An interview with Benjy Boxer CEO/Co-Founder of Parsec Cloud discussing their new connected network gaming platform Parsec
One of the most significant trends that are occurring in gaming is the push to game anywhere. Multiple companies are trying to figure out the best way to get more players playing games through remote play, cloud gaming, and connected gaming. One of the newest companies Parsec Cloud came up with their application for connected, remote, and cloud gaming, Parsec. Parsec recently showed up with a lot of clout from gamers such as Jackal (note: a friend of the author) and Justin Wong, a professional Fighting Game player. Seeing this trend, I thought it would be best to talk to the CEO of Parsec Cloud, Benjy Boxer about Parsec and what does it mean to gamers.
This interview is edited for clarity and length.
Fandom Post: What is Parsec?
Benjy Boxer: At the highest level, Parsec is all about playing and sharing and watching games as if you are in the same room. We’re trying to recreate, at least when I was a kid, the experience of sitting down with a friend, co-oping, playing against them, passing the controller back and forth. That’s the focus of our technology and our application is to enhance that experience and to recreate it in the virtual space.
FP: Lots of Japanese games, from Blaz Blue Cross Battle Tag, to beat games need minimal input and lag, how do you control for latency?
BB: It depends on the distance between two players and the networking. Our goal of our software specifically is to not have more than one frame of latency added. Once you add distance and ping between the PCs, you will have more latency because of internet speeds as in ping and distance. When you think of the internet, the speed in which two things connect is called their ping, and the bandwidth is their flow. Ping is how short your pipe is, and bandwidth is how wide the pipe is.
FP: Does Parsec try to accommodate different pings and different bandwidths so they are coming in at the same time?
We cannot change anything about the ping, but we do try to compensate for different bandwidths. [We] try all sorts of things to get your packets your data back and forth as quickly as possible.
FP: Compared to other competitors, Google has their own alternative into web browser gaming, there are other remote plays. What’s the differentiating factor between all of these competitors and Parsec?
Google is building cloud gaming. We also offer cloud servers if you need them, but Parsec is different in that it’s more about playing together and playing on your own machine with your own friends. None of the other big companies are doing that kind of stuff.
FP: One of your features is game related servers, what does Parsec do to assess hardware capabilities for whether to connect to a PC or to use a server?
We say that the server is great for people that don’t have gaming PCs. People that have gaming PCs, the gaming situation on the server is not as good as owning your own gaming PC. I really feel that strongly. What I do believe is that renting a gaming PC from the cloud can make the playing field more equal between two people because you’re connecting to the PC. I think it’s a good idea to use your gaming PC because it’s free.
FP: What does Parsec do to assess whether the Gaming PC is capable of running Parsec as the host computer?
It’s when your GPU was manufactured. You have to have a GPU that has a encoder, which was generally, made available in 2012 by Nvidia, AMD, and Intel. It needs to also be a Windows machine. We only allow you to host on Windows right now.
FP: Do users have to do more customization to allow Parsec to run optimally?
Well, no. You might have to if your network is blocking connections due to multiple MATs, but generally, people do not have to do anything. Only one person needs a network that needs to be traversed by Parsec Protocol. The time that it fails is when both people have a network that cannot be traversed. In that case, you will need to setup UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) or port forwarding. That only happens on 3% of connections.
FP: A lot of work has been done on software, but have you reached out to companies for hardware collaborations for Parsec? For instance, if a person has a PlayStation 4 (PS4), and you want people to play on it, do you have a way of people using hardware to connect Parsec to that hardware?
BB: There are ways to do it, if you set up a PS4 with an Elgato card connected to a Windows PC, [but] don’t have any hardware or any specifications. You have to hack it to make it work. It’s very technically difficult to make it work.
FP: On your blog, you discussed developing Parsec for web browser use, are there any plans to pursue making a full web browser version of Parsec in addition to your application?
BB: We do both. The application will always be better than what the browser can perform at. Simply because of access to hardware decoding. We have more control over the networking protocols that you use if you are not using the browser because the browsers have specific networking protocol called WebRTC. If you use the Parsec browser version, you’re using WebRTC; you’re not our own specialized protocols for gaming streaming. The native technology will continue to be better than the web browser, until Chrome, or Chromium and Mozilla, and others really implement and can get access to hardware accelerated decoding and can allow for different types of networking protocol. We always believe that building from the ground up the technology for own on product is the path to the best performance.
FP: Casually speaking, if you want to RPGs and you can’t get to your PC does Parsec allow for people to stream to themselves, like Remote Play?
BB: Yes, of course. The first thing we built a long ago. A lot of people do that. A lot of people play WoW (World of Warcraft) and different [games].
FP: Have you seen worldwide adoption of Parsec or is more localized to the United States?
BB: Parsec is available and used all over the world at this point.
FP: Where do you see Parsec going from here?
BB: We want to build technologies and products that help people gain access to gaming and play gaming that they want to play with their friend. [We want to] make it easier for to hang out with friends online and have meaningful connections with people while playing games. We’re working very much on developing [a] different solution that other companies can use to take advantage of our outstanding technology and just continue to build out our community and making gamers happy and having fun with Parsec.