A livestream in which one's game of Minecraft can be interrupted by audience members pooling their resources to freeze the player character during their Ender Dragon fight sounds like a sadistic and chaotic venture, but that's exactly the kind of interactivity that Warp World's Crowd Control is built to foster. With the launch of Crowd Control 2.0 this week, that kind of fun is now available outside the confides of its original home on Twitch. Content creators looking to support themselves with engaging events or raise money for charity can certainly get their money's worth through the free streamer tool.Game Rant spoke to Warp World CEO Matthew "Jaku" Jakubowski about the open beta launch for Crowd Control 2.0, how the team came about its many changes, and breaking into the games industry through unconventional means. The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.Q: When we met at IndieLand, you said Crowd Control was something of a pivot. Can you tell me how it got started?A: My background was Information Security (InfoSec) for many years, starting as a low-level penetration tester and building up to director levels. What ended up happening was that in 2015, a little game called Super Mario Maker came out. One of the most difficult levels at the time, at least according to a September Kotaku article, was "P-Break" by PangeaPanga. It took the creator way too long to beat, nobody else was able to. My friends said, "You're good at Mario, why don't you play?"[EMBED_YT]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOQ0CujqxQs[/EMBED_YT]I ended up becoming the first to beat it other than Panga, tweeted it to him, and people suggested I stream on Twitch. So, I started looking at the landscape - I do before jumping into anything, but I had an account going back to the Justin.tv days. I just never found a community.When I looked at what was going on in the Mario Maker community, people were submitting viewer levels, sending codes in the chat. The streamer stopped what they were doing, pasted the code into a notepad, and then continued the level they were on. They'd enter that 16-digit code and more often than not it would be invalid because of a typo, or it was a level they'd already played. There was on average two-to-three minutes of downtime between levels, and I found myself clicking off streams to find the next person playing a level. I thought to myself, "There's got to be a better way." Insert infomercial graphic here.I couldn't find what I wanted, so I started building a bot that would take level codes and put it into a queue. Nintendo released a website that December to bookmark pages, and using my InfoSec background - one doesn't need it for this, but that led me to think this way - I was able to validate codes were correct. Now, users can't type fake codes to waste your time, it's able to enter the code in automatically. This took the downtime from two minutes on average to 10 seconds.I started streaming as well, got Twitch partnership within about a year, and started looking into streamer tools as a hobby. It was fun, I figured let's keep exploring this space using my skills in a new way.
Warp World the company was formed prior to Crowd Control, but we were always looking for new things to build. For example, in 2017 I built a cryptocurrency donation platform. It wasn't our own coin, just a way for people to send you coins and have alerts play on stream. You linked your Coinbase account, your Streamlabs, your StreamElements, and if $10 in Bitcoin came across it would say that was donated by whichever user. It was a good way for people in that space who wanted to use that technology to get alerts safely.Then, in 2018 I started experimenting with Twitch Bits. A few streamers and I did a Mario Party stream where we set four CPUs and commentated it. Afterward I thought, "What if the chat could influence that AI by cheering?" We explored that idea with Borderlands 2, calling it "Bitlands." It was a way users could influence our game by cheering - giving us power-ups, killing us, making us big or small. At the same time, KatDevsGames was working on "Bit Races" with retro games. I said we should work together, and she became the first employee of Warp World.We launched the first version of Crowd Control in October 2018 with three games: A Link to the Past, Super Mario Bros. 3, and Super Mario World. Over the years we've grown our team to about 10 employees, and I quit my InfoSec job in the first quarter of 2020 because I saw my hobby turning into something more and thought the only way to continue growing it was to go in full-time. We really saw a new way that viewers, streamers, and gamers in general can interact and experience games. It's like multiplayer, like an MMO, but it's more than that.Q: So you worked in InfoSec, like video games, and took an interest in crypto before it became a huge buzzword. Have you always had this technical sensibility?A: It's funny, video games got me into InfoSec because emulators were really fun and exciting in the 90s. Modding games was relatively new, but in the late-90s, early-2000s, I was interested in making emulators and my own games. I made ROM hacks before it was cool using tools people built, modifying hex values myself. I figured there was no way people could get a job doing it.
Modifying and hacking games - not online ones, I'm not a cheater - was a gateway into InfoSec because I understand the concepts and programs are just not-fun games. Okay, some programs can be fun, but you know. I've come full-circle now since games are more advanced and connected.I've always been a dabbler or a tinkerer, one might say. I took things apart as a child to try and put them back together - more often than not I'd be successful, but microwaves are hard.Kidding, I've never taken apart a microwave. That's dangerous.But I'm always looking, and if I don't understand something I try to give it enough time to see why it's valuable to others. Why people think it's the next "big thing." I don't want to discount things because they're not for me.Q: So into Crowd Control, you've gone from three games to over 100. What's the process to decide what gets added? How do you balance ease versus popularity?A: I think over 110 now, which is super exciting.We look at all sorts of things - obviously popularity is a big component, but some popular games won't be feasible. Valorant is a competitive, online-only game where you can't set up your own modded server. It also hardware-ties to your machine under one account, so if you get detected doing anything silly, you could potentially get banned. As much as we might like to support Valorant in some capacity, we have to weigh the pros and cons, and users getting banned with our platform is a big con.We get around that on some games like Fall Guys by only doing negative, indirect effects. Anything good happening to you would be considered cheating, so we're not actually influencing it. We essentially put a transparent video player on top of your screen to cover it with something like ink or paint. We have a virtual controller that pretends to press inputs for you. None of that stuff is technically happening in-gameHow often is the game going to get updated? People wanted us to support Elden Ring, and that would be great. But when it launched, lots of updates were coming out, so it could be an extra two weeks before we get our mod updated to match. We try to not be in a spot where we're constantly chasing updates, they should be stable (in terms of release status, not bugs).
We also like for people to experience a game the way developers, publishers, creators intend. If you play Elden Ring and your first experience is with Crowd Control, that's tough - you don't know what the story was, what they wanted you to feel, because somebody set you on fire at the wrong time (or the right time, depending on who you're watching). We try to balance those things, but we do jump into the hype and make it work for games like Vampire Survivors.Q: Has it been easier or harder to expand your catalog over time?A: It's an ongoing process. We've built the system in such a way that connecting to a game in many different ways is possible now. We might connect through a mod, directly manipulate its memory, or maybe a mod loader is used. I think we're at 20 different connector types, as we call them, which is great.That really helps when a new game comes out. We're working on a game that uses Lua for its modding framework, and another developer recently asked if we had anything for Lua games. We sent it to them, and it was exactly what they were looking for. This allows us and others to not have to redo a lot of that work.Additionally, as we refine and update our documentation, we don't have to experiment as much with effects to see what's popular. We have a lot of that information because of the amount of games we've supported, though we are always thinking of new ideas. We recently made public our plugin that allows any developer to implement Crowd Control into their Unity games. A lot of ideas are being built that will only be available in Unity and Unreal games. It won't be an easy process to translate over to, say, emulator games, and that's okay.Q: How often does a developer come to you versus your team seeking out games?A: We've been pushing for developers to bring Crowd Control to their games. As time goes on, more people are wanting Twitch or livestream interactions, so we saw ourselves in a unique position where we have the technology. But we've also always had some stuff available for community developers, and try to engage with modding communities whenever possible.[EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/monistreams/status/1651229255135551494?s=20[/EMBED_TWITTER]A big thing is that we are fans of games of all types and genres. We've been playing these games, so in many cases, our own employees are already a part of those communities in some way or another. We don't necessarily need to engage devs who are working on these randomizers or ROM hacks to utilize Crowd Control, we essentially do it ourselves.We have options for users all over, either community, indie studios, or actual AAA. We help them out with whatever we can, because for us to go from three to 100 games has taken us four years as a team. For us to go from 100 to 1,000 games, we need the support of developers.Q: In terms of communities, IndieLand featured a big Crowd Control event. How has it felt watching interest spring up around this thing you've created?A: I thought I wasn't going to make anything in the gaming space in 2015, 2016. My world was InfoSec. I missed my window. So it's super exciting to be part of the gaming community and have some influence on it, however minor it might be.We worked with the ToeJam & Earl developers and got Crowd Control support into Back in the Groove in 2019. That was a huge deal to me because I loved the original growing up, and the reboot was a lot of fun. I remember playing with streamers in March thinking this would be a great Crowd Control game, every single present could be an effect. The devs thought so too, so we made it work.My name's in the credits; that's huge. It wasn't a Kickstarter credit where I just contributed by paying - which is still legit. But the company logo is in the title splash screen. It was amazing to see that sort of thing happen, and as time has gone on, I feel more and more like I belong. That we are making a difference in the world of gaming, bringing some cool stuff that people enjoy.
Q: And now you're coming up on a big expansion. Crowd Control 2.0 is essentially your own software that can integrate with more than just Twitch, right?A: Yeah, that would be the simplest way to do it.The big thing about Crowd Control 1.0 is we built it with Twitch extensions; Twitch remains the only streaming platform that allows an interactive tool to be displayed on top of the video player. That's one of the best sleeping features of the service. I don't think Twitch even contributes enough to it, but it's literally a game-changer.YouTube, Facebook, and all the others seem to be sleeping on that feature, so we went back to the drawing board. Luckily, we didn't build Crowd Control around Twitch Bits. We have our own Coin system, and people have always wondered why, but the main reason is that Bits were not able to be refunded. If an effect didn't happen, the user would be out their Bits, and that didn't sit well with us.That really helped us with this rewrite because we don't have to worry about a whole new payment system. We want to focus on more than one platform, as do game developers. Twitch is still the big streaming platform right now, but more users are converting as there are more options in general. Even if Twitch remains the big player, their 80-percent market share could be down to 60, with 40-percent YouTube and others.I don't want game developers to feel like they're trapped on any single platform, or have their user base say, "This is great, but I can't use it because I'm on YouTube." We want to not only empower creators on all platforms, but also allow developers to feel proud of what they're doing and not worry about making their target audiences smaller.Q: The current Coin system is split 80/20 for streamers/Crowd Control. Is that changing with the new system?A: Yeah, that is an 80/20 split with Twitch, it's something we can't change. With the new Crowd Control 2.0, we will still allow Bits to convert to Coins, but Channel Coins and Global Coins are the two buckets now.
Channel Coins are probably going to be Twitch-only; they're from Bits and can only be used in that channel since Twitch pays out the streamer when Bits are exchanged. So it wouldn't be fair if I bought $100 worth of Coins on X streamer and went to Y streamer to spend them. Y streamer wouldn't see any of that revenue.Global Coins allow viewers to buy directly into their wallet. They can be spent on any channel, and the streamer is paid when they are used. If you buy $100 worth of Coins on X streamer, use none of them, and then spend them all on Y streamer, that's when the payout happens. We're going to launch with an 80/20 split, but we have plans to allow for potential variations if they are a partner or ambassador with us. It will be more flexible to allow creators a higher revenue share.Q: Can you speak a little on the ambassador point?A: We're launching a partnership program which will allow just about anyone to join if they meet some criteria - still being set. You see it with a lot of other applications these days, it will be something where you can see your path; how close are you to partnership using Crowd Control?Ambassadors are something we already have launched, these are creators who have been using Crowd Control for a while that we reached out to. They know the software well, and are - naturally - ambassadors for it. When viewers are watching them, if there's a problem, they know how to solve it. That's an invite-only platform.One feature we've been testing with our ambassadors is the Global Coin system to see if that's something people want to use. We've seen some good success in it so far, happy to report that it was an idea we were able to execute on.
Q: Do you think going multi-platform will make it more difficult to adapt certain games?A: That's the best part. The way that we've built it, it should not matter to the developers or streamers - platform independence is what we're calling it. The only thing is Twitch has channel points and extensions, so going to YouTube there might not be those exact features, but there will be ways you can interact with your community. There might be platform limitations, but not game limitations.Q: One of the four platforms mentioned as an example for 2.0's reach is TikTok. Some people might be surprised by that, what led you to put this social platform alongside Twitch, YouTube?A: I think we wanted to bring TikTok as a focus because Twitch recently came out and said it's okay for partner streamers to go through other platforms, including short-form livestreaming platforms like Instagram Live and TikTok. We wanted to let people know that Crowd Control is a great thing to use on those smaller streams.What we've seen a lot is streamers will go on TikTok Live while their waiting page is up on Twitch, "Going live in 10 minutes." There, they'll drum up support, talk to their audience about what they're about to be playing, using that as a sneak peek. But we also recognize some people might be trying to use it as a platform for more than short streams. We want to see how that goes, it's really an experiment on both sides with ideas such as sending likes.Q: You've talked about making the user experience easier, and one big 2.0 change is its aesthetic presentation and UI. What have you been looking at?A: We built Crowd Control four years ago, and when it first launched the UI/UX was horrible. It was a little icon that sat in your system tray - I'm going to throw the developer under the bus, she fully recognizes that we never should have launched it. We put out our new UI in February 2019, about four months after launch, which is kind of what we have today. There's been so many games, features, and options added over the years that we've tried to add into the UI. We had to throw everything out the window, take what works, and reconfigure it to be easier on the eyes; make it so that first-time users don't have to ask any questions.
We spent months on the new colors, design, and framework, and we're really excited with what we came up with. It should be really easy to get started for those who have and haven't used Crowd Control before. Overall it's a lot more polished and integrated.However, we're in an interesting position where a lot of people use our software for events, so we can't just put all our options on the computer. It might be getting used while you're streaming. Some of those features still have to be on the website, but it can feel a little disconnected for our users if they go to our website and there's not enough features, so we're trying to make that more clear.Q: Have you gotten a lot of feedback from users for those changes?A: You know, feedback is always a difficult thing to get. We send out emails after sessions, and we have a feedback thing in the app, but users typically don't give feedback if things are good. Most people don't write good reviews for stuff, they write bad reviews. So we take all the bad stuff we get and look at what's legit. We try to engage with our users as much as possible, and the employees all use our software every so often.Then we look at the support requests in general. Could this have been solved if the UI was slightly different, or if the app did this? I think that's where we get our best feedback, customer support requests where people are asking for help. They don't know they're helping essentially guide things, but they are.Q: Another thing we discussed at IndieLand was competitors that have popped up since you made "Crowd Control" popular. Will 2.0 do anything to help you stand out further?A: With everything we're building, I think we're setting ourselves up to be a lot more flexible and build in features quicker than we used to. The big thing is we're striving for a way to help people use Crowd Control with more games. It might be more similar to the Fall Guys stuff where it isn't affecting the game directly; I think we'll be able to bring in a lot of users based on that sort of thing, which will help drive Crowd Control adoption. Then, when we do support games that they use, they'll be one-click away from having something they're familiar with.
Q: Are there still games you're excited to see added?A: There are definitely a lot of games I'd like to see added. I'm a big fan of indies, and I can almost always see a way for certain games to be implemented. I'm always looking at "what can make this game fun for streamers?" I hope we get a AAA game on-board soon. We've seen this shift in a lot of games having some sort of interactivity, and I think we're potentially close to getting a deal.I don't have any specifics I guess, especially because a lot of times I have to be careful about what games I do say.Q: Totally get it. Would you say ToeJam & Earl is your biggest accomplishment to-date then?A: We've had two one-off events that have been particularly exciting, though unfortunately they haven't been publicly released.One of them is Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night for Tokyo Game Show 2019, we were able to build Crowd Control into that for a showcase stream where we were given the game 12 days before the conference. I was flying to Japan to get it all set and present it while we were still compiling the code. That was an insane experience; first time at Tokyo Game Show, having a game showcased essentially.Then, we were part of The Wonderful 101's Kickstarter celebration event. Again, in Japan - this time in Osaka just before the pandemic lockdown. We were able to have Crowd Control Wonderful 101, and it did help them drive enough extra revenue to hit the next Kickstarter goal; the full musical symphony track.As much as I'd love to bring it to those games, we like to listen to the people we work with when they say yes or no on things.
Q: I'm sure you'll be busy implementing 2.0 for a while, but do you have any other big aspirations for Crowd Control beyond that?A: I hate to be like "can't talk too much about it," but we have a lot of ideas on ways to bring people outside the streaming space into this sort of interactivity. We already have a name for it, and some ideas around it. We're definitely looking into how Crowd Control as a feature can be used just with friends, outside of streams and events.[END]Crowd Control 2.0's open beta is available now, with a full release planned for June 1, 2023.