Growth Stage by FastSpring

Hello, everyone.

Welcome to Growth Stage by FastSpring, where we discuss how digital product companies can
increase the value of their businesses.

I'm your host, David Vogelpohl.

I support the digital product community as part of my role here at FastSpring, and I love
to bring the best of the community to you here on Growth Stage.

In this episode, we're going to be talking about the dramatic rise of the web in gaming
and how top publishers and studios

are building innovative web teams.

We're gonna be having that conversation with someone who knows a decent amount about that.

I'd like to welcome Caleb Brown from X-Team.

Caleb, welcome to Growth Stage.

Hey, thanks so much for having me, David.

Happy to be here.

Awesome.

Well, I know you all over at X-Team do quite a bit of work in this area, so I'm really
curious to get your insights here.

And for those listening and watching what we're going to be talking about today, uh X-Team
and the company Caleb works with is a provider of technology talent as a service for top

game publishers.

But we're going to be covering his thoughts around the drivers behind the rise of web
experiences in gaming.

the key challenges of building an innovative web team from scratch, which I know a lot of
publishers are doing these days, and how top game publishers and studios are approaching

building out their own teams.

I think these are some topics that are really top of mind for a lot of folks, and I'm
really interested to get Caleb's perspective, and I hope you are too.

Caleb, to kick us off, and I ask this question very often when we talk about gaming of
guests.

But what was the first video game where you spent your own money on?

Not like your parents' know, holiday gift or anything like that, but like your money.

What was the first game?

It's a really good question.

um So my birthday is just a few weeks after Christmas.

So was very common when I was young to kind of pull that money together, the Christmas
money, the birthday money.

um I do have a memory of buying, it was Donkey Kong Country one or two.

for the Super Nintendo, probably would have been eight or nine or somewhere around there.

I recall holding it in the car, my mom driving us home, and just wanting to play it there,
wishing it was a mobile game, because I was holding the package and so excited to get home

and play it on Super Nintendo.

So I'm pretty sure that was birthday and Christmas money.

So I think that answers your question, unless you mean...

money from my first paycheck or something like that.

No, no, no.

Yeah, birthday and Christmas money makes a lot of sense.

It's funny, we were just talking about Donkey Kong Country over here.

I can't remember the context.

But yeah, that's such an iconic game.

It was so cool, especially in the Super Nintendo era when you were getting more into these
3D games, which was really compelling at the time.

But I can empathize with you there on that one.

And lives on.

It's cool to see the franchise live on.

It's doing incredibly well on the Switch and things like that.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Nice franchise and IP there.

But let's move on and talk about the topic at hand.

But before we jump into that, I'm just curious.

I said a little bit about X-Team when I did the intro.

But can you help the people listening and watching understand what X-Team does and what
you do there?

100%, yeah.

I mean, you did a great intro.

do um staff augmentation essentially for software development.

um So we connect top tier developers that are around the world, living everywhere, um with
some pretty great companies that we've partnered with over the years.

In fact, over the decades, uh X seems about 20 years old somewhere around there.

And some of those, partners we have,

Riot Games being a good example ah are folks we've worked with for a decade plus.

um And so we have a lot of X-teamers all over the world working with not just gaming
companies, but we certainly have some in the portfolio.

um the nice thing about how that works is ah it's staff augmentation.

So developers come on for maybe a six-month-long project with one company.

And then there's still X teamers the entire way through.

So once that contract wraps up, they kind of come back to X team.

um And then we begin that search for their next partner opportunity.

So um like a lot of developers were already kind of independent contractors prior to being
in X team and liked the, experience.

uh But getting clients can be hard.

And like I said, we've, we've, we've partnered with, with uh many great companies over the
years.

We have a good relationship with them and so we can kind of help them.

Keep that lifestyle they loved as an independent contractor and help bring them to great
clients.

In terms of my role, currently I am content and strategic initiatives manager, which is a
bit of a mouthful, but I handle a lot of stuff.

I am our podcast host on our end for the podcast, Keep Moving Forward, which you can find
anywhere you get podcasts.

We also have an internal education program, something that looks like a Udemy or Coursera,
know, with Swift and React and even AI courses, so I kind of uh curate a lot of that

content.

We're starting to do some of our own original content there.

I do a little bit on our social media and the developer-focused stuff, and my background
is actually technical, so um with the rise of Vibe coding, I've been...

helping us do lot of internal apps, stuff that we might have bought a small subscription
for.

We're starting to roll that out on our own.

So I'm a little bit all over the place, but just trying to uh kind of really enrich the
developer experience when you're working at XT.

That's excellent.

And I personally know Nextteam for a good long time and happy to know Mitt, the CEO as
well, and many developers that have worked there and all of them really super high caliber

folks.

I guess I'm talking nice also about some of my friends there.

So like that with a grain of salt, I suppose.

yeah, really, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Some of the best folks I've worked with are known in that way.

So I've been real pleased with my interactions with you all over the years.

And you mentioned you have game publishers in your portfolio.

And I know you can't share like every name you do work for, but I know you've publicly
talked about others.

But give me some examples you can share.

Totally.

So like I said, we have had a great relationship with Riot Games for quite some time.

And that is the biggest, at least as far as my knowledge, the biggest game publisher that
we work with.

We also work with Epic Games.

we've worked with small, I mean, massive, huge.

Yeah, but we've worked with some smaller.

uh...

kind of more indie studios and things like that in the past for for some small engagements
but yeah the big ones uh...

epic and riot

All right, good deal.

So now let's transition to the topic at hand, which is the rise of web experiences in
gaming.

From your perspective and your team's perspective, what do you think is driving that?

Yeah, great question.

um Because yeah, there certainly is a rise.

um I I think a lot of it, and I don't think all of it, I think we'll certainly get into
it, but I think a lot of it is the margin and the ownership of direct to consumer, The

marketplace.

Speaking of Epic Games, we all know about Epic Games versus Apple.

There's the whole uh thing about...

uh

using kind of other folks' uh platforms and taking a significant portion of that.

um And so I do think a lot of it is on the financial side of wanting to rule your own uh
marketplace.

uh That being said, I don't think it's just about the financials.

I think that there are major benefits to having that direct relationship uh with the
consumers.

for sure and like I said, we're happy to get into that but you know, I do think probably a
big thing that kicked it off was You know realizing that a lot of game publishers felt

stuck within within some of these You know walled guards

Yeah, and it's such an interesting observation because in almost every other industry,
this idea that I'm going to have a direct relationship with my customer and own my

commerce experience is a foregone conclusion.

And the web is the engine and pathway for that for most brands, certainly digital brands.

uh And gaming was traditionally relying on marketplaces and uh

app stores and things like that for distribution and monetization.

And so it is interesting to think about the uh ability to monetize direct as unlocking
this idea that the web can be more than like a brochure site, if you will, to promote your

game.

Is that kind of where you're going with this, it sounds like?

That's exactly it.

like there is a like not even thinking at all about the financials.

I think there's a massive benefit to having uh web platforms that kind of extend through.

mean, you know, gaming is, know, folks are fanatical about it or they love it, right?

And I think you can, you can have a better experience across the spectrum.

You can have kind of frictionless, you know, platforms where

You're doing your, you have a hub, you're doing your loadouts.

I think um EA Sports for their soccer game, I think you can manage your entire squad uh
from their web-based um app.

So I think part of that is just the direct connection that you can have with consumers and
you can experiment too.

I think we're seeing some potential.

I don't think we're totally there yet, but there's some um even tech.

uh expansion with like web GPU, where I've seen like 3D demos and mini games happening.

And I think you could probably just have like a really good interactive experience on the
web that then might even push you to uh try the full game, know, things like that.

So I think there's just a world of experimentation where you can build these, uh you know,
extensions of the game.

It's an interesting point.

You I am kind of curious from your perspective as we talk about, you know, beyond just
having a, you know, a store on your website, a web store, if you will, like, what does it

mean to have web based gaming experiences?

And I really liked the example you provide of like managing your soccer or football team
on the web where you're going to play it though on your phone or maybe a console or

something like that.

That's a really

interesting example because there are these really complex interactions where maybe a
larger screen or a mouse and a keyboard might provide a better experience than maybe

trying to mash it out on your phone.

And obviously that's not going to work for every kind of game, but a game like managing a
soccer team maybe is more relevant.

uh You also talked about this idea that maybe I have extensions of the game or even uh

playable elements of the game that are on the web that connect to the game, which I think
is also really interesting.

um What are some other examples?

Like you talked about this idea of a hub, and I know a lot of folks talk about this in the
gaming context, but what are some of the spokes on that hub um that stand out to you?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, so it's interesting because I think that Rockstar actually rolled it back.

But I thought their Rockstar Social Club was really interesting.

They had like an activity feed, uh like a player profile that you could see.

And I think some, you know, people obviously get really into Rockstar stuff.

And I think they had some exclusive content videos and things like that.

And they discontinued it, which is interesting.

But at the same time, I still think that's a good example of what's possible.

I don't know the reasons for pulling back on that.

But I think the experimentation alone is really interesting.

um And my guess would be, even if they rolled that back, I think it was a year or two ago.

um

that they're probably not done in that space.

They'll probably expand into it.

um But yeah, like I said, the inventory management, you made a really good point that some
stuff works really good with a keyboard and mouse or even on the console, but then doing

some of your kind of management of what's in your inventory and things like that actually
might work better as a mobile app or a web app.

Yeah, it's interesting to think about the interaction between the game and the web and how
you combine them together, or maybe not even just the web, but like PC versus phone versus

console.

And, you know, it's, I don't, I'm not familiar with Rockstar Social Club, but obviously we
also have third party platforms like Discord, where some of those interactions happen, but

it sounds like the wheels of the hub, if you will, or the hub in general.

It sounds like the the sentiment you're getting across is this idea of your website is not
just a brochure or not just a commerce engine, but a destination for your players where

they can interact with their account, with the game and perhaps the community.

But it's this idea of it being a destination and not just a sales page.

Is that fair?

OK.

100%.

Yeah, yeah.

You need to look at these things like they're real products.

Okay, products.

And my website is more than just an advertisement.

It's part of my product.

I think that's a really distinct way of looking at this.

And I think a lot of people haven't thought that way before.

Yeah, I agree with you.

And perhaps we will get more into it, but I think you're right that it would be really
easy to make what I would call a mistake of saying that you're getting into this world of

extending out into web, and it's really just marketing, not a product.

a lot of sense and definitely resonates with me.

if I wind the clock back even like three to five years ago, and I kind of imagine gaming
sites at the time, it would have some good imagery, some videos, a little link in the

navigation to our games, maybe a hiring page and things like this.

It was really basic.

It was the kind of thing you could probably outsource to an agency down the street.

oh

They'd build it within a month and it'd be live and that'd be a thing.

And now when you're talking about like, wait a minute, now I'm going to have this commerce
engine with D2C.

I'm going to have a destination that's going to be part of my product.

And I do want to get into that more later.

uh But now we're having to like think like, well, wait a minute, this is more than just
like offloading, making a website.

This is now a very important and much more important thing.

uh So help me understand what are some, help everyone really understand.

What are some of the key challenges in building a quality web team from scratch?

Like lot of these publishers have just never done this before.

Give me the lay of the land.

Like what are they up against?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you know, playing off what we just said, like, you know, you do have to look at it
or the right way to look at it, in my opinion, is a true product.

And that's what we're saying, you know, authentication so that it is uh working with your
existing ecosystem with the existing game.

So when you do stuff like, you know, you already have a soccer game going and then you log
into this web portal, you you want to be able to have all of that sync up.

and work and just to see your team there within the web app.

So there's obviously like the, the technical side of things.

um But you you're also looking at, um like you said, you're looking at it as a marketplace
now.

So you're looking at, can even have microtransactions within that.

So you're looking at, you know, fraud and policy and chargebacks on virtual goods, you
know, a whole thing.

So having folks that understand that world, that ecosystem.

um certainly valuable, certainly important to have the right tools there to build these
things up properly and securely.

So when I'm building this team from scratch, though, uh and I've got to go find people,
and recruiting can be a challenge.

And of course, the gaming industry has had rounds of layoffs recently.

And so maybe hiring for game developers isn't super duper challenging.

Maybe web developers are also relatively easy to find.

But the first thing I think about when I think about hiring is hiring for what?

uh

And so as I put myself in the shoes of a publisher that's kind of ramping up a web team
for the very first time, the first question is really, what is my web stack?

You talked about interactions with the game and the back end system, and those are things,
obviously, that are already there.

But what are some of the key considerations for choosing which web stack to go with?

uh Help folks understand that.

Totally, yeah.

And I do think that'll vary to some degree based on what they're building.

But trusted, modern, real-time frameworks are typically a good way to go.

Next.js will give you a lot out of the box.

You're streaming out of the box, server components out of the box, which is pretty nice.

Like I said, like an authentication standard that works with your existing ecosystem.

And that's where it's important to, I think, have experts, folks that

know OAuth and know that world and ideally have built something similar to this before.

um If we're talking about the micro oh transactions, we're in the payments world, we're
looking at compliance and regional conditions, um you want folks or a platform that

understands that really well.

And specialization I think is huge here.

I we see it at Xseme for sure.

I was just talking about the web GPU.

stuff that I was seeing recently, which I haven't seen built totally.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I haven't seen it built totally into one of the examples we're talking about, but I've
seen demos that are wildly impressive through the browser.

And that's like relatively recently unlocked with some of the, some of the web GPU stuff.

you know, you're, you're right.

Maybe it's a little easy at the moment to find game developers, but

even within any niche is a sub niche.

So looking for folks that have worked with something like a web GPU is really valuable.

And uh like I said, we do see that at X team where folks are putting this thing together
and they have an amazing existing in-house team, but they need folks that have really

worked with XYZ tech to build that out.

um And so that helps on the hiring side if you want to kind of...

jump right into it.

OK, so that makes sense.

So um if I kind of play back some of what you talked about there, I'm going to pick a kind
of core technology for my site build.

And one example you gave was Next.js.

I'm going to leverage and integrate in things I already have, like say maybe my player
authentication system, uh and integrate that into my web experiences.

uh Next.js is often used with decoupled JavaScript web architecture, headless, if you
will.

And maybe folks in the game industry aren't as familiar with this, but this is the new way
of building a web experience is where most developers coming out of code school and

learning are learning in this way.

Is that a fair assessment, Caleb?

Okay, okay.

So...

This might be a path that if I'm building out a web team from scratch and I'm picking this
web stack, but I might very well uh land in this approach.

Now, I want to talk in the game world, there's a lot of web store or web shop providers.

And so what these will typically look like is there's some kind of store in a box and the
provider

does all the work for you or most of the work for you and launches it and hosts it and
maintains it.

And when you see Next.js and headless builds and things like that, yes, you're right.

It's like a framework and you inherit things that you don't have to build from scratch.

But it's building a site from scratch but with a framework versus a guardrail of a store
and a box.

So help me understand the balance between those two approaches.

Obviously, we like

Each approach is probably valid for different reasons and different situations, but help
us understand like the benefits of both sides.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

um You know, and you're right.

I don't think there is a universal right or wrong.

That's certainly for sure.

um But when you have a little bit more freedom, especially if you are a larger team, a
larger organization, I think that has resources, you want the freedom to A-B test and test

with pricing and do stuff that might.

be something that you alone want to try and therefore it might not be baked into an
off-the-shelf solution.

um At the same time, guardrails is amazing to have in terms of, you don't need to be A-B
testing security.

You don't need to be experimenting with compliance.

um And so it's nice to have cookie cutter solutions for the stuff that

you know, needs to be sort of hammered down.

um But every team is going to be entirely different.

know, I wasn't a game developer, but when I was an individual developer building
e-commerce solutions, I was just one person, and I was happy to have options that covered

more than I could handle in terms of that.

um At the same time, you know, like I said, if you're a bigger team doing a bigger
project,

and have resources, having freedom to build exactly what you want and make that.

Like I said, if you're looking at this as a product, which you should, you should be
developing it the way that the team feels it should be built.

And so having that freedom is necessary.

But um yeah, you're certainly right in that I don't think there's any right or wrong uh
kind of across the board.

Yeah.

So the balance it sounds like is when I go the kind of quote custom coded route and I am
quoting that because like frameworks obviously come with a lot of stuff baked in.

have the freedom to kind of drive the direction of innovation and experiences.

And if I'm using something off the shelf with more rails on it, I can go faster and I have
to mess with maintaining it to your example.

I don't have to experiment with security or compliance.

Totally.

but I might be trading off that freedom.

so these are some of the balances that play there.

If I'm taking the custom route though, what are your thoughts on using off-the-shelf
components to address that?

um So like in the FastSpring universe, people like offload payments to us.

So like that's one example.

But do think that's a way to bridge some of those gaps on the custom side?

Not necessarily the payment side.

but just like in general using off the shelf components for certain parts, but still
preserving that freedom you have with a custom coded site.

Yeah, absolutely.

mean, and payments is a really good example.

Like I said, that's what I was referring to when I was working as kind of an independent
developer.

uh Like I was so happy that in fact, I actually did use fast spring for this project.

um is back in truly back in 2011, I started taking payments for a it was an educational
bookmarking site.

um And it was the first dollar I had ever made on the internet.

And, you know, because of the security and compliance stuff we were talking about, I was
so happy.

um that someone else, Fast Spring in this case, was able to handle all that stuff and I
didn't have to think about, oh my gosh, I have customer credit cards and stuff like that.

And obviously there's parallels there to other uh off the shelf components.

I'm sure there's times when that makes just a ton of sense for folks and they don't need
to customize absolutely every single thing.

um But yeah, totally depends on what you're building, but absolutely.

pulling in uh outside resources like that can be uh really helpful.

What a happy surprise for me.

actually didn't know this.

feel like it sounded like I teed you up for that, but that's really ironic.

uh

assure you did not, but no, it's true,

That's funny.

That's cool.

So, you know, in my background, I've ran an agency before and we would go to customers and
we talk about, you know, custom coded versus off the shelf systems.

And these were some of the tugs and pools and we almost always landed on something custom
coded.

And it was because the client usually had some zany idea on how to make money or go to
market in a very specific way.

Yep.

liked the advantages of offloading complexity, especially in areas that they weren't going
to experiment with or that presented a lot of risk.

And so I think a lot of people think that custom coded means you're responsible for
everything, but you actually can componentize and offload key parts of it in that way.

But then at the same time, if you're up against the deadline or you don't have the team to
support something custom,

Maybe you're too small or you just haven't got there yet in a larger organization.

Off the shelf is a great path and option.

um And it's good people have those choices.

But I appreciate you kind of walking through the puts and the takes on that one.

So you've mentioned a few times that you feel like the web should really be treated like,
the web experiences should be really treated like a product instead of just like an ad, if

you will.

Yeah.

really brings up the question, you know, again, a lot of publishers are for the very first
time starting to scale a web team.

Where should they report?

I feel like in the old days they would go to marketing, but should they go to product or
engineering?

And I guess it obviously differs per organization, but what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, yeah, it may differ per organization.

the same time, I'm pretty opinionated that it probably makes the most sense to have the
core web team under product, uh but with a strong sort of dotted line connection to

marketing.

uh

You know, obviously, uh marketing is a very important thing, of course.

At the same time, I think it would probably be a mistake to have your web product entirely
focused on marketing, because as we said, uh what you don't want it to be is a marketing

landing page, and you don't want it to feel like that.

um

So I think having a strong connection with product and looking at it like a product, like
an extension of your existing uh game in this case, is the best way to do it.

But you partner with marketing for campaigns and maybe some kind of like life cycle
strategy.

uh You can sort of partner a little bit on some of the content, but I don't think
marketing should define all of that content.

But I think you should work together to figure that out.

I'm pretty strong in feeling that, you because you don't want to make that mistake of
letting this fall into just being a landing page, uh you know, for marketing and feeling

that way, that it probably does make the most sense to at least have that core team
underpriced.

Yeah, that makes sense.

As a marketer though, I'm going to push back a little bit here.

And yeah, like to me as a marketer, when I hear things like this, I'm like, wait a minute,
I'm to have to wait on product and engineering to like do stuff on the website.

So like to me, like a more ideal approach would be to have, say the main website or the,
the dub dub dub sub domain, if you would not that people do that anymore.

be different than the product side of my web experiences?

And in the web, of course, this might just mean different sites or domains with the
marketing side and the product side of the hub or whatever.

What are your thoughts on that?

Like giving marketing the freedom to be able to market uh without making them wait on
engineering, but then giving engineering and product their own realm where they can treat

the web like a product.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I absolutely think that marketing should be marketing for this, uh for
the existing game as well as um the new one.

And right, I understand timelines can...

ah Yeah, you don't want to be just waiting around for another department to kind of wrap
things up, wrap their sprint up and things like that.

yeah, I I do think that they should be in harmony.

I think that there should be that dotted line connection.

I think they should work closely.

ah

I just feel that the core app itself should be product focused.

Yeah, it's such an interesting dynamic.

And I think it depends on the company in this situation.

I worked for a CMO in the past where it was one of those tech companies from her past
where the homepage was the product and it wasn't marketing.

was just, it's kind of like Google is like homepage is the product.

But as a marketer, if she needed to go out and like spread the word about this thing and
be able to have

web pages that people came to and learned about it and then interacted with the brand in
different ways.

And so there was this tension in that org between the two.

And when that tension is handled in a bad way, that can be really problematic.

So if I'm out there marketing games and in-game purchases on the marketing side and the
product side of my website is vastly different and disconnected,

then that sounds like a really bad experience for players and you're not getting the
benefit of the product and the marketing side working together.

Now, this is definitely not an easy thing to solve for, but I'm definitely in your camp
where that player web experience is a product-led experience.

And as a marketer though, I'm like, well, let's keep the door open on the other side to
give those marketers some of that freedom, but...

I think, of course, it just depends on the company and the publisher or studio or whatever
focused on this.

This is all super duper interesting.

I would love to talk about this all day and often do.

But for those watching and listening, if they remembered one thing we talked about today,
what should it be?

Yeah, great question.

um

I really think what we, the marketing product discussion I think is really interesting.

I would definitely want folks to be thinking about how that should work in their
organization.

Even if they're not in gaming, but they're in a similar situation here.

Think about that because, mean, you're right, it can be a little bit of a complicated
dance, but when it works,

you know, that synergy, if you will, with product and marketing is beautiful.

And you you build a great product and then you actually get it out there.

uh On a personal level, I build a lot of products and then just don't market it.

Like on a personal, you know, I don't market it at all.

I'm more product and engineering than I am marketing personally.

um And so I, and I wish that I had more of that marketing DNA.

um

And so I absolutely see the benefits of it.

So yeah, think just understanding what your product is, making sure that, it's no
disrespect to marketing, but making sure that your side app is not a landing page for

marketing and is an app if that's what it's going to be.

But then utilizing, working very closely with marketing to make sure that actually gets
out there and people understand it.

That's what sometimes on the technical side we're bad at.

explaining why users want to use this and that's why marketers are amazing because they're
good at communication on that.

I think thinking about your own organization and that balance between product and
marketing is probably the most important thing to remember.

Such an interesting point to focus on because, historically in gaming, we would make a
game and then mark it over here on the product side and then market it on the website

side.

And now what we're seeing is like, well, these web experiences should be a part of the
product, if you would, which now means that product and marketing need to have a much

stronger bond than they have in the past.

It's such a kind of higher level

challenge or way of thinking that I think is great to end on and kind of underpin some of
the more tactical strategic things we were talking about.

This was super interesting.

Thank you so much for sharing all this today, Caleb.

Thank you for having me.

I really enjoyed this.

Awesome.

If you'd like to learn more about what Caleb is up to, you can check out x-team.com.

Thanks everyone for joining this episode of Grow Stage.

Again, I'm your host, David Vogelpohl.

I support the digital product community as part of my role at FastSpring, and I love to
bring the best of the community to you here on Grow Stage.

Thanks everybody.

Thank you.