Questions by Garrett
Fuller, Industry Relations Specialist

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Answers by Charles F.
Manning, CEO of PlayXpert




In the eyes of many in the massively multiplayer online gaming
generation, the next step in communication is the thorough integration
of community building tools into the world of MMOGs. While many
technical hurdles exist before players will be able to fully immerse
themselves in this sort of environment, the gaming community is finally
beginning to receive the tools they need. For example, PlayXpert and
Vivox recently announced that they would be bundling their services
together to form one easy-to-use game overlay system, taking another
step forward in the search for the perfect community toolset. Ten Ton
Hammer’s Garrett Fuller talked with Charles F. Manning, CEO
of PlayXpert, to learn about PlayXpert and what sort of options are now
available to players.




Ten Ton Hammer: Could you
discuss PlayXpert’s capabilities? How will it help players
communicate?



style="font-weight: bold;">Charles Manning:
At a macro level, PlayXpert is an in-game modding and operating
environment for the PC player.  It lets you stay in game, and
do
the things you like to do while you play – regardless of the
games you play.  PlayXpert combines two key components: first,
it
delivers a beautiful semi-transparent overlay on top of the games you
play irrespective of what the game is; and second, it provides ultimate
flexibility because everything that you bring in game with PlayXpert is
brought in as a “widget.”  Our widget
application
programming interface (API) is open to anyone.  As a result,
we
build widgets and the general community can develop widgets for their
respective user communities.  



PlayXpert’s capabilities are limited only by users’
creativity in the widgets that we make and in what the community can
come up with!  PlayXpert helps players communicate via text
chat
with all of their existing chat communities (Xfire, Yahoo, MSN, Google,
AIM), via voice chat with our out-of-the-box Vivox widget and our other
voice widgets we provide for TeamSpeak and Ventrillo, via our community
management tools.  And finally, we have a variety of quest
research tool widgets like Wikia and Wowhead which lets users
collaborate on questing, lore, and other key elements of the MMO worlds
of their choice.


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style="font-style: italic;">Charles Manning,
CEO of PlayXpert

Ten Ton Hammer: What kind
of relationship do you have with Sony Online Entertainment, and what is
it like working with them?



style="font-weight: bold;">Charles:
Sony Online as a team is a great group of folks. 
We’ve been
working with them since this past summer.  We built an EQII
Players widget with them and debuted it at FanFaire this past
August.  This widget lets EQII players query information on
clans,
items, characters, and anything else available on EQII Players via an
in-game widget that’s skinned to look native to EQII.
 



Since then, we collaborated on gluing our Chat Widget together with
their Sony Friends system.  Their willingness to do this kind
of
thing – and their foresight to do it with us -- is really
significant.  It demonstrates their thought leadership and the
extent to which they have their finger on the pulse of what’s
new
in the industry.     



As an organization, I think they “get it”
philosophically.  It shows in what they spend their time on,
what
concerns them, and how they paint the future when they run the tape
fast-forward.  Large publishers can suffer from bureaucracy
and
paralysis.  John Smedley seems to have his team focused on the
things that matter.  



Ten Ton Hammer: Voice
chat in MMOs
seems to be the obvious next step in player communication. How does
PlayXpert add to this transition?



style="font-weight: bold;">Charles:
Voice is certainly the next frontier for games.  Up to this
point,
it’s been on a rapid adoption curve by publishers and studios
because players have demonstrated how important it is to them.
 



The complicated thing is that voice adoption (and even text chat for
that matter) is driven by the player – not by the
publisher.  If you join up with a clan, you get told what
voice
tool you will be using, even if the game supports a voice solution
natively.  This is because communities are cross-game by their
very nature and as a result, the collaboration tools need to be equally
cross-game.



At PlayXpert, our philosophy is: Provide something that works
universally in any game, with a great codec, as a managed service (so
users don’t have to do anything – it just works),
and
you’ve got a solid solution that’s totally
player-centric.



We licensed PlayXpert to Vivox and by doing so, made them the default
Voice widget that’s pre-installed on our public version of
PlayXpert.  They fit all of these objectives –
they’re
also a great team to work with.



With the Vivox Widget, you can perform user to user voice
conversations, channel conversations (good for clans), you can create
your own channels, see who is talking, and kick/ban users as a
moderator.  All this and it’s natively integrated
into
PlayXpert. So you can totally control it without alt-tab.



We knew from the beginning that we’re not a VoIP company - in
standard PlayXpert form, we have widgets for VoIP.  This way,
the
people who do voice best can – and we deliver it in game.



When you read the tea-leaves, it seems like voice is going to go the
same way of text chat.  I expect that publishers will want to
enable players to connect to voice channels that are used in game even
when those users may or may not be in the game.   If
you
believe that to be true, then voice solutions being bundled into games
will likely start to have “gateway” like interfaces
via SIP
so that third party tools can connect – and player-based
voice
will be about inter-connecting to various voice gateways –
not as
a walled garden that only works in a particular game.



Ten Ton Hammer: One of
the major
concerns with voice chat is protecting a player’s identity.
What
steps do you take to insure players are treated fairly and respectfully?



style="font-weight: bold;">Charles:
The identity of a user is totally limited to the information that the
user chooses to share.  By default, the only information
available
about users that’s available is their chosen PlayXpert
userids.  Email address is not available, and certainly age
information is not shared unless the user chooses to do so.



So, in both PlayXpert and in the Voice Widget, the PlayXpert userid is
the only identifiable handle.



Having said that, sound adds a complication to identity (or perceived
identity).  More on this in the next question…



Ten Ton Hammer: Along
those same
lines, many women players have mentioned being harassed in online
games. Do you offer women any protection from players looking to meet
up with them or give them a hard time?



style="font-weight: bold;">Charles:
When I think about this topic, I often think about how sound, as a
sense, is so revealing.  Someone could remind someone else of
a
past friend or foe – and immediately – the intimacy
of
voice combined with the anonymity of the Internet equate to a
potentially explosive situation resulting in potential problems if the
wrong person is involved.



One of the key features I love about the Vivox service is their Voice
Skin support.  Voice Skins are like
“fonts” for
text.  It allows you to modify your voice in real time using
pre-selected classifications so that instead of sounding like a woman,
you sound like a wizard.  We thought this was a fantastic
capability and were thrilled to be able to add to the Vivox Widget as a
premium service for users who want to opt-in.  Although this
support is not yet available for users, it is coming very soon in the
widget.



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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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