>> [Announcer] Live from Los Angeles, it's theCUBE,
covering E3 2018, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media.
>> Hey, welcome back , everybody.
Jeff Frick here with theCUBE.
We are on the ground at the LA Convention Center at E3,
68,000 people filling every hall, hotel, LA Live.
The place is crawling.
We're excited to be here,
and there's a lotta things going on,
and we're here with Matt Firor,
and he is the game director for ZeniMax Online Studio.
>> That is correct.
>> And we're launching Summerset.
>> Yeah, it launched last week.
It's been crazily well received.
We're super happy with how it's doing.
It's probably some of the best content we've ever done
in Elder Scrolls Online.
>> So why is it some of the best content?
Is it new game play?
Is it using new technology?
What makes this something different
than you've launched before?
>> It's basically we do rolling content updates
every quarter, and every year, we do one big one,
and this is the second big one that we've done.
So really this one is set in the home High Elves,
so it's kinda really high fantasy,
and so it's green, lush environments
and big, tall, white castles in towns.
So it just feels epic just going into it.
And the story is really good, which I'm not gonna spoil.
>> [Jeff] Yeah, don't spoil the story.
>> But the story is really good.
>> So this online game, very different kind of challenges
and opportunities than you get
in kind of a classic console game.
So how do you address some of those things?
What are some of the things that you can do
that you're excited about that you couldn't do
on kind of a traditional console game?
What are some of the real challenges
that you gotta overcome to deliver on that promise?
>> Yeah, well, we started developing this game
nearly nine years ago or eight years ago.
It's been launched for about four years now.
>> [Jeff] Right.
>> But it was funny, when we were in development,
we were right at the edge of when cloud technology
was becoming available, but it wasn't quite there yet
when we were making all the important launch decisions,
so we built our own private clouds for this.
So we have a private cloud in Europe
and a private cloud in North America.
>> [Jeff] So you run this on your own infrastructure.
>> Oh yeah, we run it totally on our own infrastructure.
And we've gotten up to 500,000 concurring users
on our tech, so it's really robust.
And the cool thing is that it hides the server structure
from the players, so they just make a decision,
do they wanna play in North America or Europe,
and then after that, they just log in and play,
and they don't worry about servers.
>> Wow.
So, you know, a lot of the advance in technology
has come a lot way, like you said,
since you guys have started.
So as kinda compute, store and networking
continue to increase to infinite capacity
and asymptotic leap approach a cost of zero.
Not quite there yet.
>> We'd make different decisions if we were doing it today.
>> Yeah, exactly.
But I mean, how do you look at the increase in horsepower,
the increase that you have available
from an infrastructure point of view
working that back into the game design?
>> Yeah, I mean, now you can start developing in the cloud,
and then when you launch, you just get more of it
from whatever cloud provider you're using.
We didn't do it.
We actually have iron.
We actually have hardware in data centers, so.
It has its advantages 'cause we're completely in control
of everything, you know, but I think now
with the technology going the way it is,
you just don't need to make the big investment
in hardware upfront.
You can solve all the problems in a cloud solution
and then deploy either privately or publicly.
It's much more flexible now than it was, so.
Yeah, I've been in the online gaming industry for decades,
and obviously, the change has just been amazing,
especially in the last three or four years.
>> Wait 'til 5G comes out in a couple years.
That's gonna take it up a whole nother level of madness.
>> My last big game, we had to work on 28-8 modems,
so that was a long time ago.
>> So I'm curious just in terms of how you prioritize
the additional horsepower that you have to work with
between better graphics, faster play, latency, story?
I mean, obviously, you can't optimize,
you can't maximize all those variables.
You're always in kind of an optimization play.
>> Absolutely.
>> So how do you think about those things?
>> Well, you know, fortunately, the latest console generation
is really PC based.
They're DirectX based,
so we really have a PC development technology
that it is easy to port to Xbox and PlayStation.
So they solve a lot of those client frame rate API problems
for us, and we do the backend ourselves.
Yeah, and every year, new stuff rolls out.
There's a new, slightly newer Xbox,
slightly newer PlayStation, better PCs,
so we just stay up to date with the drivers
and make sure that we support whatever crazy hardware
is coming out, and it all works.
>> Right, but then as you said, at the end of the day,
it's about the story, and people will probably put up
with a little bit less on the graphics
if the story is there.
>> Yeah, it used to be gamers played games
because of the technology, and now they play games
because of the games because no one cares
about the technology anymore
because you can do almost anything
on any device now and now.
So it's really important to us as game developers
to hide the technology from players
and just give 'em a great experience.
>> So you've been at this for a while.
Just love to get kinda your perspective on E3 specifically,
where the show is today, where it's come from,
and looking down the road, what do you see?
>> Yeah, it's funny, us old-timers,
when we go to E3, we all try to figure out
how many E3s we've been to, and I actually don't know,
but it's gotta be 20.
Like I went to the Atlanta ones in the late '90s.
So the change, it's funny.
Everything's changed, and nothing's changed.
Like people are always super excited.
There's always gamers that wanna see the newest stuff.
That hasn't changed at all,
but just the sheer technology difference is, you know,
monitors are thin now.
They were giant CRTs back then, you know.
Just the funny, it's much easier to load in and out
'cause all the technology is much smaller.
The booth, you know, there's a lotta open space
in this booth.
It used to be you needed whole rooms
of technology driving everything,
and you don't need that anymore.
>> And that's before you brought the chillers in, right,
to keep the stuff from blowing up.
>> Yeah, we still have those.
They just don't need to be quite as big now.
>> Alright, so Matt, gimme the last word on Summerset.
What should people know?
Where should they go?
What should they jump in on?
>> So The Elder Scrolls Online is a phenomenon, right?
So Summerset's the latest chapter for it.
You can get it on Xbox, PlayStation, or PC.
We roll out content every quarter,
so we have a dungeon DLC coming up next called Wolfhunter
and then a story DLC coming out fourth quarter,
and we're working on huge plans for next year.
>> Alright, and hang out with 11 million
of your closest friends.
>> And hang out with a huge community.
>> 500,000 of 'em concurrently.
>> A huge community which is awesome.
We love 'em.
>> It's all about community, right?
>> Exactly.
>> Alright, Matt, well, thanks for taking a couple minutes
of your day. >> Thank you.
>> Alright, he's Matt, I'm Jeff.
You're watching theCUBE from E3 at LA Convention Center.
Thanks for watching.
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