Valve's Multicast Tech Interview
April 13th, 2001
By John “JCal” Callaham


The Counter-Strike mod for Half-Life has become the most popular first person shooter game to be played on the Internet by a wide margin over the past year or so and is now begining to become a staple in pro gaming tournaments. At the CPL/Speakeasy.net Counter-Strike Tournament that is currently happening in Dallas this week, the folks at Valve Software are showing off a beta version of some new software technology that will allow spectators to watch a Counter-Strike match in progress. The multicast technology could open up the way for pro gaming tournaments to become a true spectator sport.
Stomped got a chance to briefly chat with Erik Johnson, the project manager at Valve, about the new technology and Valve's plans for their future support of pro gaming.

Stomped: First, how did Valve first come up with this new spectator technology?


Johnson: Ever since we released Half-Life, we've been looking for interesting ways to support the online and competitive gaming communities. We met Martin Otten over the Internet a few months back. He approached us with the beginnings of this project, we made some suggestions, and this is the end result.
Stomped: What are the main features of this new tech?


Johnson: The current multicast spectator allows an unlimited number of spectators to connect to a server at once. If the clients and server are multicast capable, then a proxy server connected to the game server could potentially host an infinite number of clients at once. The multicast spectator also allows users to view the map from a top-down view, where you can watch iconic representations of the players connected to the game. Network data can be buffered up at the proxy for an arbitrary amount of time, which will allow us to do some more interesting things in the future (i.e. instant replay of spectacular events).
Stomped: Once the spectator tech leaves beta, how does Valve plan to distribute it?


Johnson: This will be rolled into the next Half-Life/Counter-Strike update, so it will be available to all of our customers. We will also be distributing a stand-alone version of the client.

Stomped: Will Valve charge a fee for professional tournaments to use this technology?


Johnson: No.

Stomped: Will this new technology be used in games other than Counter-Strike?


Johnson: Absolutely, this doesn't actually require much in the way of code work on the part of mod makers. We'll be releasing an SDK to our mod-makers before we release the next Half-Life update so mod makers have time to roll this new feature into their mod.

Stomped: Do you believe this new technology will make pro gaming tournaments more popular among spectators?


Johnson: I certainly hope so. I think it would be pretty amazing to have 1 million people tuned in to watch the Counter-Strike tournament finals.

Stomped: What other plans does Valve have in supporting pro gaming tournament in the future?


Johnson: We've been working on the current spectator technology for quite some time, but not specifically as a pro gaming feature. We think this is something that all of our customers will really enjoy using, but it happens to be particularly interesting from a professional gaming standpoint.
Professional gaming and the CPL represent the hardcore gamers of our user base, which are an extremely important segment to listen to if you want to have success with an online game.



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