We sat down with Razer CEO Tan Min-Liang to talk about the company’s new products, making third-party peripherals cool and what the future of tech in gaming might look like.
When trying to get feedback from the community, how easy has it been to interpret their needs and their demands, and translate those into things they really want?
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Absolutely, absolutely. So, I think that’s got a really long, drawn-out answer. A good example is we use eSports athletes for validation; we don’t use them for design. The thing is, eSports athletes are great at playing games, they’re great at giving feedback on existing products where they can say ‘Oh, this needs to be tweaked’ or something like that. But if you ask them to come up with something truly different, they’re not going to be able to come up with that. Or, most of them will not be able to come up with that.
But that’s what we’re great at. We’ve got great designers, great engineers, people who are gamers at the same time, and they can articulate that. But at the same time, it’s being able to sift through all the feedback and all the information that comes through. You realise that most gamers, unfortunately, there’s this silent majority of sorts that don’t get riled up, unless there’s something that they are unhappy with. So you also tend to get this very vocal group of people who, if you constantly listen to, without sifting through, you end up… It’s just like when you write a review. There’s bound to be someone who disagrees. In fact, the people who disagree are the ones who will write a comment and the other people will just like that and move on. That’s something that we’re very circumspect at.
What we have is actually very different. We have a data platform that allows us to understand what gamers really want, on a data-centric format. So maybe a good example would also be like Firefly, the mousepad that we just launched. We really focused on the surface and made sure it was great, but we had a whole bunch of really vocal guys who were all ‘Why are you putting LEDs in this?’ and stuff like that. If we sifted through the comments, it sounded like it was a really bad idea, but we sold out of Fireflys within the first, I don’t know, 45 minutes? It was insane. So that’s actually something that we are really focused on, how to truly understand and interpret the feedback that we get so it’s not just taking everything at face value, it’s really understanding the gamers. ‘Do you like this? Is this something that you’re interested in?’ It’s a data-centric perspective, but there is a bit of art to the science of it.
With all the lights and adjustable controls, your approach reminds us a lot of the car modding community. Has that been an inspiration to you, in terms of the direction that you’ve moved in?
I think, with us, if you look at the way we do our laptops, we’re probably closer to Koenigsegg, who we did a collaboration with, rather than Lamborghini or Ferrari. We create products that are really up there, and only the most discerning, and the guys that really need those advantages will subscribe to. And that’s what we do. We focus on the very high end, but we understand that on the high end, people want to have the ability to change things. They want the ability to really tweak things and amp it up right up to the last moment. That’s why we have a very open approach to everything that we do.
A good example would be our open-source VR stuff that we do. All the work that we’ve done on OSVR, we’ve gone completely open-source with it. Anyone can use the software, anyone can use the hardware, create their own versions. They don’t have to buy it from us, no. If they buy it from us, of course they get all the bells and whistles. Essentially what we believe in is a really open eco-system, but on top of that we’re also mindful that the people who use our products tend to be the most discerning, and we want to make sure they get the very best experience and performance out there.
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We guess the other thing you get from that is that you’ve also created a product that’s kind of aspirational. It’s high-end, but people who maybe don’t currently need that level look up to the possibility of one day being able to make use of it.
I talk to gamers all the time, on the Facebook page, who are always asking ‘Why don’t you make something cheaper?’ Right? And I tell them, ‘Honestly, I could pretend to be that corporate face and say, “Oh, we’re always listening to our customers” and stuff like that but dude, it’s not going to happen.’ Because if I had to clock down the specs or something like that, just to meet their price point, it wouldn’t be a Razer product any more. A Razer product is the culmination of a product that we want to have ourselves. It doesn’t matter what resources we have, the amount of money we have, etc. It’s all about making the very best.
If I could control every single aspect, you know, to make the materials to be perfect, space-age materials, next-generation materials, it would cost a huge amount of money and that’s what we’ve done. Just to make our laptops and USBs green, we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, just to do that. Now, does anyone care? Yeah, I can think of a couple of people: ourselves. We design our products inside out. Someone might say ‘But Min, no one would know’, but you absolutely do know. Because in the deep of the night, when you wake up, you will know whether you did a great product or you did absolutely the very best thing. You don’t want that to be the last thing on your mind, you know, when you keel over or something… That’s a bit extreme, but that’s something that we really go at! Every single thing has to be perfect. That’s what we do.
You work in a platform-agnostic world, where you want everything to be as compatible as possible. Do you feel that that’s ultimately the future we should all be working towards in tech, that we should be as open and platform-agnostic as possible?
I believe so. I’m a huge proponent of keeping everything open, if we can. We keep our community in the loop, the pros and cons of the challenges. We make sure we try and give as many options to the user as possible. That’s something that I think could do a lot better, today, if more companies were able to do it.
So, we won the Best of CES for Project Christine back in the day. That, unfortunately… It’s a great idea: you reduce waste; you allow users to upgrade themselves without having to be, you know, truly techy or geeky. Anyone can change that. But it needs every single guy, all the major guys, to be in line with it. We want to do that. In fact, we said we were perfectly happy opening up the patents, having everyone share it, and use it, etc, as long as you fall within those brackets of making sure the consumer gets the best experience. But they are saying ‘No, we just want to be able to drive shitty products, terrible products, to shovel into the hands of consumers out there.’ And consumers, unfortunately, it’s like we are our own worst enemy. We subscribe to that. But we’re really hoping to change that in the openness of things. Open-source VR is something that we’re really hoping to be able to push through with our community, and we’ve got a truly passionate one.
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Project Christine, a subscription PC model you mooted, seemed like a great idea. It hasn’t quite come together, but do you think that’s the way things will inevitably move?
I think that’s an idea we’ve mooted. I think it’s definitely sustainable. Is it in the interests of the corporations? Probably not. But I’m going to be very open about this: is it in the interest of the gamer? Absolutely! That’s the thing; I’d sign on immediately. A much lower cost; always being at the forefront; the game developers knowing that there’s always an install base that they can create products for. But the problem with the way it is today is that it’s better for the corporations to be able to sell you something that you throw away to buy a new one, because that’s revenue, as opposed to just having an incremental subscription. So I think we’re keeping our fingers crossed, and one of the reasons why we’re pushing ahead with our laptops is because we really want to create this new standard. We’re getting a huge following right now; Razer’s probably today the leading brand for gamers, from a lifestyle perspective. We think we’ve got a great chance to start with the gamers and reach out to the rest of the world.
Do you think the Steam Box is likely to have an impact here, because Valve has essentially allowed manufacturers to make their own machines? Do you think that there might be an opening there for some exploration of different delivery systems?
We’re really excited about Steam and what they’re doing with the Steam Box, etc. But I think it’s got to be much broader, industry perspective, just on a digital distribution platform. I think Steam is great, but a lot of the games right now – Minecraft, League Of Legends, etc – are going their own route. They don’t want to be on Steam. And that becomes a bit of a problem again: what if you want to play some of these games? So I think the PC, ultimately, still presents that incredible opportunity, to be so much more open. I hope that the Steam Box will get there, and we are working very closely with Valve to see what we can do to support that initiative. But for the time being, I think it’s really the openness that the PC brings… I think the PC is probably the most open platform right now.
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Finally we wanted to get your thoughts on wearable tech. Do you think that it will become more heavily integrated into gaming experiences?
We already are! So, for example, one of the biggest games on the planet – that a lot of [Western] gamers don’t know about because it’s from China – is called We Run. And what it does – I think it’s just second to Clash Of Clans, I think – essentially, you can buy things like distance boosts or you can buy extra lives. You know, micro-transactional stuff. We Run and the Nabu X is now tied in so closely that when you, you get a free distance boost. You sleep well at night, you get a free extra life. And this is just one game; we’re working with multiple game developers to be able to game-ify life. Our tagline essentially is: ‘Life is just a game’. What we want to do is to do it unobtrusively. Instead of doing things like ‘Oh, you have to tap this and do that’, we want to be able to have it so you look at it and go ‘Oh, 9000 steps’. And, sure, you can tie it to the dog, and try to get extra steps or whatever, but it’s all about that experience where you go ‘I could just walk down the stairs or something, and boom! I get a distance boost! That’s cool! Plus, I have the added advantage of being healthy.’ So that stuff that we’re doing right now… We’ve shipped a lot of Nabus out there, there’s a lot of excitement. We’ve been actively pushing this, together with the ISV community. I’m excited. We design products for gamers, and this is one of the products I’m so excited about.
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