 Welcome to the wide world of esports, the show devoted to all things esports. I'm your host, Catherine nor today we're talking about game glass, a new way to game. Joining us from Melbourne, Australia is the CEO and co founder of game glass, Andy Lee. Welcome Andy. Good morning. Thanks for having me. All right, so what is game glass. Game glass is a way to use your phone or your tablet to interact and control your games with touchscreen controls. All right. And so how did you come up with that idea or who came up with it. It's a bit of a long process and my co founder is the head of product. He looks after all of our visual design and he posted an image for a control screen that he was working on for a game called Stasis and on Reddit. And the community there really loved it. They really wanted to be able to use it. They wanted to be able to use that as a way to control their game. It looked really great. It looked like it was part of the game. And he got a really amazing reaction to it when he posted it to that community and he started up a discord and people started flooding in and talking about how cool it was. And I saw that as well and thought it was amazing and been thinking about something similar but I've been thinking about it more from a platform perspective wouldn't it be amazing to have those kinds of experiences for lots of different games. But I didn't have the product itself. I had the platform that I was thinking of. He had the product but wasn't really thinking about the platform. So I reached out to him and we started talking and going over some some ways we could build it and where we went. Building the team and yeah it's been great. All right. So let's show the video and he tell us what we saw in that video. About a few months ago we announced that we have become officially licensed to a partner with CIG the developers for Star Citizen so that was the official announcement of our partnership with them. It was also the release of some brand new shards we call the screens that go on your phone or your tablet we call them shards because game glass and shards. Everyone likes a good pun. And we put that together that video to show off what the new shards look like and what the rest of our platform looks like. The other parts of what game glass does is not just the shards that we give you to play and control your game using a touchscreen on your phone or your tablet but you can also build your own shards or edit them or share them with your friends as well. So you saw a little bit of that in the video. Okay now I know what shards means I wasn't. Yeah it makes my finger feel like it's cut with glass or something. But anyway, so does this how does it impact gameplay. So one of the things that we really wanted to focus on as we were building these shards was trying to find a way to make games feel more immersive to play. You know especially for sim type games for flight sims or racing sims or space sims anything's got lots of fidelity to the way you interact with the world or you control your spaceship or your car or your plane. There's always tons of key mines you know hundreds literally hundreds of key mines sometimes. And they're all really great because they're all for systems and functions and features that make the game feel really immersive to play but there's so many that you forget what they are the way you're interacting with them perhaps is a keyboard. Maybe it's a joystick maybe it's two joysticks, but they're still not a room full of the different keybinds. And so what we wanted to do was try and put together a screen that that made it easier for you to use a lot of those commands and do it in a way that made it easier for you to remember what they were as well and felt like it was part of the game it looked and felt like it was part of the game. So, you know you're playing a game with your with a spaceship for example, you want to lower your landing gear on your spaceship. Can't remember is the command for lowering my spaceship is it control L is it all G I can't remember. We put a button on the screen that says landing gear and guess what happens when you press the button that says landing gear, your landing gear comes down. So it's a way to play make the game feel easier to play make it easy if you do access all of those features of the game and do it in really immersive and beautiful way. This seems like it would be a great thing for beginners of of a game or if if someone hasn't been playing long enough or they want to improve their speed is that right. That's a really good point definitely we see game glasses a great way for beginners for people to kind of on board themselves into the game instead of having to hunt through the menus for all the keybinds. Not just for what the commands are but what what kinds of things I can do they can see all of the commands on on the shards and it makes it easy for you to know what you can do and how to do it so definitely for beginners that's a really good point. But it's also as you said for people that are coming back to a game perhaps they used to know all this stuff and now they're coming back they haven't played it for a little while. They can't remember what some of those commands were so game glass certainly makes that easier. And then for people that are a bit more advanced or a bit more looking for performance improvements or a way to make themselves a bit more effective. They can customize game glass to give themselves just the features they really think are going to enhance their performance as well so that that customizability part of it is a big thing to we see a lot of users building shards of themselves that are very narrowly focused around exactly how they want to play the game or exactly the features or the buttons they want to have on the screen just for their performance improvement. So those are those are some good points. So is it software that you would download then. Yeah, so there's a web app essentially you would download the software from our website and installs on your PC. And that lets you build the shards or edit and load the shards. So you can configure them the way you want. You know you can put the buttons where you want them on the screen you can attach whatever commands you want those buttons those commands and actions can be key binds they can be mouse clicks they can be delays they can be sounds they can be whatever you want. And then the pieces of software you can install on your PC listens for those commands and sends them straight into the game so as far as the game is concerned it's just game glasses just like a gaming mouse with 100 key with 100 buttons on the side of it. And then you install an app on your tablet or your phone as well and then you that logs into game glass and you see your library of all of your shards for all of your games. You pick the shard that you've configured that you've built or that you've downloaded from our marketplace and you load it up on your phone or your tablet. Wow that's fantastic I could I could see where people would really get used to that for their games and and would use that they would kind of not feel as comfortable after a while just playing it in the regular way. Yeah that's really our goal that that's what we want game glass to become a normal part of gaming you have a keyboard you have a mouse you have game glass off the side and it kind of works. Everyone's got a phone everyone's got a tablet and it sits next to us on our desk on our on our couch when we're playing games. So having a shard on it, but whatever game you're playing is is definitely our goal and that's a big part of what we think of when we are designing all of the components you can use inside a shard all of the buttons and the dials and the switches is. Obviously we want we don't just want game glass to be for space sims and flight sims you want it to be for every game for RPGs for MMOs for Esports games for shooters. And the types of shards you would build for those games are all really different but that's what game glass was designed about because it's so easy to build your own char with whatever buttons and dials and switches and sliders that you want that have whatever actions attached to them that you want that look however you want them to look it can support any game and any shard or any function you want those shards to give you for it for any game you want to play. So are people using this in competition. We haven't seen a lot of it in competitive Esports yet we've seen some shards for for League of Legends for PUBG for Fortnite. For a couple of others but we haven't seen it used competitively yet and that's I think in the area where we do want to be a little bit careful about I think there's a definitely a big spot where we want to work on kind of the the accessibility and the the intuitiveness of games and that immersion factor and certainly as I said a lot of people use it to help them with their personal performance but we want to really steer away from game glass being something that's a really raw obvious performance enhancer all by itself you know things like macros and scripts and those kinds of things where you can build some simple macros you can attach multiple actions to a button so it kind of works like a little bit of a macro. We don't want it to automatically give you a huge performance increase so we're really keen to see how it performs in an Esports in any competitive sense but we don't want it to be something that really boost you in an easy way above other people. So Andy what is your background that led you to do this. My professional background is in digital advertising so lots of ad agencies working in in digital as a project manager and operations manager general manager so sort of on the business side of things and on the digital advertising and marketing and sort of product side of things. And I've always built teams have always built companies have always built you know the the engines of business inside agencies so that's always been where my professional interest and expertise is lie as has lied but always been a gamer. And when I was very very young my handwriting is awful. My mother bought a computer for my brother and I when we were very young in in high school so we could type up our homework and printed off instead of having to to handwrite it and she bought a game with the computer that was her big mistake she bought a game with the computer. There's not too much time on that but since then we've always played games so I've managed to find a way very luckily to to merge my gaming passion with my my professional expertise and and it's been fun. Perfect. So, what, how do you want game glass to impact the gaming industry. That's a, that's a good one so I think, as I mentioned we have goal is that we want game last be really standard part of gaming as I said you know keyboard mouse game glass. But we really want to make game glass something that can transform how people interact with games so yes at the moment is about, you know, a screen with buttons and sliders and dials it feels like it's a more tactile and intuitive and immersive way to play those games but we really want to move game glass, not away from that but extended so it can provide new experiences for how you play games you can imagine playing. See if thieves perhaps and you've got a picture of the galleon that you're playing and you've got your little icons for your friends on that picture and you drag one from the sales to the cannons and then on your friends shot they've got the same shot, and they can see their icon is moved from the sales to the cannons so they can see if you want them to change position. You know that that's an experience that's not connected to the game it's not about controlling the game but it enhances how you play the game how you experience the game. You could imagine in your competitive sense you know League of Legends back you take a screenshot of the map and you draw with your finger on your phone, the battle plan where you want people to go and what you want people to do everyone else has got the shot and they can see those plans appear on their phone or on their tablet. So again it's not connected it's not controlling the game it's enhancing your experience of playing the game. So if we can extend it out and make everyone feel that when they get a new game and they start playing it is not just the game their experience of playing the game is the game plus whatever cool experiences they want to add to the game using game glass. Sure, I would think it's when you say other cool experiences I think that it would be really a fun thing to tell your friends look what I've got you know like this is really cool watch this. You know how fast I can play, you know with game glass, as opposed to how you're doing it. You know, like, I definitely think that it would catch on. I think a lot of that with the games of people over the shards of people use right now is they they'll say look at the cool thing that I made you know it makes playing this way or using this system so much easier than than doing in another way and you know we've built the platform in a way that's really easy to grab a code from a friend for a shard and directly imported into your library or to grab it from our marketplace and you can see a collection of all of the shards and just download whichever one you want. But you're right you're absolutely right that you know that ability for people to show off what they've made but shards they've made or talk to their friends about how much more fun a shard makes their games that's definitely something we see today. Sure. And so do people use game glass alongside other peripherals like joysticks or steering wells. Yep. Yeah, we see that a lot too I think you know the really hardcore dedicated gamers will often have a lot of those peripherals that you know one to joysticks and a steering wheel sometimes they they really set up their their simpits to be pretty awesome. You know the downside of those and you know that the great thing about them is they're a very direct and tactile way to control your movement in the game is steering wheel is great for steering a car. You know joysticks great for moving your your your plane around. But it's not so great for accessing all of the other functions in the game and they take up a huge amount of space they're very expensive they're very specific for what they do. They're amazing at what they do. I don't think game glass is better than those peripherals of what they really are great at. But going last works perfectly alongside them you know your steering wheel is for steering your car game glasses for everything else that the game does and that pairing works works beautifully together. So has there been a community built you know is this kind of a community thing where there's like a game glass community. Yeah we've got a very active discord there's a lot of people on our discord server talking about the games they play and how they use game glass for it and as I said we we came out of Reddit out of the star citizen community so we've always been been part of that we take a lot of inspiration from the community and how they they play the games and what what things they're trying to do in the games or and what functions or features that they're trying to use and be trying to find a way to make those features and functions more accessible and immersive for them. Absolutely you know we take a lot of that from the outside communities and from our own community as well and they're sharing the shards they create and send them to each other as well. So are you paying attention to what people are saying then about it and then making changes based on that. Yeah, absolutely that's and that's one of the great things about being a software platform is that you know when we see that people are really using a certain set of features to maybe it's new features that have been added to a game or they're using new features in a new way or putting more emphasis on using those features for whatever reason, we can make changes to the shards and then we push those changes out and everyone who's got that shard they get that new button that we've added they get that new feature that we've added so we're always pushing out new buttons for shards new actions they can add to them new components in the library for them to build their own shards with. So we're always listening to what the community is talking about and we're always expanding and adding to it. So what's the coolest thing that you've seen someone do with game glass. We've seen some really amazing stuff for farming sims so you're a truck simulator farming simulator you know I can see myself again but I never played farming seems and truck seems and tractor seems but it's huge and people spend a lot of time and have a lot of passion for those games and we've seen some community members build some you know control screens for their for their tractors that are incredibly in depth and very realistic. And it was a usage for that we hadn't kind of seen from the connecting it to data inside the game and doing some really cool stuff with it we've also seen some really cool shards for productivity software as well which is, and everyone we want to move forward in the future as well but for apps like fusion 360 the 3D modeling program or Photoshop with some people create shards to make it easier to use those programs as well which is pretty cool. Sure, so application is much larger than gaming that I think it will be a big area for us to to explore in the future that's always where we've seen you know this core idea of you know game glass can make playing games better for you by whatever definition of better that you want maybe you're looking for more immersion I'm looking for something that's more intuitive someone else is looking for a competitive edge. Everyone wants their games to be better in a different way and game glass is flexible enough to let people get whatever they want out of more of what they want out of their games. That exact same thing applies to to productivity software or industrial software. The thing you want out of your application is going to be different I want more productivity or more effectiveness I want more integrations game glass will give you that as well. So moving into those areas is definitely something we see people creating some actually some really cool stuff for streamers as well people got stream decks or streaming for controlling their, their twitch streams for example we've seen some really cool control panels for that as well so that'd be a really interesting area for us to move into in the future. Okay, so everyone's talking about the metaverse metaverse and so do you see game glass being having a role with the metaverse. So it's VR and the metaverse and augmented reality that a new it's another way of solving the same problem is how do I more intuitively interact with software so instead of having a menu that you drop down and select from you reach out with your virtual hand and you grab something and you pull the lever or you turn the dial or you pick it up and you drop it somewhere so those are really intuitive immediately understandable ways to interact with software. And that's what game glass does as well so enhancing the way we use some of those platforms is definitely something that we'll be looking at we've already looked at ways for us to put our shards inside VR world so being able to invoke shards or a type of shard and it may not replicate a screen exactly it could be completely different being able to have a shard in VR worlds and be able to invoke them and customize them in whatever virtual metaworld you're in is definitely something that we'll be doing you know we see shards yes as phone phones and tablets but we see shards on smartwatches as well and in VR and on you know by OT devices and on smart fridges and a shard is just a better more flexible and intuitive way to control software can be games it can be anything and being able to build it and define it yourself that's kind of the core of game glass so putting shards in lots of places in lots of ways for lots of reasons that's kind of what we want to do. So, would you think that disabled people with various types of disabilities would find these shards to be advantageous in operating various software games and other other applications. That's a really great question. Yeah absolutely I think your Xbox did some really amazing work with some really accessible control devices that made it a lot easier to interact with the games that I think game glass can do very similar things being able to control the size and the placement of those controls and being able to put them in a location you know we're having as much smaller more maneuverable phone or tablet and then making those controls accessible in a way that really suits you needs and suit your personal particular needs because game glass is so flexible. Absolutely I think that's a great great great use case for it. But you know I can also see this as being product placement in a movie because it's really cool. No it hasn't been done yet. We've had some really good conversations when we're looking at designers to help us build components and really great conversations with artists who've built those motion graphics for movies. Nothing yet but that's a really interesting spot for I can definitely see someone in a in a sci-fi movie picking up a shard for this that's got a device with a game glass shard and using that to control something in their world I think that would be really cool. Sure. So are you a gamer? Yes. Yeah I always have. Don't have a lot of time for it unfortunately now with running game glass and kids and all the rest of it but no still play as much as I can still get excited about new releases. Yeah absolutely. And what games do you play? I mean my my niche is sort of survival open world kind of crafting games your subnautica with forest green hell those kinds of games are like sort of the survival based building crafting games. But MMOs as well obviously begin to get water warcraft back in the day Final Fantasy now. And then you know love destiny destiny is an amazing world really looking at Starfield coming up is going to be pretty exciting. So yeah broad range when I get the time to plays is good. So did the pandemic impact your business and the direction of your business? No not at all. Our team is is global. You know when Craig and I might my co-founder built the team you know he's in Canada I'm in Australia we were global from and remote from the very beginning we built our team so everyone was remote. We've always worked from home. So it didn't didn't really impact the way we worked together and I think people had more time to play games to spend some time at home. You know which absolutely has has some some terrible downsides but it didn't impact us a lot in terms of our operations and the business as a whole. All right fantastic. So what do you see the future is for Gamebuff. So in the short term we've got some new shards coming out for some new games so we have some a collection of shards coming out for Microsoft Flight Simulator which we're extremely excited about it's an amazing game and they just going from strength to strength as well and they've got a huge community of people that are modding it with new aircraft and and new content inside the game. So we're really excited to get those shards out and then we have some shards coming for Final Fantasy working on some shards for other flights in for DCS and explain for example and then you're a truck simulator the farming sim games as well. And then from there broadening out into some MMOs and some RPG so more shards more games and then we've got some really cool features coming out for as I said for the smartwatches and a few other places as well so really looking forward to the the shards. Thank you so much for some of these specific games that we're developing. And Andy thank you so much for telling us all about game glass. How can people find you. Firstly thank you so much for having me it's been great to be on the show it's an amazing show that you produce here. It's like game glass.gg. You can grab the software you install to make game glass work you can see the different shards we make and you can have a look at the marketplace as well with all of the shards that we create and all of the shards that our community creates as well that's the cool thing about our marketplace is if you create a cool shard you want to share you put it in the marketplace and everyone else can see it. All right fantastic well now I want to get shards for my game. All right thanks Andy and thank you to our viewers for joining us today next week. My guest will be James Hess with Encore Events. See you then. Mahalo.