hold
Speaker 1: on to the Alien where desktop he was given to
Speaker 1: review and not return it, he would very much appreciate that.
Speaker 1: So I think that's probably the best review any computer
Speaker 1: manufacturer can hope for, when the person giving the review
Speaker 1: admits outright, they just want to hold onto that machine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was That was a defining moment in our history,
Speaker 1: UM for a couple of reasons. One because getting a
Speaker 1: great review is always awesome, and we're very sensitive to
Speaker 1: what the press and especially our customers say about us
Speaker 1: in our products and UM you know, pretty much any comment,
Speaker 1: any any question, any complaint about anything that reaches us
Speaker 1: at at Alien were headquarters. Those answered because if we
Speaker 1: mess up, we want our customers to acknowledge. We want
Speaker 1: to acknowledge to our customers that we did so we
Speaker 1: want to learn from it and we want to improve.
Speaker 1: And if we didn't necessarily mess up, we want to
Speaker 1: defend ourselves and explain why. But listening to customers feedback,
Speaker 1: listening to what are the experts in the industry, like
Speaker 1: pressing journalists have to say about our products UM and
Speaker 1: acting upon that is has been a key contributor not
Speaker 1: only to our initial success but also to all of
Speaker 1: our success up to now. It's because of our ability
Speaker 1: to listen and be so sensitive to that information, because
Speaker 1: we we've never forgotten where we came from. We really
Speaker 1: came from, of course, that idea, the original idea that
Speaker 1: Nelson had, but we also came from that review, which
Speaker 1: told us what we did well and what we needed
Speaker 1: and what we needed to do improve of on. But
Speaker 1: it also gave us confidence that we were really onto somethings.
Speaker 1: Ye at that time, what we were doing was had
Speaker 1: never been done before. Nobody was building computers optimized to
Speaker 1: play games. There was no market data as to how
Speaker 1: big this market is. There was nobody to follow and
Speaker 1: draft from. UM. We modeled ourselves after Apple from an
Speaker 1: industrial design and identity perspective and iconic nature UM, and
Speaker 1: then we modeled ourselves after Dell from a go to
Speaker 1: market UM business model type of perspective. We knew we
Speaker 1: wanted to offer customization and personalization and we wanted to
Speaker 1: focus on being a primarity direct type of business. But
Speaker 1: we you know, we could model ourselves in the business
Speaker 1: that way and the way in which we wanted to
Speaker 1: approach our products, but no idea like what these gaming
Speaker 1: computers were and if the people wanted to buy them,
Speaker 1: and if people saw value in them, and if they
Speaker 1: cared about them. And those initial reviews gave us that confidence,
Speaker 1: and of course gave us the awareness and the exposure
Speaker 1: to them parcus so that people knew what we were
Speaker 1: doing and that phone started ringing off the hook, and
Speaker 1: that confidence was it was critical. Really, I don't know
Speaker 1: that if we wouldn't have gotten that confidence at that
Speaker 1: time that we have any and we're here today because
Speaker 1: we would have maybe thought we had a done owner
Speaker 1: had if that reviewer would have said, this is really cool,
Speaker 1: but it's five thousand dollars. I don't know why anybody
Speaker 1: in the right mind would buy this thing. Um, it's
Speaker 1: not worth it, and we would have been like, maybe
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have done this. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: for sure that wasn't necessarily a do or die moment um,
Speaker 1: but it was certainly a moment I remember having the
Speaker 1: confidence to say, yeah, we're onto something here, let's keep
Speaker 1: moving forward at this thing, right And then in had
Speaker 1: PC World named the original Area fifty one desktop one
Speaker 1: of its best PCs of all time, they listed twenty
Speaker 1: five different machines, and Area fifty one was one of
Speaker 1: the ones listed, so clearly things were on the right track.
Speaker 1: You already mentioned the fact that you that the company
Speaker 1: was the first to offer a laptop specifically for gaming.
Speaker 1: There are other firsts that came out to You had
Speaker 1: the first liquid cool desktop in two thousand four with
Speaker 1: the a l X. So there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: innovation on going on with the Alien where the brand
Speaker 1: has been associated with that both in the components that
Speaker 1: you include inside your your rigs, but also obviously that
Speaker 1: that aesthetic, that thing that really sets the Alien ware
Speaker 1: apart from just a first glance, whether it's the triangular
Speaker 1: shape of the new Area fifty one machine, or it's
Speaker 1: custom lights and and and cool vents and uh, really
Speaker 1: nice paint jobs. What do you see as the future
Speaker 1: for Alien where we've we've got a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: that's battling it out to try and really emerge as
Speaker 1: a new era in gaming, whether it's augmented reality or
Speaker 1: virtual reality. But from your perspective, what do you see
Speaker 1: as the future for the Alien were brand? Um? I mean,
Speaker 1: there's an incredible amount of opportunity for us ahead. You know,
Speaker 1: gaming has more momentum today than it's ever had. The
Speaker 1: amount of innovation that's going on, the amount of new
Speaker 1: products that are coming into this space, some even from
Speaker 1: our competitors. UM, the innovation that's coming in here, it's phenomenal.
Speaker 1: And you know, we're no longer a niche for like
Speaker 1: the first fifteen years of our company's history. I no
Speaker 1: longer go out there and with my Indian work shirt
Speaker 1: and people don't ask me what is that? Like, people
Speaker 1: know already what Alien war is. When I tell people,
Speaker 1: you know, we do PC gaming, They're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: my son is a huge PC's Minecraft, or he's playing Overwatch,
Speaker 1: or he's playing this or that. So it's an incredible
Speaker 1: time right now. It's really exciting because not only are
Speaker 1: we benefiting from this incredible momentum, but we helped build it.
Speaker 1: And that's an incredible thing to be a part of.
Speaker 1: UM and you know, work an essential piece of the
Speaker 1: history of PC gaming and UH and I think an
Speaker 1: essential contributor to helping to get to where it is
Speaker 1: today in many ways, at least from a hardware perspective.
Speaker 1: So it's the amount of momentum, the amount of energy,
Speaker 1: the amount of investment and everything that the entire industry
Speaker 1: is putting into piece of gaming is It's unprecedented and
Speaker 1: way beyond anything we ever anticipated in terms of opportunities
Speaker 1: that I see ahead. I think the sports is massive.
Speaker 1: I genuinely believe that the sports is going to become
Speaker 1: the most popular sport in the world in our lifetime.
Speaker 1: We are already seeing the sports move into the Asian
Speaker 1: Games in two and that's just another step in the
Speaker 1: path to becoming potentially an Olympic sport. We're seeing the
Speaker 1: sports being broadcast through the type of channels that you
Speaker 1: would expect, like online streaming platforms like Twitch dot tv
Speaker 1: or Caffeine dot tv. But we're also seeing our partnership
Speaker 1: with Elague bring E sports to mainstream television as well,
Speaker 1: to start kind of bridging those audiences and introducing it
Speaker 1: to television and giving access stability to folks that enjoy
Speaker 1: watching TV in that type of a setting to this
Speaker 1: incredible um culture and this incredible sport that's emerged here,
Speaker 1: and I've seen people get engaged from all types of
Speaker 1: ages and groups and demographics into the League E sports broadcast.
Speaker 1: They see it as a as a sport like any other.
Speaker 1: There's competition in it, there's skill, there's passion, their stories
Speaker 1: behind each of the athletes, and um, it's got all
Speaker 1: the right elements for it to be an extremely popular sport,
Speaker 1: which it already is. But ultimately that is why I
Speaker 1: think it will become females popular sport. And within that,
Speaker 1: the opportunity we see for the entire gaming industry and
Speaker 1: the one that work capital lasting on with alien ware
Speaker 1: is the hardware element of the sports is massive. I mean,
Speaker 1: from my perspective, I don't think there's any other sport
Speaker 1: out there where the athlete depends on their equipment outside
Speaker 1: of vehicle racing, where then there is any sports. I
Speaker 1: mean that your hardware can literally mean the difference no
Speaker 1: matter how good of a player you are between walking
Speaker 1: home with millions of dollars are walking home a loser
Speaker 1: with nothing. If that machine overheats, it locks up, it
Speaker 1: blue screens, it starts to lag, any issues occur, it's
Speaker 1: a very expensive mistake or it's a very expensive issue.
Speaker 1: So our commitment to gamers, especially supports gamers, is that
Speaker 1: quality will always be number one and everything that we do,
Speaker 1: and if we don't get it right for any reason,
Speaker 1: then there have been instances in the past where we
Speaker 1: haven't like any company, the difference in what we're gonna
Speaker 1: do is that we're going to immediately listen, respond, acknowledge
Speaker 1: if and when we failed, and fix it immediately. And
Speaker 1: that's been the commitment that we've delivered upon for years now.
Speaker 1: Quality is above everything else that we do. Performance is important,
Speaker 1: industrial design is important, Our service and support are extremely important.
Speaker 1: But a lot of other companies will sacrifice those things,
Speaker 1: will sacrifice quality in the sake of those things. They'll
Speaker 1: give you more performance, but they'll stress the system a
Speaker 1: little bit too much. They'll give you great performance and
Speaker 1: a great configuration and a really sexy thin form factor
Speaker 1: of six months after you own it, it starts to overheat,
Speaker 1: as dust builds up in the fans, and as it
Speaker 1: starts to lose it thermal efficiency because they pushed the
Speaker 1: limits so much without any thermal headroom and old head
Speaker 1: room at all, to give you that sexy look, because
Speaker 1: they know it's going to sell well. That they pushed
Speaker 1: it too far, and it fails our commitment because we
Speaker 1: know how gaming is more than just for fun. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: gaming is becoming It has become a profession for many
Speaker 1: people out there. Our commitment is that we're going to
Speaker 1: give you the tools you need to enjoy yourself. Enjoy
Speaker 1: yourself with these systems for extended periods of time. We
Speaker 1: design our systems with at least a four year warranty option,
Speaker 1: So every computer you get from US has a four
Speaker 1: year warranty option. That's an incredible responsibility for us, because
Speaker 1: we self warranty the machine. We don't give it to
Speaker 1: a third party. We don't, you know, sell you an
Speaker 1: extended warranty contract from a reseller anything like that. If
Speaker 1: you call us three and a half years after you
Speaker 1: purchased the machine with an issue, we are going to
Speaker 1: repair that issue. You're going to get a replacement on
Speaker 1: on site service technician in your house to repair it,
Speaker 1: or whatever the case needs to be to get you
Speaker 1: back up and running at our expense. And that's important
Speaker 1: because we get to design the product up front to
Speaker 1: ensure that it's going to have the quality in their
Speaker 1: necessary so that you don't have those issues three and
Speaker 1: a half years down the road. So I can go
Speaker 1: on to a whole rant about quality and the importance
Speaker 1: of it. I hope it gives you an idea, but
Speaker 1: e sports there's a critical area in the future of growth. UM,
Speaker 1: we're doing a lot to help UH accelerate that our
Speaker 1: partnership with the league. Check that out if you haven't
Speaker 1: seen it at broadcasts on different turner networks around the country. UM.
Speaker 1: We also have in China. We just actually announced our
Speaker 1: championship last weekend at China. Joy I was in Invijing.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry in Shanghai announcing this. But we have a
Speaker 1: something called the Indian Ware Game Arena where we hold
Speaker 1: a thousand East Worts matches. This year alone, we've held
Speaker 1: the thousands, will hold about two thousand before the end
Speaker 1: of the year. And this sports platform is intended to
Speaker 1: raisit the gap between the average gamer and the professional gamers. Today,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of professional e sports leagues like the
Speaker 1: League and es L and others and the into Extreme Masters.
Speaker 1: But to get into that league, you have to kind
Speaker 1: of be part of a professional team. To get into
Speaker 1: that professional team, you kind of have to go through
Speaker 1: an introduction somehow. If you can reach out to them,
Speaker 1: hope that they respond to you, show them the skills
Speaker 1: you've got, and you kind of have to be really
Speaker 1: really damn it's almost like the NFL to get into
Speaker 1: a professional e sports league. But we're doing with the
Speaker 1: A G A D Anywhere Game Arena because we've created
Speaker 1: a platform where it's open basically any gamers to come in.
Speaker 1: They can form a team, they can compete, they can
Speaker 1: start thanks a little by little, getting to know other players,
Speaker 1: getting to build teams together and eventually grow with us
Speaker 1: into becoming that e sports athlete. At the same time,
Speaker 1: we were with professional sports teams in the region in
Speaker 1: China that take on certain members that are aspiring to
Speaker 1: become professional e sports athletes and they take them under
Speaker 1: their wing and they teach them how to improve their game.
Speaker 1: They coach them basically, and they compete against them to
Speaker 1: improve their game. So it's this platform that creates a
Speaker 1: funnel to help create more E sports athletes and get
Speaker 1: them into the league and get them into um that
Speaker 1: the professional sport. Eventually, it's almost like a minor league,
Speaker 1: if you will, like what baseball does. So we're doing
Speaker 1: a We're doing a lot of things around these sports.
Speaker 1: UM the other areas of virtual reality and augmented reality,
Speaker 1: we believe big in those categories. We think that virtual
Speaker 1: and augmented reality are going to be as disruptive over
Speaker 1: in our lives over the next twenty years as the
Speaker 1: Internet has been over the past twenty years. If you
Speaker 1: think about how the Internet has changed the way in
Speaker 1: which we learn, form education question that we typed into
Speaker 1: Google or as theory or a SCALEXA, the way in
Speaker 1: which we learn, the one which can we communicate, whether
Speaker 1: it be through social media, networks, through email, through voice
Speaker 1: over IP connections while we're playing a game. The way
Speaker 1: we communicate is has changed completely thanks to the Internet.
Speaker 1: The way in which we entertain has completely changed over
Speaker 1: the Internet as well. So you think about solutions like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have Netflix and Hulu and these online streaming platforms,
Speaker 1: but most of our entertainment today comes in through some
Speaker 1: type of Internet solution, even social media. You laugh at
Speaker 1: a at a gift, or you see a funny online video. Um,
Speaker 1: I get an email that makes you laugh, You play
Speaker 1: an online game, you watch a movie. You do these things.
Speaker 1: Those three things learning, um, communication, and education completely disrupted
Speaker 1: by the Internet over the past twenty years. And we
Speaker 1: take all these things with us now in our pocket
Speaker 1: in the smartphone right, which is kind of crazy to
Speaker 1: think about it. We've only been a really doing that
Speaker 1: for about ten years or so since the launch at
Speaker 1: the iPhone. It was done be for that, but much
Speaker 1: smaller numbers. Virtual reality and a mentor reality. We believe
Speaker 1: we're gonna do the same thing. We believe that are
Speaker 1: the way in which we communicate will be done, will
Speaker 1: be done less in a blind fashion like we do
Speaker 1: it today, where we're only really depending on audio for
Speaker 1: the most part. Um and a camera webcam solution. There's
Speaker 1: always been like this disconnected personalization um or with a webcam,
Speaker 1: it's like it just doesn't feel really natural, and that's
Speaker 1: why I don't think webcams have really taken off as
Speaker 1: much as a phone conversation has. But when you do
Speaker 1: a in room type of virtual reality, multiple people are
Speaker 1: in one instance of a room burntual reality interaction, it's
Speaker 1: a really cool and fascinating experience. And today it's very
Speaker 1: cartoonish and animated. But in the future, you'll imagine it's
Speaker 1: gonna look as good as real time video looks today.
Speaker 1: You'll you'll actually be able to will actually be able
Speaker 1: to see each other like you've seen in sci fi
Speaker 1: movies through augmented reality solutions and virtual reality solutions. So
Speaker 1: I joke with people that it's the true human teleportation technology.
Speaker 1: But instead of teleporting our bodies like we've always thought
Speaker 1: about from sci fi movies and everything, v R and
Speaker 1: a R will allow us to teleport our minds anywhere
Speaker 1: around the room, anywhere around the world, and we can
Speaker 1: be with anyone anywhere, and basically at any time, you'll
Speaker 1: be able to transport yourself into the future, and you'll
Speaker 1: be able to transport yourself into the past. Not real
Speaker 1: of course, not time machine. But if you think about
Speaker 1: a movie and it's setting, and a setting of a
Speaker 1: movie being an old Western, you'll be able to teleport
Speaker 1: yourself into that fictional setting that whatever, whoever, whatever that company,
Speaker 1: or whoever produced that content decided to create for this,
Speaker 1: so you can, joking jokingly, we can all be We
Speaker 1: can be having this interview in a you know, in
Speaker 1: a in a in a restaurant in if we wanted to,
Speaker 1: in New York, for example, and and that environment can
Speaker 1: be all around us, and I would be looking at
Speaker 1: you and we will be at a table actually having
Speaker 1: that conversation from the comfort of our homes. Now that
Speaker 1: sounds really crazy and far fetched, and people talking to
Speaker 1: listen to me, and they say, this guy is a dreamer.
Speaker 1: But when I remind them that, you know, a smartphone
Speaker 1: is only ten years old. And if I told you
Speaker 1: twenty years ago that you'd be carrying a computer which
Speaker 1: imagine what computers look like back then, in your pocket,
Speaker 1: and it would be a thousand times faster and be
Speaker 1: able to communicate with anybody you want to, and you'd
Speaker 1: be able to do all the amazing things that we
Speaker 1: do with our smartphones today, they would have said, your
Speaker 1: dreamer crazy. M hmm. Yeah, it's about this category. It
Speaker 1: is when I appreciate that. It's great to hear from
Speaker 1: someone who has that sort of vision and passion because
Speaker 1: it's the sort of thing I've been talking about for
Speaker 1: a while as well. This, uh, this very disruptive technology.
Speaker 1: That disruptive does not necessarily means something bad. Obviously, it
Speaker 1: can mean something amazing. I mean, the Internet has truly
Speaker 1: been a disruptive technology. The world is totally different from
Speaker 1: the pre Internet days. You know, I while the Internet
Speaker 1: was a thing when I was a kid, there was
Speaker 1: no web when I was a kid. That was that
Speaker 1: came when I was in college. Uh, And so really,
Speaker 1: most people's awareness of the Internet really didn't arise till later,
Speaker 1: and then just to actually have lived through that, have
Speaker 1: seen the birth of the web, the evolution of it,
Speaker 1: it's coming into play as a marketplace. It's the you know,
Speaker 1: the the Internet bubble bursting and then it reforming stronger
Speaker 1: than ever before. The argument over whether or not Web
Speaker 1: two point oh even means anything, all of that was
Speaker 1: really fascinating to watch. And I agree with you and
Speaker 1: that I think we're seeing the same sort of thing
Speaker 1: the very earliest days for virtual reality and augmented reality.
Speaker 1: You know, virtual reality has had a couple of false
Speaker 1: starts in the past, largely limited by the the hardware
Speaker 1: at the time, the hardware and the software which wasn't
Speaker 1: quite up to the task to meet the expectations people
Speaker 1: had for it. After the various science fiction media versions
Speaker 1: of what virtual reality was going to be versus what
Speaker 1: it really was when you put on that thirty pound
Speaker 1: helmet and you saw, you know, pterodactyl made out of
Speaker 1: four polygons. Uh, it's a much different world today and
Speaker 1: to see where it's going. I really do hope to
Speaker 1: see VR and a R take off in a big,
Speaker 1: big way over the next few years. It's it's uh
Speaker 1: still got some barriers in front of it, including the
Speaker 1: various competing platforms as well as the the price to
Speaker 1: entry right now is still fairly high. But I think
Speaker 1: that those, just like other technologies, those issues will work
Speaker 1: themselves out over time as the best approaches and the
Speaker 1: technology itself becomes less expensive. So I really have high
Speaker 1: hopes for that as well. And to touch also on
Speaker 1: your point about e sports and how that has become
Speaker 1: a big component or and it's growing in importance, I
Speaker 1: would also add that the the culture of live streaming
Speaker 1: games UH and let's plays and things of that nature
Speaker 1: has exploded over the last few years where it might
Speaker 1: have been a few years ago. I might mention this
Speaker 1: to some people and they say, you watch other people
Speaker 1: play video games? What what's that about. Well, now, I've
Speaker 1: got a friend, she's the mom of a couple of kids,
Speaker 1: and she was telling me just the other day about
Speaker 1: how much she likes to watch these let's plays that
Speaker 1: UH have these guys playing games and making jokes the
Speaker 1: whole time. And I'm thinking, well, this is this is
Speaker 1: a mom of of young kids. She's not she's not
Speaker 1: in the game air culture, but she's already aware of
Speaker 1: this element of gaming, so we're seeing that continue to
Speaker 1: grow as well. I think that you are right on
Speaker 1: target about gamer culture. You know, it's just getting stronger
Speaker 1: year over year. And you could even argue that the
Speaker 1: the long time between console generations means that gamers who
Speaker 1: follow console games often are feeling like they're being left behind.
Speaker 1: Over time. They might get you, they might get a
Speaker 1: half hearted update right or what could be viewed as
Speaker 1: a half hearted update, because it's not a full jump
Speaker 1: in generation. It's technically the same generation but slightly better specs. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you have the PC gamers who are customizing their rigs
Speaker 1: to to their design where you know, it's playing the
Speaker 1: games they want to play. UH. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: interesting because I've seen PC games Ride and arc where
Speaker 1: for a while they were on top and then the
Speaker 1: consoles started to come into the foreground, and then you
Speaker 1: see that switch back and forth. I feel like the
Speaker 1: PC games are firmly grabbing the spotlight right now, and
Speaker 1: you're seeing the consoles being pushed a little further back. UH.
Speaker 1: Probably will see that cycle continue over and over again
Speaker 1: until the end of time. But it is interesting to
Speaker 1: have seen it happen a few times at this point
Speaker 1: because there was a time where post video game crash,
Speaker 1: I just became a PC gamer. For many years, I
Speaker 1: skipped the Nintendo years, I skipped Super Nintendo. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until uh PS two, I think, before I came back
Speaker 1: over to consoles. So PC gaming, I think is bigger
Speaker 1: than ever. I mean, it's it's clear if you go
Speaker 1: to any of these uh, whether it's a trade show
Speaker 1: event or something like the Penny Arcade expo which is
Speaker 1: all about all sorts of different games, PC gaming is
Speaker 1: huge there. Uh. I think we're just going to continue
Speaker 1: to see that. And I can't wait to see the
Speaker 1: next Alien wear rigs. I can't wait to to finally
Speaker 1: pull the trigger and buy one because I keep, I
Speaker 1: keep very gently suggesting it to my wife, uh and
Speaker 1: that hasn't hasn't yet paid off yet, But I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm close. I'm real close. So maybe I'll have
Speaker 1: one of those monster rigs on my own before too
Speaker 1: much longer. Thank you so much for joining me and
Speaker 1: telling me more about the back story of Alien where
Speaker 1: kind of the philosophy of the company. Where you guys
Speaker 1: are going, I really very much appreciate it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: really appreciate the opportunity. Um, it's a it's a really
Speaker 1: exciting time for us and a really exciting time to
Speaker 1: be a gamer. And first and foremost, we're gamers at anywhere.
Speaker 1: This is our our lifeblood. We love this. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: our jobs are hard, but in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: they're easy too, because we're making the biggest, baddest, amazing
Speaker 1: toys for ourselves first and foremost, and that we were
Speaker 1: just very lucky that there's a lot of people out
Speaker 1: there that are like us, that appreciate what we're building.
Speaker 1: So this is a lot of fun and I really
Speaker 1: appreciate you giving us an opportunity to tell the story
Speaker 1: and share it with everybody. Well, I do have one
Speaker 1: last question for you. Do you have a particular game
Speaker 1: that you consider to be your favorite? It can be
Speaker 1: from any era. Yeah, well right now, not my all
Speaker 1: time favorite, But right now I'm playing a Player Unknown Battlegrounds.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, a lot of on. Yeah, we're having a
Speaker 1: lot of fun with that. Um, we're doing squad matches
Speaker 1: every night. Now. Unfortunately, I was up till I'm less
Speaker 1: like um doing that, and it's been a rough week.
Speaker 1: Because I've been up so late with the guys hanging
Speaker 1: out and playing. Before that, I was playing Overwatch. But
Speaker 1: my favorite all time game is was Half Life. What
Speaker 1: Half Life did is that I've always been predominantly a
Speaker 1: first person shooter or an RTS road time strategy gamer,
Speaker 1: and um, what Half Life did for me for the
Speaker 1: first time is as a first person genre game, it
Speaker 1: brought in a storyline that was really engaging and fascinating.
Speaker 1: And you didn't want to just play the game because
Speaker 1: the graphics were awesome, or the bosses were big and
Speaker 1: bad an amazing, and the game was challenging and the
Speaker 1: weapons were awesome. You played it because you really wanted
Speaker 1: to see how this story ended, and you were You
Speaker 1: were captured by the storyline. And I think that that
Speaker 1: changed games, especially the first person genre moving forward, where
Speaker 1: all those traditional elements that I spoke about the game,
Speaker 1: the graphics, the guns, the weapons, the bosses, all these things,
Speaker 1: they weren't what defined a great game anymore. And everybody
Speaker 1: who's tried to use that recipe since and and solely
Speaker 1: rely on it has for the most part, not had
Speaker 1: a huge success. It's the storyline that has really helped
Speaker 1: define the success of games, whether it's in the game
Speaker 1: itself or it's a peripheral storyline like in the case
Speaker 1: of Overwatched, it's a story about the characters that exists
Speaker 1: outside the game itself, and the game is like one
Speaker 1: element of their lives. Um. It's really it adds a
Speaker 1: more personal connection to the game, UM, and it creates
Speaker 1: retention of the game. And I just feel and at
Speaker 1: least maybe it wasn't the first one to do it,
Speaker 1: but in my recollection of kind of my gaming career,
Speaker 1: my gaming life, half life was the one that stood
Speaker 1: out to me at that moment where I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: this is more than a game. This is like a movie.
Speaker 1: This is a story, and I want to keep playing
Speaker 1: to learn more about it. Well as as a fellow
Speaker 1: Gordon Freeman fan, I say, that's a great answer. I
Speaker 1: hope you win many Chicken dinners in the future, and
Speaker 1: thanks once in second place. A few times i've I've
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I need won a new gaming
Speaker 1: rig so I can play pub G properly because my
Speaker 1: current one is just not yet. It's just not up
Speaker 1: to the task. I just when it when you're dropping
Speaker 1: frames that much in a game where you need to
Speaker 1: see where everybody is. It is not it's not ideal.
Speaker 1: So that's that's one of the driving factors for me.
Speaker 1: I've been I've been really chopping at the bit to
Speaker 1: play some pub g So, well, thank you again. It
Speaker 1: makes better if it makes you any better, John, to
Speaker 1: imagine what I'm playing on, I have access to whatever
Speaker 1: I want. I still drop the game is up there
Speaker 1: to optimize that thing it is. It is an early access.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's true. In their defense, and yesterday or
Speaker 1: the day before, they came out with a patch that's
Speaker 1: a little rough. It introduced a bunch of lag and
Speaker 1: they acknowledged it, which is cool if the same thing
Speaker 1: that we do when something wrong happens. You know, they
Speaker 1: acknowledged it, they apologized for it, and they they guaranteed
Speaker 1: us that they're going to fix it. But it made
Speaker 1: it even more challenging. But you know what I found
Speaker 1: fascinating is all this lag was introduced into this game
Speaker 1: and we were all still playing it. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: the sign of a very captivating game when you can't
Speaker 1: when you can spend time pointing out the problems and
Speaker 1: complain about them while you're still playing the game that's
Speaker 1: an addictive game. Yeah, that's that's one that's got you.
Speaker 1: You know, they built something special, that's for sure. So
Speaker 1: I'm ready happy for that team. You know, they're a
Speaker 1: small team, a smaller type of developer. Um and I
Speaker 1: love those stories. I love to see um when small
Speaker 1: indie developers and and many medium sized publishers and developers
Speaker 1: have these breakout games. Because it's so hard, markets so
Speaker 1: saturated right now, there's so many games out there. When
Speaker 1: when when the company can come out and kind of
Speaker 1: figure out the recipe and have that hit, you know,
Speaker 1: it really changes the company and it's it's an exciting time.
Speaker 1: So I'm really excited for the whole team at Blue
Speaker 1: Hole and and all the guys that are making this game.
Speaker 1: We don't have a partnership with them or anything. This
Speaker 1: is not an endorsement. It's just me being the gamer
Speaker 1: nerd that I am. I just love this stuff. I
Speaker 1: can appreciate that. Thank you again so much. It's been
Speaker 1: a fantastic conversation. Thank you, Jonathan, appreciate it. Have a
Speaker 1: great weekend. Again. I have to thank Frank for taking
Speaker 1: the time to speak with me. He also met with
Speaker 1: me during E three and his passion for gaming was
Speaker 1: clear in both cases. And in a moment we're going
Speaker 1: to cover a few more odds and ends about alien Ware,
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're back now. I didn't talk about this
Speaker 1: with Mr Azor, but alien Where experienced a really big
Speaker 1: change in two thousand six. That's when the PC company Dell. Dude,
Speaker 1: you got a Dell. That Dell acquired alien Ware as
Speaker 1: a wholly owned subsidiary of Dell Computers. Nelson Gonzalez issued
Speaker 1: an open letter explaining the move from alien Ware's perspective,
Speaker 1: and in that he said that Dell and alien Ware
Speaker 1: shared similar philosophies in the personal computer space, including the
Speaker 1: strategy to use direct, the direct business model with consumers,
Speaker 1: and he said that Dell would give alien Ware the
Speaker 1: assets to step up to the next level in gaming,
Speaker 1: rig production, and shipping. You see, there were these huge
Speaker 1: markets of opportunity for the company, especially in areas like
Speaker 1: in Asia, but as a boutique PC manufacturing operation, they
Speaker 1: just didn't have the assets that would allow them to
Speaker 1: reach those markets. They didn't have the manpower, they didn't
Speaker 1: have the the hookups in the supply chain to be
Speaker 1: able to step up manufacturing to the next level. For that,
Speaker 1: they needed something they needed to either grow exponentially, which
Speaker 1: was difficult considering their boutique PC status, or they needed
Speaker 1: a partner with an established, big company in the space,
Speaker 1: and that ended up being Dell, so uh. Gonzalez was
Speaker 1: quick also to point out that alien Ware wasn't going anywhere.
Speaker 1: It was going to continue to exist as its own,
Speaker 1: separate brand from Dell, with its own dedicated product development, marketing, planning,
Speaker 1: and customer support departments, so it would effectively operate as
Speaker 1: a as a as A and a private entity within
Speaker 1: the confines of Dell. You know, from the outside, that's
Speaker 1: what it would look like. And he was very careful
Speaker 1: to say, you're not going to see a whole lot
Speaker 1: of changes here now. Nelson Gonzalez served as CEO for
Speaker 1: alien Ware until two thousand seven. Today, Michael Dell is
Speaker 1: technically the CEO of the company because he's a founder
Speaker 1: and the CEO of Dell Technologies, and Franka Zora as
Speaker 1: the general manager. Over the years, the company has experimented
Speaker 1: a bit, both in case design and in new products.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and fourteen, alien Ware announced its alpha
Speaker 1: Steam Machine, which was a small PC box system, one
Speaker 1: of those self contained PCs, very very compact, and you
Speaker 1: would just hook that up to your display and your
Speaker 1: keyboard and your mouse and it would take care of everything. Now,
Speaker 1: it ended up launching as a Windows eight gaming PC
Speaker 1: in a box instead of a Steam Machine, but that
Speaker 1: was due to delays in the Steam OS, the operating
Speaker 1: system from Valve, and that reminds me I need to
Speaker 1: do an episode about Valve at some point. These days,
Speaker 1: alien Ware's also getting into peripherals. They are offering up
Speaker 1: some uh some accessories to PC games, like keyboards or
Speaker 1: a computer mouse, like a gaming mouse, that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and to plays as well, so they have branched out
Speaker 1: beyond the gaming rings. This is not the first time
Speaker 1: that they've worked with various peripherals. But I can tell
Speaker 1: you they're really pretty. I got a chance to play
Speaker 1: with some when I was at E three, and uh
Speaker 1: I liked them. They felt they felt great, and they
Speaker 1: look really nice, really snazzy. If I were a pro gamer,
Speaker 1: I'd probably be looking at those um although obviously I
Speaker 1: would want to make sure that they really stood the
Speaker 1: test of my leite skills, being the gamer that I am.
Speaker 1: If you hand me a cutting edge machine and tell
Speaker 1: me to give you give you my thoughts on it,
Speaker 1: chances are I'm just gonna say it's real fast and
Speaker 1: pretty um, largely because my skills are not at a
Speaker 1: level where I can really push the hardware at a
Speaker 1: decent amount to to give you an idea of any
Speaker 1: limitations I might encounter. I doubt that I would ever
Speaker 1: run into any limitations unless it were something along the
Speaker 1: lines of trying to run a particular pularly complicated game,
Speaker 1: like complicated in the sense of graphics intensive and process
Speaker 1: or intensive on a machine, in which case it's not
Speaker 1: really me that's testing the machine, it's the software. One
Speaker 1: thing I need to address before I get out of
Speaker 1: here is PC prices, because alien Ware rigs aren't and
Speaker 1: never have been, cheap. They are expensive. It's an expensive,
Speaker 1: boutique customized gaming rig approach, and so you're you're spending
Speaker 1: a premium for that. There's a great article on tech
Speaker 1: Radar about alien Ware's history that includes a specific example
Speaker 1: that I think is helpful. Back in in the early
Speaker 1: days of alien Ware, remember the company that became alien
Speaker 1: where launched in nineties six well, that's when alien Ware
Speaker 1: launched the first Area fifty one tower desktop PC. The
Speaker 1: price tag for one particular configuration of this PC was
Speaker 1: three thousand seven dollars, which if you had just for inflation,
Speaker 1: would be more than five thousand sixty dollars today, this
Speaker 1: particular configuration of the Area fifty one desktop. Keeping in mind,
Speaker 1: these rigs are customizable, so you could build it out
Speaker 1: with fewer bells and whistles and that would bring the
Speaker 1: price down. It was an impressive build at the time.
Speaker 1: It included two Voodoo three D graphics cards and included
Speaker 1: a two D graphics card because remember the Voodoo three
Speaker 1: D graphics cards didn't handle two D rendering on their own.
Speaker 1: You had to pair it with another graphics cards. So
Speaker 1: I had three graphics cards total and dual sound cards
Speaker 1: which would allow for two different incompatible sound formats to
Speaker 1: work on the same machine. So that way, if you
Speaker 1: had a game that supported one but not the other,
Speaker 1: you were covered because it had both of those sound
Speaker 1: cards in there. And it had a lot more to
Speaker 1: it as well. So it was a premium price to
Speaker 1: be sure, and it definitely would be less expand to
Speaker 1: build your own gaming rig from the ground up selecting
Speaker 1: all the same components. So if you went out and
Speaker 1: bought the processors and the graphics cards and the sound cards,
Speaker 1: and the motherboard and the case and the power supply
Speaker 1: and the cooling system and all of that stuff, if
Speaker 1: you bought all of that yourself, you would not spend
Speaker 1: so much money as you would buying the Alien War rig.
Speaker 1: But you also have to remember part of that price
Speaker 1: that you're paying for Alien Wear includes the labor of
Speaker 1: putting all that stuff together for you and making sure
Speaker 1: that the actual computer works before it is shipped to you,
Speaker 1: so you don't have that frustration of building out a rig,
Speaker 1: turning on the power and nothing happens, and then having
Speaker 1: to track down where is the issue. Is there something
Speaker 1: that's not plugged in correctly? Is there a bad component?
Speaker 1: All of that would be taking care for you, so
Speaker 1: part of the price goes to that. Another big part
Speaker 1: of the price ends up covering the aesthetic appeal of
Speaker 1: Alien Wear. These are customized machines with uh with very
Speaker 1: cool cases, often with lighting effects and other elements that
Speaker 1: set it apart from other types of gaming rigs. So
Speaker 1: you then ask, all right, well is that worth that
Speaker 1: extra amount of money. This this really cool design that
Speaker 1: sets this apart from say a regular you know, tower
Speaker 1: desktop style, and if that's important to you, then that
Speaker 1: extra money might be well warranted. The fact that all
Speaker 1: those decisions are taking care for you, the build is
Speaker 1: taking care for you, the the aesthetic is there if
Speaker 1: that appeals to you. Uh, and the granted today, as
Speaker 1: we alluded in the interview, the complications of figuring out
Speaker 1: what components go into your computer, those have been whittled
Speaker 1: down significantly. You don't have to worry nearly as much
Speaker 1: today as you did back in the day where you
Speaker 1: had the different battling sound cards and video cards that
Speaker 1: that you you know that that we're dominating the space,
Speaker 1: and most of the games that were coming out would
Speaker 1: only support some but not all of them, which fractured
Speaker 1: the market. That's not as big an issue now, so
Speaker 1: you can take a lot of that confusion out, but
Speaker 1: still kind of a daunting process for a lot of
Speaker 1: people to build their own PC. So yeah, alien ware
Speaker 1: rigs can get expensive, particularly if you want to build
Speaker 1: a beast of a machine. I do recommend that you
Speaker 1: go to the alien ware website and just you know,
Speaker 1: go nuts, just see what you could do if you
Speaker 1: went premium as far as you possibly could, because I
Speaker 1: guarantee you you're gonna get a rig that's gonna come
Speaker 1: in it around like ten grand. It's crazy, but it
Speaker 1: would also be amazing if you had that kind of
Speaker 1: cheddar to drop on a on a PC. Personally, unless
Speaker 1: six certain numbers come up in the near future, I
Speaker 1: don't think I'll be able to justify buying the premium
Speaker 1: cream of the crop fastest that there is type of
Speaker 1: gaming rigs that are out there, but they these alien
Speaker 1: ware rigs that are built they also tend to perform really,
Speaker 1: really well against various benchmarks. They're not always at the top.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're battling at the top with a couple of
Speaker 1: other gaming rigs, but they're always in contention so that
Speaker 1: you get good performance as well. The question are they
Speaker 1: worth the price? That's the decision that every gamer has
Speaker 1: to make for him or herself. I can say honestly,
Speaker 1: I have never owned an alien ware rig, but I
Speaker 1: have built out a rig online more than once, and
Speaker 1: one of these days, I'm guessing I'm gonna pull the
Speaker 1: trigger on this because I really do like the aesthetic
Speaker 1: and I do like the idea of all of that
Speaker 1: work being taken care for me, so I don't have
Speaker 1: to sit down and do it all myself. But that's
Speaker 1: because I have made that decision. I completely am aware
Speaker 1: that this is a premium style product, and then at
Speaker 1: that point I can finally play the latest PC games
Speaker 1: and then immediately starts soaking up bullets from all the
Speaker 1: other players, because a gaming Riggs performance depends pretty heavily
Speaker 1: on the skill of the gamer, and my skill is
Speaker 1: a I mean, I'm more than I'm older than forty guys.
Speaker 1: My twitch skills have been on the decline for a decade,
Speaker 1: and they weren't great to start with, but I still
Speaker 1: enjoy playing well. I'm very glad that I got a
Speaker 1: chance to look into this particular company. It's one that
Speaker 1: I've seen around forever, and I've been a fan of
Speaker 1: their design for quite some time, but I never really
Speaker 1: looked into it before. If you guys have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for types of companies I should do an episode on,
Speaker 1: or people I should interview, or really any topic in
Speaker 1: technology that you would like to learn more about, whether
Speaker 1: it's cutting edge, brand new technology or something from ancient history.
Speaker 1: And you've always wondered how did it work and and
Speaker 1: where did it go? Send me a message let me
Speaker 1: know what you want. My email address is tech stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, or you can always
Speaker 1: drop me a line on Twitter or Facebook. The handle
Speaker 1: at both of those is text stuff hs W. Remember
Speaker 1: you can watch me record episodes live at twitch dot
Speaker 1: tv slash tech stuff. I record on Wednesdays and Fridays,
Speaker 1: so if you want to watch an episode get recorded,
Speaker 1: including all the bits where I make little mistakes and
Speaker 1: flubs and I have to go back and fix it,
Speaker 1: then you should tune in on Wednesdays and Fridays. I
Speaker 1: also like to chat with the chat room and we
Speaker 1: have a good old time, so I'll see you then
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, is it how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com