WEBVTT - The Alienware Story 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:07.480 Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from stuff 0:00:07.520 --> 0:00:14.400 works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff. 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:18.040 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm a senior writer with 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:21.280 how stuff works dot com. I like to talk about 0:00:21.440 --> 0:00:24.840 things that go buzz in the night, you know, like 0:00:25.239 --> 0:00:29.720 robots and stuff. And today I thought we explore the 0:00:29.720 --> 0:00:32.839 world of alien Ware. This is a company that's been 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:36.800 making specialized gaming rig computers since the mid nineteen nineties, 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:39.000 and I thought it might be cool to see where 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:41.839 it got its start and where is it going now. 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:44.320 A little bit later in this episode, I'll be talking 0:00:44.360 --> 0:00:47.600 with Frank Azor, general manager of alien Ware, one of 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:50.920 the co founders when the early early employees of the company, 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:53.760 and he's going to give us some background on that company, 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:56.480 a little bit more about the philosophy and the design 0:00:57.000 --> 0:01:00.800 uh decisions, and and just kind of what makes the 0:01:01.640 --> 0:01:04.039 company tick. But let's stay set the stage a little 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:07.240 bit so that we understand why alien Wear even has 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:11.600 a space in the PC world. Well, games have been 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:14.679 part of computer history for a really long time, which 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:17.040 really shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Gaming has 0:01:17.120 --> 0:01:21.520 always been a big part of the human experience. We 0:01:21.640 --> 0:01:26.360 hone skills. Through games, we bond socially with others, We 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:30.800 explore ideas, we test philosophies, or sometimes we just want 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:32.480 to beat up on some sort of I don't know, 0:01:32.840 --> 0:01:37.839 Martian Robo Overlord or something. Now, back in nineteen fifty eight, 0:01:37.840 --> 0:01:41.000 before personal computers were even a thing, there was a 0:01:41.080 --> 0:01:46.720 physicist named William Higginbotham who used an analog computer and 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:50.000 in oscilloscope to create a game similar to what would 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:54.720 later become Pong. And a few years later and sixty two, 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:58.200 Stephen Russell at m I T created Space War, which 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:00.600 was a predecessor to the Arcade miss Genes that would 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:03.760 follow more than a decade later. These games were built 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:08.720 on specialized hardware. We're talking like mainframe computers. You have 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:12.840 to go ten years into the future to look about 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:16.160 the first PC games because personal computers weren't really a 0:02:16.200 --> 0:02:19.400 thing till the mid to late seventies. For example, in 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:22.960 nineteen seventy six, will Crowther, who actually was one of 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:25.160 the people who worked on the arpa net that was 0:02:25.200 --> 0:02:29.079 a predecessor to the Internet. It was a network that 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:33.639 that ended up pioneering the technologies that would power the Internet. Well, 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:37.480 he wasn't just busy helping make computers talk to each other. 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:40.560 He was also developing a text based game in four 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:45.280 tran called Colossal Cave Adventure for the PDP ten main frame, 0:02:45.800 --> 0:02:49.280 which is not exactly a PC I grant you, but 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:52.560 other programmers began to work on the project in order 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:56.640 to pour it over to different computer systems, including personal 0:02:56.680 --> 0:03:01.160 computer systems, and these text based games were kind of 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:05.560 like a role playing game. It would spell out what 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:07.840 is going on in any given room. You would get 0:03:07.840 --> 0:03:11.200 a paragraph of text and it would describe your surroundings 0:03:11.200 --> 0:03:13.120 and things that are in the area, and you would 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:17.200 have to type in whatever it was you wanted to do. So, 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:21.520 for example, you might say, there's the description says you 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:24.840 are in a room, there is an old chair in 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:27.720 the corner, and a door leads out to the north, 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:31.560 and you might say sit in chair. And if the 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:35.440 programmers had thought about that, then you would get a response. 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:37.800 Perhaps it would be something such as you sit in 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:41.520 the chair, that's a load off, or the chair collapses 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:44.320 under your weight. You're now sitting on a pile of lumber, 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:48.800 or whatever the result maybe and you would just go 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:53.480 turn through turn. Not exactly the cutting edge in technology 0:03:53.520 --> 0:03:57.160 by today's standards, but it was an early attempt at 0:03:57.160 --> 0:04:00.240 creating games for computers. And there are a lot of 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:02.840 these text based games in the day. I remember things 0:04:02.880 --> 0:04:05.960 like the Zork series or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 0:04:06.080 --> 0:04:10.119 and of course the Leather Goddesses of Phobos and yes, 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:13.840 that's a real game, you can look it up. Before long, 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:17.960 a host of programmers began to build graphics based games. 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:21.320 They began to create things that weren't just text related. 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:25.840 You could control little characters or perhaps control a vehicle 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:28.120 of some sort. It was all very primitive at the time. 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:31.400 The graphics were very basic, and so were the sounds. 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:36.359 Display resolution and processor power and sound ability was replacing 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:39.440 really hefty limitations on what a game developer could do. 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:42.719 Not that it stopped people from pushing the envelope. There 0:04:42.760 --> 0:04:45.920 have always been game developers who have been creating games 0:04:46.800 --> 0:04:50.919 that push hardware to its limits, and so it was 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:53.120 even in the early days. But those limits were much 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:56.359 lower back then. And then Moore's law just kept on 0:04:56.400 --> 0:05:00.600 plugging away. You know that observation that generally speaking today 0:05:00.640 --> 0:05:03.840 we interpret it as computers get about twice as powerful 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:07.880 every twenty four months, as they were before. So in 0:05:07.960 --> 0:05:10.520 two years the computers that you buy are twice as 0:05:10.520 --> 0:05:13.360 powerful as the ones from two years previous, and two 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:15.440 years in the future they will be twice as powerful 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:17.960 as the ones that are here today. Well, that was 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:22.039 still going along, and so you were getting increasing amounts 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:25.960 of processing power. But if you start off small, then 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:31.240 doubling doesn't mean you get a huge amount, right, not 0:05:31.360 --> 0:05:35.080 at the beginning. It over time, yes, But let's say 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:38.839 that you know you can lift twenty pounds, and then 0:05:39.040 --> 0:05:41.080 you train and train and train and train, and now 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:43.320 you can lift twice that you can lift forty pounds. 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:46.240 Forty pounds in the grand scheme of things, still isn't 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:47.880 that much. But then you train and train, and then 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:49.840 it's eighty pounds, and then a hundred sixty, and then 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:53.120 pretty soon you're talking about really, really big numbers. Well, 0:05:53.120 --> 0:05:55.560 in those early days of personal computers, we weren't talking 0:05:55.640 --> 0:05:59.880 big numbers so well, developers were creating games that could 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:03.840 wish hardware to its limits. It was still pretty modest. 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:12.120 Then something big happened, and it happened in the mid nineties, 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:16.080 and that big something was three D graphics. Now that 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:18.960 was not three D in the you need special glasses 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:22.000 in order to play this game sense, but rather that 0:06:22.120 --> 0:06:25.640 the rendered objects on screen appeared to have three dimensions 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:29.560 to them. They appeared to have depth, and that was 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:32.200 a lot different from what had been there. It used 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:35.120 to be that games all like just two dimensional characters, 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:38.919 there was no third dimension to them. Games like Doom 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:42.640 and Quake started to support these three dimensional graphics, and 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:46.960 you needed hardware to support that capability. In the early days, 0:06:47.279 --> 0:06:50.200 it was the CPUs job to do all of that 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:53.680 three D rendering. Now, obviously the CPU has to do 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:57.240 a lot, so pushing three D rendering onto the CPU 0:06:57.360 --> 0:07:00.080 as well made it work even harder. So if you 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:04.240 companies began to explore options with expansion cards that would 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:07.200 take on some of the work that the CPU would 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:10.160 have to do. Video cards had been around since the 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:13.280 nineteen eighties, but none of them were really true three 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:16.120 D graphics cards. Those would come in the mid nineties, 0:07:16.120 --> 0:07:19.400 and one of the earliest of those was the Verge 0:07:19.480 --> 0:07:23.320 pc I expansion card from S three. Verge spelled v 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:28.080 I r g E stood for Virtual Reality Graphics Engine, 0:07:28.920 --> 0:07:33.400 so they had pretty high aspirations back in those mid nineties. 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:37.280 We're talking like right here, so this would be during 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:43.040 the first attempt to bring virtual reality out into the 0:07:43.120 --> 0:07:47.640 public consciousness. This was the one that ultimately crashed in 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:51.640 on itself and and ultimately had it set virtual reality 0:07:51.720 --> 0:07:55.280 back by about a decade because people were so disenchanted 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:57.240 by it that no one was really willing to pour 0:07:57.240 --> 0:08:00.800 any money into it for quite some time. Well. The 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:04.600 first card, this verge pc I expansion card, had four 0:08:04.680 --> 0:08:07.560 whole megabytes of memory and a clock speed of sixty 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:10.320 six mega hurts. Now at the time that was impressive, 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:13.080 but by today's standards, it wouldn't even measure up to 0:08:13.120 --> 0:08:16.480 a bargain ben graphics card. What it did do, however, 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:20.120 was created a new era, the era of the hardcore gamer, 0:08:20.200 --> 0:08:24.320 because now you could actually get a supplemental card on 0:08:24.440 --> 0:08:27.880 your computer that would allow you to play these advanced 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:31.560 games um and there had never been anything like that 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:35.120 really before. And tons of other graphics cards followed, both 0:08:35.200 --> 0:08:37.880 from S three that was the company that made the 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:41.240 verge pc i'm a card, and lots of other manufacturers 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:43.360 as well, So there are some pretty big names that 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:45.760 got serious traction in those days. You had a t 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:49.439 I was way before the radion days, and they introduced 0:08:49.440 --> 0:08:52.080 the Rage three D card. I remember when that came out. 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:54.839 Three D f X launched the Voodoo one, which was 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:57.840 incredibly influential. I'll have to do a full episode about 0:08:57.840 --> 0:08:59.640 three D f X sometime in the future. That that 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:02.880 wholes stories a little weird. The Voodoo one also did 0:09:02.920 --> 0:09:05.640 something the other early three D cards did not do. 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:10.360 It focused solely on rendering three D graphics. Other early 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:13.600 cards would fuse three D graphics rendering with two D 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:16.880 graphics rendering, so you'd have both of them handled by 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:19.160 the same graphics card. But with the Voodoo one, you 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:21.880 actually had to have a second graphics card just to 0:09:21.920 --> 0:09:25.000 handle the two D graphics. It would work alongside the 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:27.920 Voodoo one in order for you to get the full functionality. 0:09:28.200 --> 0:09:31.600 And it doesn't stop with the Voodoo one either. Nvidio 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:34.800 got into the game, literally in this case, with a 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:38.760 launch of the n V three in nine. Later, still 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:42.680 in nine, a Canadian company called Matrox decided to wade 0:09:42.679 --> 0:09:44.600 into the fray and they had their own three D 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:48.320 acceleration cards, and Intel tried to compete in this new 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:51.920 space with the I seven forty graphics cards, though the 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:55.000 product failed to get much traction in the marketplace, and 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:57.800 it didn't get very many positive reviews either. For the 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:01.000 most part, the graphics card market dominated by a T 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:03.560 I in Vidio three D f X, and S three 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:09.120 in those early years, So this creates some level of 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:13.200 confusion for people who want to pursue PC gaming. Let's 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:16.760 take myself as an example. I was playing PC games 0:10:16.800 --> 0:10:19.400 back then. I wasn't a console gamer at this time, 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:22.960 in the mid to late nineties. I was a PC gamer, 0:10:23.800 --> 0:10:27.560 but my PC was just a basic PC. I didn't 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:31.000 have like a dedicated graphics card. And once these games 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:34.240 started to get this advanced and there was really more 0:10:34.320 --> 0:10:36.160 or less a requirement for you to get a three 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:38.760 D graphics card, it was hard for me to figure 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:40.800 out what I should do next. There were so many 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:43.720 different cards on the market, and they all had different abilities, 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:45.560 and I wasn't really sure what any of them were. 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:49.760 And and they also many of them had proprietary approaches, 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:53.800 which meant that you could buy a game that requires 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:56.960 the three D graphics accelerator card and you have one 0:10:57.000 --> 0:10:59.240 of those cards in your computer, but you have one 0:10:59.280 --> 0:11:03.200 from a different manufacturer, and because it's not compatible, you 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:07.280 can't play the game even though from a raw power standpoint, 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:11.720 you'd be fine. It's your card is completely capable of 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:15.800 churning out the the output that you would need. But 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:20.040 because of that proprietary approach and the incompatibility issue, the 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:24.560 game still won't run on your machine. This was really frustrating. Um, 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:29.160 you know, before that, before the graphics cards and sound 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:33.720 cards really became a big deal, you just had to 0:11:33.840 --> 0:11:36.720 really worry about the motherboard and the CPU, plus any 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:39.040 expansion cards you might want in order to hook up 0:11:39.080 --> 0:11:41.360 gear to your computer. But now you suddenly had to 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:43.600 take those three D graphics cards into account, and this 0:11:43.640 --> 0:11:47.160 was a non trivial task. You had all these competing 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:51.760 products on the market, and you didn't necessarily know which firmware, 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:54.920 which which proprietary approach rather would be the best one. 0:11:55.400 --> 0:11:58.320 You might go out and buy a card that today 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:00.600 had support for most of the games that are on 0:12:00.640 --> 0:12:04.120 the market, and then a year from then it might 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:05.800 turn out that all the games that are coming out 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:08.120 don't support that format anymore. They go to one of 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:12.160 the competitors. So it's a very confusing and frustrating time. 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:15.160 It meant that game developers also we're going through this, 0:12:15.280 --> 0:12:18.319 They had to decide which graphics cards were they going 0:12:18.360 --> 0:12:22.200 to support with their their games, Because every time you 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:26.000 add on another graphics card to support, you add on 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:29.400 time that it takes, and money and and other resources 0:12:29.440 --> 0:12:31.439 that it takes to develop the game so that will 0:12:31.520 --> 0:12:34.520 run on that platform. So from a game developer standpoint, 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:40.720 having lots of different incompatible formats out there, it's frustrating 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:42.800 because you have to make those decisions. If you try 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:45.360 to support everything, it's going to take you longer to 0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:47.120 get your game out, which means it's going to be 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:49.360 more expensive to you. It means you're gonna have to 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:51.520 sell more copies of it in order to get a 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:54.640 return on your investment. And if you choose to not 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:59.240 support everyone, then you have to figure out which card 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:02.240 makes the most sense to support, which one is going 0:13:02.280 --> 0:13:07.000 to get you the most potential sales. It was not 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:11.480 a great time to have to make these decisions. It 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:16.720 was really kind of uh difficult. So it was a 0:13:16.720 --> 0:13:19.160 total bummer if you were a gamer and you felt 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:21.600 like you had made bad decisions, or just that you 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:23.880 had made a decision that turned out later on to 0:13:24.000 --> 0:13:26.800 become bad. Like at the time it wasn't bad, but 0:13:26.920 --> 0:13:30.480 later down the road it did. Building a PC got 0:13:30.520 --> 0:13:33.240 more complicated and the games kept coming out, and so 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:35.880 that opened up an opportunity for a company to come 0:13:35.880 --> 0:13:39.760 along and serve that market. So instead of building identical, 0:13:39.880 --> 0:13:44.160 identical beige boxes with like standard specs to them, this 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:47.760 company would design gaming rigs with gamers in mind. So 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:50.240 the company would offer up various options for gamers to 0:13:50.320 --> 0:13:53.199 choose from. So it wasn't even just like here are 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:57.080 three different computer models. There were a lot of options 0:13:57.120 --> 0:14:01.520 for gamers to choose which come opponents they wanted included, 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.440 and that would obviously affect everything from the performance of 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:08.240 the PC to its ultimate price. Now, all of the 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:10.800 actual work and building the rig would be done by 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:13.000 the company. The gamer wouldn't have to do it, so 0:14:13.440 --> 0:14:17.520 that takes that responsibility off the gamers shoulders. That company 0:14:17.800 --> 0:14:20.960 was alien Ware. But here's a little bit of trivia. 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:24.720 It wasn't originally called alien Ware. In fact, it wasn't 0:14:24.760 --> 0:14:28.880 originally meant to be a PC gaming rig company. The 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:32.520 original name of the company back in nineteen was Psychi, 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:35.360 and it was based in Miami, Florida still is. In fact, 0:14:35.400 --> 0:14:38.320 to this day, alien Ware is still in Miami. The 0:14:38.400 --> 0:14:42.480 founder was Nelson Gonzalez, and he started the company with 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:46.120 a ten thousand dollar personal credit loan. He didn't set 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:48.200 out to make gaming rigs right away either. He was 0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:51.400 just going to build personal computers. But then he noticed 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:53.680 that many of the people he knew, like his friends 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:55.880 and family, were coming to him for advice on how 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:59.480 to make a personal computer run certain games that either 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:02.600 were are performing on their current machine or not even 0:15:02.680 --> 0:15:06.880 working at all. And Gonzalez understood the complexities of the 0:15:06.880 --> 0:15:10.119 PC space at the time and helped get those computers 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:12.680 in shape. You know, his friends and family. He helped 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:15.080 them out and he made sure that they could run 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:17.960 the latest games and they didn't have these compatibility issues. 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:22.560 So he then developed a business plan, and that business 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:27.280 plan was direct selling to customers. It was a a 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:31.120 very transparent sort of approach where customers could come straight 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:37.640 through to purchase these PCs, which increasingly became gaming rigs. 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:41.800 He was still making regular PC computers at the time, 0:15:41.840 --> 0:15:44.040 but he was finding more and more of his time 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:46.600 dedicated to building out these gaming rigs for a gamers 0:15:47.280 --> 0:15:52.000 in He convinced his friend Alex Aguila to join him 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:54.680 at his company, and by the end of ninety seven, 0:15:54.680 --> 0:15:56.920 the two decided it was time to pivot the business 0:15:57.240 --> 0:16:01.600 and focus solely on building PC gaming rigs. They said 0:16:01.800 --> 0:16:04.880 farewell to the standard PC business and went all in 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:07.680 on gaming now. As I said at the top of 0:16:07.720 --> 0:16:10.840 the show, I had the opportunity to talk to the 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:14.480 general manager of alien Ware, Frank Hazor, and we had 0:16:14.560 --> 0:16:17.520 a nice conversation. So we'll listen in on that interview 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:21.280 right after we take this break to thank our sponsor. 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:31.600 First of all, thank you so much for joining me today. 0:16:31.720 --> 0:16:35.360 I very much appreciate your time. Yeah, thanks for having me. 0:16:35.840 --> 0:16:39.840 Appreciate it. And I would like to to start at 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:42.880 the beginning. I find that's always a good place and 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:47.880 talk about the earliest days. We're talking about alien Ware, 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:55.440 a brand that has really established itself as the forefront 0:16:55.880 --> 0:17:02.040 for especially for high performing gaming rigs. But how did 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:05.360 it all get started? Well, it starts with an idea, 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:10.400 UM pretty simply. UM. We were very passionate gamers at 0:17:10.400 --> 0:17:14.800 the time and UM mostly playing on PC, some on console, 0:17:15.520 --> 0:17:18.440 and a lot of really great games were coming out 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:21.920 on the PC. UM around that time, we were working 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:26.280 with Doom, Doom too, UM Quake, UH, and these games 0:17:26.280 --> 0:17:31.000 were really pushing the performance boundaries of what PCs were 0:17:31.040 --> 0:17:32.920 able to do then, and there was also really hard 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:36.800 to get to work correctly on PCs. Back then, we 0:17:37.000 --> 0:17:39.760 had a sixteen bit Doss operating system, thirty two bit 0:17:39.760 --> 0:17:43.760 Windows operating system. Graphics cards were just starting to emerge 0:17:44.200 --> 0:17:46.119 on the market for consumers, and there was two D 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:49.399 cards and three D cards, so it was really hard 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:52.680 to get these games to work correctly. So are our 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:56.399 CEO UM had started a PC company and I was 0:17:56.480 --> 0:17:58.760 just trying to build like regular PCs at the time, 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:00.679 and a lot of friends kept coming him and saying, Hey, 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:02.440 I want to play these games and I want to 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:04.840 play with you. Guys, can you help me tweak my 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:08.080 machine to do it or build me one to do it? 0:18:08.240 --> 0:18:10.600 And he would help them out, and little by little 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:12.800 it just started forming into a business, and he reached 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:16.320 out to one of his friends, Alex, and Alex joined him, 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:19.520 and then they reached out to another friend. That friend 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:22.640 introduced me to them, and uh and an alien work 0:18:22.920 --> 0:18:26.600 was born. So this is a great point that you make, 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:29.720 this idea of of how in those early days when 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:33.120 PC games were really starting to enter in a new 0:18:33.200 --> 0:18:36.120 level of sophistication, I mean PC gaming obviously had been 0:18:36.520 --> 0:18:39.520 an element since the birth of the personal computer, but 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:42.919 around the mid nineties is when we really started to 0:18:42.960 --> 0:18:46.560 see it blossom and and push the boundaries of what 0:18:46.600 --> 0:18:51.160 computers were capable of doing. It really was a complicated 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:55.400 system to to try and keep up with the demands 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:59.200 of the latest games. You had all these different cards, 0:18:59.400 --> 0:19:02.760 some of which might not be compatible with certain motherboards, 0:19:02.960 --> 0:19:06.160 which to the to the uninitiated, to people who don't 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:10.560 build computers, that creates a real barrier, right. It creates 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:13.880 that level of intimidation of getting into PC gaming, something 0:19:13.880 --> 0:19:16.359 that still really exists today, and there may be people 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:19.440 out there who do not realize that not all processors 0:19:19.640 --> 0:19:22.879 are compatible with all motherboards, and you may have issues 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:26.640 with certain graphics cards, and so to create a business 0:19:26.760 --> 0:19:30.960 around solving those issues so that the consumer doesn't have 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:34.040 to think about it obviously has a great deal of appeal. 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:37.760 What sort of um what are some of the things 0:19:37.800 --> 0:19:41.399 that gamers need to think about when they are talking 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:44.119 about gaming rigs. You know, we're talking about you know, 0:19:44.160 --> 0:19:47.199 graphics processing. What what are the sort of metrics you 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:52.280 guys look at when you're building out your machines. Yeah, 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:56.560 piece of gaming was absolutely very complicated initially. Fortunately it's 0:19:56.600 --> 0:20:00.560 gotten a lot simpler over time on the software we'd have. 0:20:00.720 --> 0:20:06.119 We've had solutions like Steam and UM and origins Solution 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:09.680 e A uses Origin for their games, and what they've 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:13.000 done with these digital distribution solutions is that they've made 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:15.800 them a lot easier for us to maintain our games, 0:20:15.840 --> 0:20:19.080 to download our games, to patch them up, to deal 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:22.359 with DRM UM and c D keys. In the old days, 0:20:22.480 --> 0:20:25.200 used to have discs, multiple discs to install a game, 0:20:25.320 --> 0:20:27.040 used to have to keep your c D key somewhere 0:20:27.080 --> 0:20:29.879 around or your game key somewhere around, and if you 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:33.320 lost it, you were kind of s O l um 0:20:33.359 --> 0:20:35.320 and And not only was it difficult to do that, 0:20:35.320 --> 0:20:36.800 but then there was always patches that you had to 0:20:36.840 --> 0:20:39.120 go out to these obscure websites to try and download, 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:41.600 and sometimes they were viruses built into those patches because 0:20:41.600 --> 0:20:44.760 they were malicious code that other people would bundle into 0:20:44.760 --> 0:20:47.680 the executables, And it was always hard to maintain and 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:49.480 keep up with all the patches that are out there. 0:20:49.720 --> 0:20:52.440 It was just very difficult. So we got really really 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:56.080 lucky with these UH innovations that companies like Steam and 0:20:56.080 --> 0:20:59.600 and the others built, UM to help simplify this whole experience. 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:03.119 And then on the hardware side, companies like Alien where 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:07.639 we've been in providing turnkey gaming systems for folks so 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:10.760 that they don't have to worry about the PC itself, 0:21:10.800 --> 0:21:14.920 the technology that goes into it, maintaining the technology, servicing 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:18.240 it if and when it fails, um when someone comes 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:20.400 any and where they're coming to us because they want 0:21:20.400 --> 0:21:22.240 to focus on playing the games. They don't want to 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:24.439 have to worry about the tech and then the potential 0:21:24.480 --> 0:21:26.680 headaches that come associated with it. And and that's really 0:21:26.680 --> 0:21:29.840 been what we've built our business on is selling folks. Look, 0:21:29.840 --> 0:21:32.520 if you have the time, the knowledge, and the expertise 0:21:32.600 --> 0:21:35.520 to build your own system, by all means you're always 0:21:35.520 --> 0:21:39.360 gonna build better than what anybody else. But when your 0:21:39.359 --> 0:21:41.399 time becomes a little bit more limited and your patients 0:21:41.440 --> 0:21:43.360 may be a little bit more limited, and you want 0:21:43.359 --> 0:21:45.280 to just focus on your game and not have to 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:50.119 worry about the hardware, by that experience, that's what before. 0:21:50.760 --> 0:21:52.679 So what we've done over the years is we've done 0:21:52.720 --> 0:21:56.159 a lot of work to try and simplify making those decisions. 0:21:56.880 --> 0:21:58.920 If you look at how we sell our systems today 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:02.919 and how we offer them customers are different kind of 0:22:03.000 --> 0:22:06.520 prefigurations for them to kind of see, okay, well this 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:09.600 is like a mid range system, this is a really 0:22:09.680 --> 0:22:13.760 high end system. We give them the right communication that 0:22:13.800 --> 0:22:16.240 they need to know about what their systems capabilities are 0:22:16.280 --> 0:22:17.520 going to be. We tell them if this is going 0:22:17.560 --> 0:22:19.680 to be a ten A d P gaming system or 0:22:19.680 --> 0:22:22.760 if this is a four K capable rig um, and 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:24.800 then of course if they want to customize, if we 0:22:24.880 --> 0:22:26.760 offer them the options to be able to do it. 0:22:26.800 --> 0:22:28.800 But the whole thing that what we've tried to do 0:22:28.840 --> 0:22:31.919 is we tried to simplify the gaming experience for us, 0:22:32.000 --> 0:22:34.800 to make it less intimidating, and to and to help 0:22:34.920 --> 0:22:38.360 grow that's quite frankly, which we've been very successful in doing. 0:22:38.400 --> 0:22:41.200 PC gaming is gonna or gaming in general, I should say, 0:22:41.200 --> 0:22:42.920 not just PC, but gaming is gonna grow to be 0:22:42.960 --> 0:22:46.399 a thirty billion dollar business this year um, which is 0:22:46.400 --> 0:22:51.119