EPT
Q: Going back into the history of Game Heart, what was the inception of the idea? […] You talked about how you wanted to improve the spectator experience, but what the moment where you said “We really need to work on UI and Interface."
A: Well, I mean, that was going through my head whenever I’d watch any tournament before. There were some tournaments, not to throw NASL under the bus, but I think that they in particular had the Twitter stuff going and instead of just finding ways to work that into the current UI, they were just covering more and more of the game every time someone added a new feature. Not just NASL, but everyone would create these huge banners at the top and they would create these big logos and it was just getting to be really ridiculous. Gameheart was originally going to be a group that puts on show matches the first being Sheth vs. QXC. But at the last minute, MLG or someone had a qualifier at the same time we were supposed to have our showmatch. So we postponed it so that our players could go participate in this qualifier and it just kind of ended up falling apart from there. But my part on that team was to design our overlay. So I decided to just go a little bit of a different…
Q: A little bit of a different route?
A: It was a little less intense then. I was talking about it with a couple other people, and in the end we decided to just start using custom maps to try and modify the interface and that became what Gameheart was, the rest just fell away. Now, it’s not much of a team. I do have a buddy who helps me, Ahli, and then there’s other people who contribute, like MIT GameLab, so it’s not like i have a big team of people any more.
Q: When you started working on the initial version of Gameheart, how much experience did you have with the Galaxy Editor? Did you do any editing in WC3 or BW, or was this your first experience with Blizz modding tools?
A: I have a little bit of experience with the editors because I really enjoy the Dawn of War and Company of Heroes games. So, what I would do, in BW and in WC3, I actually used the editor to recreate the resource and win conditions of DoW and CoH. I actually did this in Starcraft 2 as well, but we won’t talk about that endeavor. I actually did it years ago but I never launched the game publicly, it wasn’t quite what I wanted it to be. But I think that there’s someone else doing a better version of that right now on SC2 Mapster as well. So that’s where my experience came from, was recreating the resource and victory systems from DoW in BW, WC3 and SC2. I did it for all three.
Q: Clearly the editor has become a second language for you.
A: Well actually, I would still say I’m more of an intermediate to advanced level in the editor. There’s a lot of people in the SC2 Mapster IRC, for example, I just go to whenever I need help. I just go “Hey I’m having a problem and I need help”. Sometimes they laugh at my stupidity, it works. Almost everything I do is a group project in that sense. I mean, Gameheart has a lot of people who have helped me in the past or just explaining. I mean, I didn’t understand strux or record or anything. Anytime I learn some new thing like that, I have to redesign my entire map to use it, because i can’t stand, once i know it, I can’t stand looking at the old version anymore that doesn’t use it.
Q: So, the initial reaction to Gameheart was pretty positive. There were some criticisms, but overall it went well. How energizing was that to see that reception and how much people enjoyed the prospect of an interface like Gameheart?
A: There was something that TB was talking about lately, where people like, 99 out 100 people might be saying something positive, but 1 says something negative? I’m not affected the same way that he is by that. Something that people might not realize is that when I hear people complaining about something specific, I’m usually already thinking about that same thing, I’m going, “Ugh, I don’t know if I like this”. I’m constantly questioning my own work. So, it doesn’t make me feel bad personally, as much as it reinforces what I’m already thinking.
But then there’s other times where people go like “Ah, I can’t have the resources at the bottom, they have to be at the top right” and I’m like “Ah, you can deal it with it, I don’t care. I’m putting them at the bottom.” It’s one of those things too, where people, they make it out to be like a really big deal. I don’t think it was one. I felt like it was ridiculous that people were saying that they couldn’t make an adjustment to that. I love to win, I was watching Inside the Game, and someone called in and said “How do you guys feel about the resources not being in the top right?” and IdrA’s like “I have no problem with that at all”. So I’m like, “Ok, if Idra doesn’t have a problem” (laughs)
Q: So you put out version 2 and almost immediately you started to see pretty good adoption. Dreamhack and GSTL started using it. It was starting to see some use by online tournaments. How did you feel about the adoption rate of it? Did it meet your expectations?
A: It’s difficult to say. It might not have met my expectations then, but looking back at what Gameheart was a year ago, I’m surprised at how well received it was by tournaments. So, it’s sort of like a little bit of both. At the time, I was a little saddened that I didn’t have faster adoption, but then I suddenly Dreamhack, suddenly I had GSTL, I was getting big leagues. I had the TeSL, ACL, it was just… I started to get some big names, even using the older version of Gameheart. But there was a buildup to that. I did expect, after posting that GH 2.0 video back a bigger response from tournaments to be honest.
There was a huge response from the community. There was a lot of community members, a lot of well known community people who were speaking out saying that it looked really good and stuff. I actually had very little response from tournaments at that time. It wasn’t until Dreamhack really picked up that it started to get the ball rolling. Once DH showed that they were using it and were confident in using it, other organizations became confident as well. It was either GSTL or DH, and they got the ball rolling then tournaments started to pick it up. But, even then, I still only had about 20% of major tournaments using it, so it was pretty small.
Q: WCS not using Gameheart. Can you kind of talk about your… I’m presuming frustration with that? Do you think that eventually Blizz’s tools will be as versatile and powerful as GH, or do you think it’s only a matter of time before Blizz accepts the fact that, Gameheart is the way to go.
A: Blizz is kind of in a tough position. Because I think that, 10 months ago, they were totally right to ban WCS tournaments from using GH. The way that GH used to be, it was very risky, whereas today, I think it’s something else entirely. But they’re still in a situation where they want to keep control over their game. And the problem with GH as a solution to spectating, is that it allows me to change things like the movement speed of Marines, for example. And, they don’t want that to accidentally happen, whether I do it intentionally or accidentally. So, they’re really terrified of that and they feel like if they’re going to support it, they have to put their name on it essentially. They have to Q&A it themselves and prove it. They don’t want to lose control of Starcraft, especially in the premier SC events. So, that’s their main concern, I think.
Hopefully, we’ll be able to break in and get them to use it eventually. I’m constantly in contact with them. I’m gonna be talking to them shortly after this, like, as soon as this interview’s over, I’l be talking to them again. I mean, there might be a solution. Maybe they can upload GH, so that they know that I can’t change it. They can verify that it works and then upload it themselves so that they know I won’t change it. But they have other concerns too. I don’t think that they like STC, for example. So, it’s a discussion that we have to have. I mean, they probably like aspects of STC, but they don’t like other aspects of it, right? For them, they see it in a “If we wanted the game to look like this, we would have designed it to look like this in the first place.” So, I think that there are parts of it that they do like and that maybe they’re looking at that, that feedback, like from my STC thread recently, and they’re saying “Well, let’s see. How can we change it to be a little bit better? How can we satisfy some of the complaints that people have about the current textures and how they affect the visibility of the player color. And how can we make those changes?”
But at the same time, I don’t think that they want to use a sledgehammer solution like STC mod. So, for them, polish is the most important thing, I think. Blizz is like all about polish. They are a company that loves polish. Polish, polish, polish. And thing that GH is not, is polished. I’ve done the best job that I can to make it easy to use, to make it clear, but uh, things like the TCE and STC, the way logos are presented? All those things can be polished so much better. And I think that, uh, maybe they look at that and go “We don’t really like how this isn’t very polished as well.” So those are all things that I’m happy to talk to them about, how we can improve those things and make them more polished, or make it more acceptable for WCS.
But who knows? It’s difficult to get a real feel for, from them, what they’re doing, because you’re only talking to one guy who represents like, a large group or collective of people, so. Who knows what will happen? Hopefully they’ll use it eventually, to be honest at this point, I’m not super concerned about it. I’ve done the best that I can. They’ll either use it or they won’t. If nothing else, they’ll probably continue to try to improve their own tools.
Q: In a similar vein, kind of talking about the success and or failure of the project, have you hit any major missteps or any failures that, looking back you wish you hadn’t undertaken or looking back you wish you could have done differently?
A: I don’t know if I would… do it. I don’t know if I would do Gameheart, going back. I don’t know if it makes enough of a difference. I don’t know if it makes enough of an impact to justify the work that I’ve put in on it, and the time that I’ve spent on it, because it just… it was supposed to be a one month project, then it becomes a two month project, and then six month… And when it was supposed to be a one month project, it made sense. And then it keeps going, and I don’t know if it’s worthwhile, overall. But, I think that if I could do what Gameheart is today? If I could have done that a year and a half ago when I started, it would have been worth it. Like, if I could have done this today, with the knowledge I have now, it probably would have taken me, you know, 3 or 4 months, and then it would have been great. That definitely would have been worthwhile.
Overall, I’m not sure. It was a good learning experience, but what am I going to do with those skills? I’m not sure if that was worthwhile overall. We’ll see, hopefully. Basically, I got to a point where I said, “I’m gonna do this and try to get 100% adoption, so that I can put it on my resume, so that I can say “I’ve changed the way people spectate Starcraft. If you go watch almost any tournament, you’ll see my work.” That was my goal.” At a certain point, I was like, I’ve already committed to much to this, I need to make something happen with it. I’m almost there, I’m almost there now. Just Proleague and WCS holding out, but we’re getting there.
Q: Are there any particular elements of Gamheart that never panned out? Either in the production stage, or were put in and flopped.The one particular that I’m thinking of is the drawing tool that you put in. The drawing tool is used so much in professional Dota, but it doesn’t see any use in SC
A: A: The drawing tools is kind of an interesting because, of all the features I’ve implemented into Gameheart, it’s probably the thing I’m most proud of. Just the way it works efficiently. It’s actually built on a system that my buddy, he created a map, a long time ago, it was for our showmatch that we were doing a long time ago for Team Gameheart. So, he created where, he’s gonna really hate me for saying this, a bit more primitive than mine. I did build mine upon his, but it’s a totally different thing now than it was back then. What he sent me gave me a good foundation, and I think the drawing tools is probably the biggest learning experience, with the game and the editor. They were so inefficient. The drawing tools themselves were actually made up of a bunch of units, so when you drew a line, that line was actually made up of like 100 units. So it was really, really inefficient, so I was like “Ok, I can’t put this into Gameheart like this.” That was a big learning experience and I probably redesigned it like 10 times, making it more efficient and I’m super proud of it.
But, I think the reason it was never really used was because it was hard to use at first. You had to remember the controls, which were pretty complicated, to use it on the fly. Then, when I simplified the controls, then people started using it on accident. So they’d, like, be in a game, and then accidentally draw a line and not know how to get rid of it, since they never intended to do it. And now they’re not in there anymore. But that’s not a decision that I made, like, “Oh, nobody uses them, so I’m gonna pull them out.” They’re just not possible.
The way that Gameheart works now, drawing tools are no longer possible, because of the interaction with the observer with the game. It’s no longer possible in SC to have the observer interact with the game. Now that didn’t break the drawing tools in Gameheart, what broke the drawing tools was my switching to real observers. Back then, I used fake observers, they were just players. Now I use real observers, because there’s a huge disadvantages to using players rather than observers, to do the observing. I think that was one of the hardest things that was hurting my adoption rate, because it was really complicated to use.
Q: So, you mentioned how Blizz kind of gave the ability to tweak UI in the Obs mode. How do you feel about those changes and do you feel that that will help solve the problem of better spectating or do you think that it’s just kind of a temporary fix for a larger problem?
A: I’m not sure if there is a problem, really with spectating in Starcraft. Like, GH, it’s not like i’m trying to fill some massive gap.
Q: It’s been pretty apparent since the first post that you made, that first version that was on TL, that you’ve been really open to taking community suggestions. Can you tell me a bit about this, and you touched on it earlier, that even when you publish an update, you’re already thinking what might need improvements. Can you discuss what your process is behind all of this?
A: Well, as far as community input, taking community ideas… I mean, there’s no reason not to take community ideas. But I don’t take all of them. I’d say probably 1 in 10 ideas that people send me, do I actually end up implementing in some way. A lot of ideas that people send ideas they think it would be really great, for them, but they make up a small percentage of people who would be watching SC, so it’s difficult to justify implementing something that’s only gonna make one person happy and then it’s gonna put a thing on the screen that everybody else has to deal with. Other times, people just have different priorities. I try to stand back and be a little bit more objective about my own priorities, and whether I’m rejecting an idea because it’s just something that I don’t like or if it’s something that the entire community won’t like. I can only be so objective about what I like and what I don’t like or don’t want to take. So, I mean, there’s probably good ideas people have sent me that i’ve never implemented. And there’s probably a lot of bad ideas, that they thought were amazing ideas that I rejected. My process for figuring out what i’m gonna work on next is mostly just about what I think will actually get used.
Like, so for example, GH Live Data, which is the most recent thing that I’ve announced. That’s not actually a new idea, in fact, you can go way back on that idea, to IPL who wanted to implement something similar to GH Live Data before they went under. And then, 6 months ago, the GGTracker guy came to me, and he was talking about doing something similar, and then the Aligulac guys just recently came to me and they said “Hey, we want to do something like this” and at that point, I was like “Ok, if you guys are excited about it and want to actually do something with it right now, I will put this feature in.” So, that’s what happened.
It’s really just about, I mean, who knows whether something’s going to be a good idea. I mean, the team colored effects, that was some guy’s post on Reddit saying “This would be cool” and I’m like “Well, not only would it be cool, it would be very possible.” So, you know, I gave that a try. I don’t know if it’s working well. I think that Psi Storms look terrible colored. It’s hard to know though, until you actually see them getting used, and I think that, maybe Blizz doesn’t like experimenting in live tournament games, but you know, Even if I look at something, maybe i like it, but nobody else will, so you know it’s community reaction and everything. But I think that a lot of people perceive GH so they think “Oh! Well he put this in, so he thinks it’s a really good idea, what an idiot.” It’s like, “Nah, I’m just kinda putting things in there and we’ll see if it turns out well or not.”
So, that’s how that goes. Team colored effects, I think that that it’ll probably stay in for things like Time Warp, EMP, and Scanner Sweep, but i’ll probably remove it from pretty much everything else. I think that for those 3 things, it really helps. Time Warp and Scanner Sweep, because it’s good to see which player cast them. And, uh, EMP, because EMP is virtually impossible to see as it is right now. I can never see EMPs happen. I know they happen because the casters say “Oh yeah, he just EMP’d a bunch of stuff” I’m like “What, I didn’t see that.” But now, that they’re colored, I see them.
Q: So, you’ve always been pretty open about your design process, especially after your IndieGoGo campaign. You’ve really taken the idea of design blogs to heart, and have been posting some wonderfully detailed things. When you started the project, did you always have the idea to be that open, or was it kind of something that happened over time, that you found that the more open you were, the better reception you got, the better feedback you got, or was it something that was always planned?
A: Are you really just asking if I did it because I was scared of the community after them lynching the Sons of Starcraft people? (Laughs) It is difficult to run an IGG campaign amidst the Land of Broken Promises articles and all that stuff. So, I figured, I don’t want to be someone who, 6 months later, people are going “What the hell happened with this guy’s prjoect?” So, I definitely wanted to, for me, it was, I love talking about GH and I love hearing other people talk about GH. i just, like, “Gameheart, yeah.“ So, for me, it made a lot of sense. You just put this thing up, it draws attention to GH, and people start talking about GH, you get more ideas from it.
By posting those blogs, you get all sorts of help. There’s one guy in the community, iHero. I don’t know if you guys know who this guy is, but he posts on Reddit, but he posts on TL as well. And for all community projects, anything like this, he just goes through - it’s actually kind of annoying sometimes, but it’s also really helpful. So, it’s really brutal sometimes, because he’ll create a list of like, 200 hundred bugs with you’re thing. And then you’re like “Oh… god. Screw you!” you know.
But, it’s really helpful and that’s the kind of thing that you get by interacting with the communities, so, it’s like, once you experience that even once, you just kind of decide “Well, I should keep doing this.” It’s funny we’re having this conversation, because i haven’t done an update in, like, a months and a half. Just because, well, I figure people kind of trust me at this point. I think that people trust that i’m working on it. plus, I kind of do these things, just like “Oh here’s nostalgia mode, oh here’s keyboards.” I haven’t actually released either of those things yet, but people can see that I’m working on stuff. So there’s that.
But also because I want my last blog to be, because the next one will be the last one, so, I want it to be pretty intense. So I’ve also just been pretty standoff-ish on doing it, because it takes a long time to put those like, nice blog posts together, like, I usually work on them like a couple of hours every day. But this one though, I’ve been so daunted by it, I haven’t been working on it at all. And I want it to be bigger than all the rest, so it’s just been sitting there. I’ll probably have to spend three or four days full time, just working on that blog post.
Q: So, that kind of leads me into the final topic, I think, that i want to ask you about GH, or potentially lack thereof, which seems to be what you’re hinting towards, a little bit. Where do you see GH in, let’s say, 6 months from now?
A: I don’t know. (laughs) when I say that I’m not going to be working on GH anymore, I mean that i’m going to be stopping development of new features. But that doesn’t mean that there won’t be new features! Because, the guys at MIT GameLab, are working on new stuff right now, which is integrated into GH. So, it’s my project but it’s open to everybody. Anybody can design a new spectator module. Someone sends me a suggestion, and they say “This would be really good” and I don’t like it, I don’t want to do it myself, I say “Make it yourself. Make it yourself and if it’s good, we’ll put it in.”
It’s open source. Anybody can go online and download the GH modules, look at my code, they can reupload it themselves, they can change what I did. Like, it’s there, it’s available for people to do that. So I think it’ll keep growing, and I think there’s a lot more things that we can do, but I just can’t afford it.
In fact, I’ve got bills to pay, and I’ve pretty much been working on this full time. And you could say “Yeah, well why don’t you just work on this in your free time?” Well, I don’t know what I’m gonna be doing. And I mean, I am gonna have to keep updating logos and so. That’s already free time spoken for, because I get a lot of logo submissions, constantly. Yeah, I think that’s just the main challenge, finding a way to pay my bills but keep improving it and working on it, and I just don’t think it’s possible.
Q: It almost seems like you view any sort of competition as a potential to build on to GH and to build on the spectator client in general. So, do you think that that’s an accurate interpretation of your view?
A: Well, I don’t really feel like GH does have any competitors. Like, there’s the Proleague interface, but they don’t let anyone else use it, so it’s no tike it’s a real competitor. And I mean, I dunno if what they’re doing really makes sense on a grander scale. Like everyone goes “Why didn’t you implement logos the same way PL does, we like that so much better.” And I’m like “Proleague only has to support 8 teams. And they can tell those 8 teams exactly what to do with their logos when they submit them.” I have to deal with 250 teams, so my system has to be a lithe bit more versatile. So that’s that.
But as far as competitors? Like, MIT Overseer, that would have been a competitor, but it doesn’t make a huge amount of sense to try and topple GH at the moment. It’s not like they’re going to make lots of money off of it or something. What makes sense is when you’re trying to create tools is to find the best way to get the most people to use them. And I think that integrating stuff into GH, a platform that’s already being used by probably 80 to 90 percent of major tournaments is the best way to do that. I’m not saying that I don’t welcome competition, I don’t care.
At this point I’m beyond my ability to try to compete. So if somebody wants to build something that’s better than GH, you’re welcome to get a head start by looking at my code. Because, I mean, I’m probably going to have put GH up here soon, up to the community and say “Hey there, who wants to start maintaining this for me? Volunteers?”
Q: So, kind of as a closing question, as you start to step away from GH, what are your final emotions on it? Is it pride, is it just kind of a “Oh, well that was a cool little project I did for a year” or do you view this as… as kind of something that you’ll always look back on?
A: Ummm… “Always look back on?” I don’t know. I feel good about the project, because I set out to do something and I accomplished it. It’s a big deal, especially something of this scale, and I was taking on a lot of things that I feel like weren't so easy for me to take on. To try to create something that’s going to be used in like a really competitive environment is intense. There’s definitely a lot of stress when you see your thing being used in GSTL for the first time, right?
And so, I used to watch every single tournament that was using GH. Every game, every tournament, I was there, on call. Whether it was the middle of the night for me, the middle of the day, whether it was being used in Korea or Sweden or Anaheim. I was right there, just ready, if there was any problem, I was like “Oh god, I’m here I can help you.” And like, that never happened. There were almost never problems throughout the entire time and I was so nervous about it.
I don’t know, it’s changed my perspective a little bit now like, I know that it’s like, more, a bigger process than any one thing that can go wrong, and if something does go wrong, it’s, you know, you just keep pushing forward. And just that I can set out to do something and accomplish it. I set out to get almost 100% adoption rate, and I’ve got that. So, that feel really good. Especially, since a lot of the things I’ve tried to do in the past haven’t worked out as well. So it’s, yeah, that feels good.
And it’s kind of validating too. Sometimes, you go through life and you have a lot of ideas. You go “Oh, this could be better, this could be done this way or that could be done this way.” And you never really, you’re not really in a position to do anything about it. And I took something really minor, spectating Starcraft, something really trivial, and I said “Oh, I can actually do something about this and I think that it would be better if I did this.” So I stuck with it and managed to do it. Even early on, when GH was probably not a great alternative to default spectating. I think now, it probably is a better alternative to spectating by default because, even though there are some features like Stronger Team Colors which are maybe too intense or Team Colored Effects which are too much.
It’s a good set of tools and I think that I’ve definitely improved the Starcraft spectating experience overall. And, not even just with GH, but the pressure that GH has put on Blizz to improve their own tools as well. They’ve added zoom function, they’ve added their own interface options, they’ve been doing a lot of stuff to improve their own spectating system. And we saw very little movement on that for the first 3 years of SC2, so I think that that helps a lot as well. So I feel good about it overall. I don’t know if that’s what you were looking for.
