0:00

That's. The story of are kind of

0:02

creative progress as humanity is like. people

0:05

build these tools. Which. Enables.

0:08

The next group of people to

0:10

focus on a higher level set

0:12

of problems. Just in the last three

0:14

weeks since launch, developers are built

0:16

over twenty thousand new activities on

0:18

the platform and that's generating four billion

0:20

minutes of use and interaction per

0:22

day is the scale is sort

0:24

of mind boggling. What's going on now?

0:27

I think something like ninety three

0:29

percent of Kinsey plays games were

0:31

back when we were kids. It was

0:33

super weird to be playing games.

0:35

We're now seeing some really significant

0:37

examples. Of companies being built entirely on discord.

0:41

Bill Gates. One sad that a

0:43

platform is when the economic value

0:45

of everybody that uses it exceeds

0:47

the value of the company that

0:49

creates it. That definition does that.

0:51

A pretty high bar, but the

0:53

few companies that surpass it, but

0:55

one company does come to mind

0:57

and that is disco. But officially

1:00

starting Twenty Fifteen can really be

1:02

traced back to Two Thousand and

1:04

Nine when Discord Co founder and

1:06

Ceo Jason Citron started building tools

1:08

and infrastructure for games. Fast

1:10

forward to today and Discord now

1:12

has over two hundred million monthly

1:14

active users. Some might even argue

1:16

that Metaverse is actually hear it

1:18

just doesn't quite look like the

1:20

sense. Now. In today's episode,

1:23

you'll get to hear from Jason

1:25

Alongside a sixteen see: general partner

1:27

Andre Mehta you actually sold his

1:29

company Ubiquity Sex to Discord and

1:31

Twenty Twenty One they're on set

1:33

up and ran Discords first dedicated

1:35

Felker platform including launching it's partnership

1:37

with Mint Journey all before joining

1:39

a sixteen he last year. You.

1:41

Can probably very quickly town that

1:44

Jason and Onge have this shared

1:46

history, especially because they got to

1:48

sit down together and are San

1:50

Francisco studio to discuss how discord

1:52

became such a thriving platform. but

1:55

what discord really do differently? Here

1:57

together they discussed community driven product

1:59

develop, So Jason himself went from

2:01

player to developer and their

2:04

focus on extensibility since the very

2:06

beginning. So with Discord's

2:08

recent release of embeddable apps, what

2:11

can we expect now that it's easier than

2:13

ever for a developer to build? If

2:15

I was to go back when I was in

2:17

college, which was almost 20 years ago now, like

2:19

none of that stuff existed. I mean, I built

2:21

games back then and it was like firing up

2:23

C++ and like reading the DirectX APIs and spending

2:25

a week trying to get a window to open

2:27

with a triangle on it. Prior

2:30

to this release, there was of course

2:32

already a flurry of new applications built

2:34

on the back of Discord like Midjourney

2:36

or Leonardo. So let's

2:39

find out what's next. As

2:45

a reminder, the content here is for informational

2:47

purposes only, should not be taken as legal,

2:49

business, tax, or investment advice, or

2:51

be used to evaluate any investment or security,

2:53

and is not directed at any investors or

2:55

potential investors in any A16Z fund. Please

2:58

note that A16Z and its affiliates may

3:00

also maintain investments in the company's discuss

3:02

in this podcast. For more details,

3:04

including a link to our investment, please

3:06

see a16z.com slash. I

3:15

am so excited for this

3:17

episode. Thank you for joining us,

3:19

Jason Citron, CEO of Discord, and dear

3:21

friend, former colleague, and probably

3:23

the person who I know who's tried

3:26

to start game studios the most number

3:28

of times and

3:30

ended up building several successful platforms

3:32

along the way. So

3:34

today we're going to talk about all kinds

3:36

of things focused on developers, infrastructure, the future

3:38

of the Discord platform. But before we get

3:40

to that, for folks who might not be

3:42

as familiar with the crazy story that led

3:44

to here, why don't we go back in

3:46

history. Let's start at the very beginning.

3:49

What was the vision for Discord when

3:51

you first started out? So way

3:53

back in 2012, I was sitting

3:55

around trying to think about what

3:58

could be an exciting business to be. to

4:01

build. And having spent most of my career,

4:03

in fact, all of my career and my

4:05

childhood steeped in video games and multiplayer games,

4:07

I had this hunch that multiplayer

4:10

gaming and gaming in general

4:13

was going to become much bigger than it already

4:15

was at that time. And back in 2012, gaming

4:17

was pretty big, but it was kind of at

4:19

the early innings of mobile and

4:21

still trying to figure out like where

4:23

was gaming going to go. And I

4:26

thought that there'd be an opportunity to

4:28

build a communications app for people who

4:30

play games that would span

4:32

all the platforms and all the devices as

4:35

gaming would become bigger and more cross platform. But

4:37

largely has played out that way. Today in 2024,

4:39

gaming is the largest form

4:43

of entertainment, bigger than music and

4:45

movies combined growing fast. And

4:47

people love to play games. It's gone mainstream. And I

4:49

think something like 93% of Gen Z plays games

4:53

where back when we were kids, it

4:55

was super weird to be playing games. So that

4:58

was kind of where it started. What

5:00

were the moments where you were playing games and you went from

5:02

being a player and a consumer of

5:05

games as a product to going,

5:07

you know what, the tools I'm using here could

5:10

be better. What was the moment where you

5:12

shifted from being player to developer? Well, I

5:15

fell in love with games when I was a little kid

5:17

because they were a way for me to

5:19

connect and spend quality time with people

5:21

in my life. And I remember sitting

5:24

with my dad, I must have been four

5:26

or five years old, this is like late 80s. And

5:28

he introduced me to this game called Where in the World is

5:31

Carmen San Diego on his old

5:33

like a Packard Bell computer. And I just

5:35

remember being so excited about coming home at

5:37

the end of the day, and being able

5:39

to sit with my dad and spend some quality time with him

5:41

exploring this world and trying to find this crazy lady. And

5:44

over the years growing up playing multiplayer games

5:47

on consoles and then on the internet, as

5:49

that became a thing in the late 90s.

5:52

And along the way, I met

5:54

someone who basically was like, you

5:57

know, I know how to make video games as a friend of mine, I was

5:59

like I was like, no, you don't. You

6:02

can't just make video games. And he was like, no, no, check it out. We

6:04

went to my computer and he fired up this thing

6:06

called QBasic and showed me how to draw a circle

6:08

on the screen. And I was like, oh my God,

6:11

that's amazing. I could make video games. And so that

6:13

was kind of when I became an

6:15

engineer and a programmer, and I learned how to code. And

6:17

then fast forward, I went to school, grew up,

6:20

and got into an opportunity where I was able to start a

6:22

company. And through the process of

6:24

building a game on the iPhone, I actually launched

6:26

a game the day the App Store opened in

6:29

2008. One of the first 50 titles on the

6:31

App Store. And that kind of took off like

6:33

crazy. As we now know, mobile has been the

6:35

biggest computing platform in the world. And through that

6:37

journey, realized that I had made a

6:39

fun game. It was called Aurora Faint. The

6:42

technology that we had built, which was kind

6:44

of like leaderboards, chat rooms, login, was

6:46

something that other developers really wanted. And at the

6:49

time, many game developers didn't know how to build

6:51

infrastructure. And I had learned how to do infrastructure

6:53

and also how to make games. So

6:56

we kind of spun out the backend tech and built this social

6:59

network for mobile gaming. This was probably 2009. It's

7:02

called OpenFaint. We opened up Aurora Faint. Lesson about

7:04

branding from that. No one knows how to spell

7:06

that thing. So that was

7:08

kind of the first moment when I started

7:10

building tools and infrastructure

7:12

for games. And that company did

7:15

pretty well. And then in 2012, after

7:18

I had kind of moved on from that, started

7:20

again building another game. But we began as a game

7:22

studio as well in 2012 called Hammer

7:24

and Chisel. And we started the

7:26

game because I thought that the path to building the

7:28

communications app would be to start with a multiplayer game.

7:32

I had this hunch that core long-form gaming was going to

7:34

come to mobile in a big way. And

7:36

so we started building a team-based competitive multiplayer

7:38

game on iPad at the time in 2012.

7:42

And one thing led to another. The game didn't

7:44

really work out. And so

7:46

it led us in late 2014, we started talking

7:49

about what if we just went to market directly

7:51

with the chat app for gaming. And

7:54

my co-founder Stan kind of had the insight for

7:56

what that concept could look like. And we started

7:58

building it in January 2015. and

8:00

then brought it to market in May 2015. And

8:03

that was kind of how it all

8:05

started. There's a theme emerging here,

8:08

right? Where at least twice now you've

8:10

approached building a product as an application developer. You

8:12

could think of a game as an app. And

8:15

you discovered along the way that there's a bunch of

8:17

really hard infrastructure that needs to be built first. Especially

8:19

when it comes to real time multiplayer gaming. The history

8:22

of computing is such that usually real

8:24

time gaming is one of the most demanding

8:26

infrastructure environments. And then you discovered that

8:29

there were a ton of infrastructure problems along the way. And then

8:31

you ended up actually building those tools for

8:33

other people to use. And have since built one

8:35

of the fastest growing,

8:37

biggest, real time communication platforms in

8:39

the world. Which is sort of insane to

8:41

think about the scale of Discord. But when

8:43

you play forward from that moment in 2015 when

8:46

Discord came out and today, how has

8:49

the community on Discord helped shape the

8:52

roadmap? The people actually using the infrastructure,

8:54

whether those are users or developers? Our

8:57

community, our user base has been part

8:59

of the conversation of what we're making

9:01

from the first day. When

9:03

we started talking about building Discord, of

9:05

course we played a lot of multiplayer games ourselves. So we had

9:07

a good sense for what the product should

9:09

be and how it should work. But as

9:12

anyone who is building a startup knows or

9:14

building products, we're building products in service of

9:16

other people. And so we immediately from the

9:18

beginning started talking to our friends and

9:21

their friends. When we showed it to them, even just

9:23

mock ups, what parts got them excited? Which parts seemed

9:25

confusing? And very quickly, once we

9:27

got a prototype off the ground, we

9:29

started giving it to our friends and having them

9:31

try it and seeing what they liked and what

9:33

they didn't like. And oh, crap, we had to

9:35

rebuild the voice tech three times. And we missed

9:38

an important set of features that we thought maybe

9:40

was not important, but turns out it was. And

9:42

so that was kind of part of the ethos

9:44

for how we built from the beginning. And

9:47

then over the years, we've continued to build products that

9:49

way in a sense that we always try to come

9:51

back to what are we hearing from

9:53

our customers, from our users, and the

9:55

different types of people who use our products. And then

9:57

how do we kind of muck that with what

9:59

are we? We excited to build for ourselves. And

10:02

then of course, what do we think will be great for us as a

10:04

business because we are a company. So along

10:07

the way, there have been many,

10:09

many, many moments when large shifts

10:11

have happened in our roadmap because

10:13

of customers. So I'll give you an example. Initially

10:15

when we built Discord, it was very focused on being

10:17

a voice and text chat app

10:20

for guilds, people who play games in groups

10:22

of like 15 people. And

10:24

actually the max group size on Discord, I

10:26

think was like 30 people, maybe 50, it

10:29

was pretty low. And we realized

10:31

pretty quickly from talking to people that they

10:33

wanted to use Discord as

10:35

almost like an IRC, like internet relay

10:37

chat kind of public chat room replacement.

10:40

And in that context, what we saw was people

10:42

were filling their servers up with 50 people and then they

10:44

were like, I can't add more people. What's going on? And I

10:46

was like, oh crap, we got to

10:48

make this work for folks. So we invested in raising

10:50

the cap and adding more infrastructure to support that. And

10:53

then developers started building moderation bots

10:56

and extending these Discord servers with

10:58

other capabilities that we never

11:01

even imagined that was made possible because we

11:03

had an open kind of API powering the

11:05

platform. So along the

11:07

way, many of these things happened. Like

11:10

these communities got big, Generative AI became

11:12

a big thing on Discord. The crypto

11:14

community was pretty big for a season

11:16

on Discord. But throughout all of

11:18

it, gaming and playing games with your friends and

11:20

hanging out with your friends was always

11:23

the main thing that people were doing, even

11:25

if they would go spend time in a

11:27

public community or futzing around with Generative AI

11:29

or something like that. Yeah, I think

11:31

one of the most underappreciated things about Discord

11:34

is that the product has found

11:36

a way to do two

11:38

things at once that almost

11:41

no other companies are able to

11:43

do at scale, which is have

11:46

a singular focus on a particular type

11:48

of user and their need. In this

11:50

case, what you said was

11:52

allowing friends to spend time together while

11:55

playing games, while also making

11:58

the platform and the product so exciting.

12:00

danceable, For. Other people to bring

12:02

their own use cases the platform and

12:04

I remember a couple years ago I

12:07

was talking to Stand and. He.

12:09

Brought up a screenshot of the first version of

12:11

the homepage you guys had put together and on

12:13

the front page on day one. You.

12:15

Had. A call out for integrations

12:17

and as the case, you hadn't open a

12:19

be I on day one as part of

12:21

the hero marketing and so clearly you are

12:23

thinking about making the platform extensible for all

12:25

other kinds of use cases. Ten years ago,

12:27

where did that come from and. Do

12:30

you doc? eluded? But the challenges of put

12:32

building a delightful product for users first while

12:34

also maintaining this extensibility for other kinds of

12:36

use cases that you may not have designed

12:38

for explicitly. Yeah. The extensibility

12:40

was built them from the beginning and it's

12:42

cool that you i'm back and looked at

12:44

I think if you go to the way

12:46

back machine of you can find it still

12:48

from like twenty fifteen. The idea was that

12:50

we knew that people. Are going to

12:52

want to? Build. Huston

12:55

integrations with different games as part

12:57

of thinking about like what the

12:59

group chat for gaming look like

13:01

so we're imagining. If you have

13:03

would say like and Eve online

13:05

corporation which they screw people playing

13:07

this outer space massively multiplayer game

13:09

or you're playing Final Fantasy Online

13:11

which is a fantasy adventure game.

13:13

These different games has. Data.

13:15

And things you might want to pull into your groups. Had

13:17

experience for the we knew we were not going to build.

13:20

All. Of these things for the hundreds or thousands

13:22

of games the people my care about. So that

13:24

was kind of one thing. We're like we've gotta

13:27

make it so other folks can integrate. Their.

13:29

Custom stuff from their games into

13:32

discord. And then related to

13:34

that was this insight that I have from

13:36

being observer in the gaming business for so

13:38

long. Which is that. In games

13:40

there's this concept of modeling where people

13:42

can mod games and with that basically

13:45

means as a developer will create a

13:47

game and then oftentimes ship with it.

13:49

The tools they use to make the

13:51

game I think it's software popular as

13:53

this in the early days with dunes

13:55

kind of person. I really remember getting

13:57

big in the call them wide files

13:59

his whole scene on my of the

14:01

download wide fi and they started packing

14:03

up and selling them and it added

14:05

a ton of a life's to the

14:08

game. And today now when we look

14:10

at the top titles that people play,

14:12

a lot of them actually began as

14:14

community driven mods like Counter Strike, Team

14:16

Fortress, League of Legends, Ceta Roleplaying Cost

14:18

The list goes on. Fortnight began with

14:20

version for of a mod that isn't

14:22

came from a game called Arma three

14:24

many years ago. So this idea that

14:26

give your community tools to create and

14:29

customize and extend. Your game or if

14:31

your software and are going to surprise you and

14:33

take it in places you never would have expected

14:35

was just telling the me seen how that's how

14:37

you make good software rice. So when we built

14:39

this court it's sort of seemed obvious to us

14:41

that we wanted to create any p I that

14:44

allow developers to extend discord to be more creative

14:46

with the to do things with it we never

14:48

would have expected. Some of the things that we

14:50

expected were like. Connecting. To the

14:52

eve online back and you can have

14:54

your own forum or pulling in world

14:56

boss spawns and as notifications but the

14:59

stuff we never expected was like. Gendered.

15:01

As a I, who could I guess

15:03

that might be. I'm in now. We're

15:06

seeing many years after you made those

15:08

investments in the craft of designing a

15:10

delightfully be I'd Fantastic tutorials are great

15:12

developer experience for people to mod discord

15:14

itself. We're now seeing some. Really?

15:17

Significant example: the companies being built and

15:19

rt underscored. The. Discord platform

15:21

has two hundred million monthly active users.

15:24

And. That's led to. Entirely.

15:26

New companies being built on top with the

15:28

open architecture describe people may be familiar with

15:30

my journey as one example. Yet.

15:33

And there's a few other ones to mid

15:35

journeys the most famous one. It's like a

15:37

canonical example of how this the habit like.

15:39

We have this open platform where we're allowing

15:41

people developers to customize and and expands. It's

15:43

I think the mid your any folks had

15:45

obviously working on them all for while they

15:47

try bring it to market as your the

15:49

ways and then they just tried the Discord

15:51

server and a discord bots and then this

15:53

was the example of exactly what I'm talking

15:55

about. I never would have predicted that you.

15:57

It has. Age and or the I in the

15:59

first place. Like what a crazy thing we've

16:01

created computer that can do the things and

16:03

then to that someone would figure out how

16:06

to take advantage of the magic of a

16:08

discord server. And. Our platform and build.

16:10

Such a cool experience And there's a handful

16:12

of these now. So yeah, it's been a

16:14

pretty cool thing to see. My Journeys.

16:16

One example of a gendered a model. It's a deck.

16:18

The image. Models. We've. Also

16:20

seen an explosion of Dex The Music Tools

16:23

as an example. How extensible discord as what

16:25

other kind of use cases are you seeing

16:27

emerge on the platform that you're excited about.

16:30

The. Tenor The I. Swear. Category

16:32

is exciting for us. the you know we

16:34

really come back to this idea of people

16:36

mostly on discord, spend their time hang out

16:38

with their friends and is kind of smaller

16:40

invite only spaces with less than sixteen people

16:42

per se. So in that context when I

16:45

think about generally I tools and using our

16:47

platform I really think about what are developers

16:49

creating that gives groups of friends more fun

16:51

things to do. and so one really cool

16:53

thing we see with the generally I stuff

16:55

is people take the bots and bring them

16:57

into their invite only servers and in the

17:00

in you them to create an explorer and

17:02

work on projects with their friends in a

17:04

more and a private setting as opposed to

17:06

being in the sort of the public chaos.

17:08

frankly have some of these large servers. but

17:10

other really cool experience as we see our

17:12

things like way to listen to music the

17:14

other soundcloud has a really cool bought that

17:17

you can use to play music when you're

17:19

and voice shots for example and we're working

17:21

with some other partners to try to bring

17:23

more music to the platform. There's a bunch

17:25

of games the people have made that are

17:27

pretty cool and many more coming. We just

17:29

actually launched. A couple weeks

17:32

ago a new kind of said a

17:34

capabilities for the platform that. Will. Allow

17:36

developers to go kind of beyond the

17:38

text box and build these. Rich kind

17:40

of visual interactive experience is powered by

17:42

Channel Five see Kabila web app and

17:44

essentially deploy it into the context of

17:46

discord. And so we're seeing lots of

17:49

really exciting stuff starting to get built.

17:51

That. I think we'll give people a lot really fun

17:53

things to do with their friends. Led Senate

17:55

Gop minutes on that. This is something you and

17:57

I spent years working on together. If we did,

18:00

The data and I picked fitness. Let's

18:02

take people looted behind the garden of

18:04

like what it takes actually go from

18:06

the moment where. We. Realize

18:08

that. Developers.

18:11

Wanted. To express their creativity beyond just

18:13

the command line like interface which is what

18:15

bots were initially designed around as a form

18:17

factor and going from there to expanding mint

18:19

are canvas for them to the whole screen.

18:21

really? with web apps. Yellow. Years

18:23

ago when the boss platform sorry to get

18:26

popular. There. Is actually a hacker project

18:28

at our company. so we do this thing every

18:30

are called Hockley where we basically stop or normal

18:32

work and everyone gets together. We have like a

18:34

little kind of creativity festival. cessna say describe it's

18:37

and weddings. Twenty eighteen was the year that I'm

18:39

thinking about less and like tents in our office.

18:41

Food like a whole cool cat was food and

18:43

stuff and one of the groups that year. We.

18:46

Had the idea of wouldn't it be cool

18:48

if we added in Html five canvas to

18:51

our ass platform in and people could like

18:53

may games and do other interesting stuff. and

18:55

says there was a team at Built this

18:57

and I was always like that's a really

19:00

cool idea, we've gotta explore that but. As.

19:02

Company Building goes. You have a long list

19:04

of ideas and you have to prioritize when

19:06

you get to them. So a couple years

19:08

later the time was right to look at

19:10

the idea and that's when we met you

19:12

actually working on your own start up at

19:14

the time. And. Work and a

19:17

building this as a standalone project and week

19:19

after some conversations I was like we should

19:21

just do together. So we acquired your company

19:23

and then we created a team and really

19:25

formalize this idea of like how do we

19:27

take our platform. From. Kind of

19:29

the text based era. In. Said

19:31

visual, rich interactive experience era.

19:34

And to start rather than just opening it

19:36

up we actually built a few games ourselves

19:38

to really test the platform, make sure that

19:41

it was designed well at work for player

19:43

that the interaction loops for good and that

19:45

to the couple years to kinda sorta I'll

19:47

out and now we're at the point where

19:49

okay right open up so it's and developer

19:51

previous it's been a journey. Yeah it's been

19:54

a fun journey. Yeah okay we're gonna girl

19:56

move a deeper they'll have. Okay I remember

19:58

one of the most exciting part. of

20:00

working at Discord was that

20:02

we had this incredible respect for

20:04

infrastructure. The company had

20:07

built its own WebRTC streaming service, had

20:09

built its own voice and video infra.

20:12

We built a bunch of serverless networking for developers

20:14

for the apps SDK. And

20:16

I remember there are these moments

20:18

in the product engineering cycle

20:20

when you're building infrastructure that you

20:23

inevitably have to ask yourself, well, what is this going

20:25

to be used for? And

20:27

I remember having debates with you about how to answer

20:29

that question and prioritize the most important

20:31

features. And so we came up with this ritual

20:34

of jam sessions, if you remember, where the team

20:37

that was working on tools and infra and SDKs for

20:39

the developers would come in and jam with you where

20:41

you would often role play the developer. So

20:43

today, fast forward, I'm going to ask

20:45

you to pretend we're in a jam session. And

20:48

we just launched the activities SDK, the embedded apps

20:50

SDK, and now you're a developer. And I'm going

20:52

to ask you now, what would you like to

20:54

go build with this entirely new set of capabilities

20:56

that you've been handed by Discord? So

20:58

I guess the way that I think about this is first, like,

21:01

what am I going to build? I try to think about what

21:03

do I as a consumer want? It's

21:05

almost like two steps even past the infrastructure.

21:07

It's like the developers are sort of thinking

21:09

like they're serving their customers. So they

21:12

have to take their hat off, right, and then

21:14

put on their consumer hat. And so for me,

21:16

it's starting to think about what kind of, you

21:19

know, games I might want to play and how they could

21:21

fit into my Discord servers in fun ways. And for me,

21:23

I really would love someone

21:25

to build some multiplayer titles

21:27

that don't require a lot of

21:30

time investment, but have really

21:32

cool moments of storytelling that you can

21:34

interact with your friends asynchronously around that

21:37

sort of weaves into the Discord experience

21:39

through text and with the visuals as

21:41

well. I have a small side project I'm

21:43

working on right now, which is a game kind of like this. It's like

21:45

a arcade shooter that

21:48

has kind of a leaderboard mechanic, but with a

21:50

modern kind of roguelike vibe on

21:52

it. Anyway, it's just like random stuff that I'm

21:54

making as a side both to sort of dog

21:56

food and test our platform. But part of this

21:59

is how I get myself in the mood. mind

22:01

space of what our developers want, what might their

22:03

customers want, so that I can give good feedback

22:05

to our team who is also doing this so

22:07

we can serve people effectively. One of

22:09

the things that I think you've always been pretty good

22:11

at doing is asking the question of what

22:14

is possible on Discord that isn't possible

22:17

elsewhere. And you're often

22:19

able to laser in and hone in

22:21

on the specific capabilities that are ultimately

22:23

technical primitives, but exposed

22:26

to users in a way that allows them to do something

22:28

with their friends they couldn't do before in a way that's

22:30

easier or faster or better or more convenient. And

22:32

that's how things like persistent stage channels happen, right? And

22:35

that's how forum channels happen, and that's

22:37

how the embedded app SDK happened. And

22:39

so as you're working on crafting your

22:41

side project right now, what in your

22:43

mind at the top two or three

22:45

things that the Discord-embedded platform

22:48

that you just launched really shines at that's

22:50

hard to do elsewhere? I

22:52

mean, the magic, I think, is the fact that you

22:54

have the social context of the space you're in, right?

22:57

So it's really, really easy for someone to

22:59

pick up a title, and then that game

23:01

can depend on the fact that there's a

23:03

group of people that are

23:06

connected to the person playing it, and you have

23:08

access to that data in a privacy-safe way. Unlike,

23:10

let's say, other games where maybe you log in

23:13

or you get a user to come into

23:15

your game, and then you have to get them to maybe build

23:17

a friends list or to invite their friends

23:19

to play. In the context of Discord, because of

23:21

the way the games work, they're

23:23

instant and they have the social

23:25

context, you could build a game

23:27

loop where one person plays, and

23:29

then immediately the result of that play

23:31

session is other people get exposed to

23:34

the game and they can play

23:36

it, and they don't have to go

23:38

do anything to be able to really set that up

23:40

because the friend brought it into the server. So

23:43

I think about cool mechanics like leaderboards

23:45

and challenges and these kind of things

23:47

that really, really depend on

23:49

having this group of people that have

23:51

access to this shared space

23:54

both synchronously and

23:56

then also on the go in bite-sized ways. So

23:58

it's a different kind of interaction model. So I

24:01

could open my phone, play a game, and

24:03

then when I get back to my computer,

24:05

I could pick it up, and then you

24:07

could play from your phone when you're somewhere else if you want

24:09

to come and compete with me when you have a few minutes

24:11

in your spare time. So this is

24:13

the kind of model that I'm playing around with with this title,

24:16

but part of what I'm so excited

24:18

about with these tools is to see the creativity that

24:20

other people bring. I know what would be interesting to

24:22

me, but much like when we

24:24

designed the platform for Discord

24:26

in the beginning, so many of the cool things

24:29

that happened with it, I would never have predicted.

24:31

So I'm most excited to see what

24:33

people do that I don't even think about.

24:35

I think it's worth taking a beat there to just

24:37

recap what you just said. Up until now, for a

24:39

developer to build in a cross-platform experience like that, it

24:41

takes years. And the end result,

24:44

I think, is what you're describing is that

24:46

a product or an app, whether it's

24:48

a game, like the one you're building,

24:50

or a non-game like Mid-Journey, can literally

24:52

go from zero to, I think Mid-Journey

24:54

is now at more than 20 million users in the server,

24:57

or about there. Yeah, I think their public

24:59

server is, yeah, it's about that size. It's pretty large.

25:01

Okay, there we go. In about,

25:04

in essentially less than a year. Yeah,

25:06

you should write the marketing briefer. Well,

25:09

I mean, you did, I guess you actually did. I

25:12

mean, you're spot on. I mean, I think that's

25:15

what's so magical about it is the trends that

25:17

entertainment and gaming in particular have been on for

25:19

the last decade are cross-platform. Like

25:21

people are more and more expecting games to

25:23

not be tethered to devices. It's

25:25

just a screen. Like you should be able to switch screens and play

25:27

the same experience. You want your content

25:29

and your progress to go across those screens. You want

25:32

your friends and your social graph to go across those

25:34

screens. You want the things you bought to go across

25:36

those screens. And these trends

25:38

are happening sort of in the world broadly in gaming

25:41

too, but what we're trying to

25:43

do is package that all together in a really easy

25:45

to pick up way, where not only

25:48

do the games have all those things, but we

25:50

also bring the social graph to the game. We

25:53

manage off for you because it's built into discord. It gets

25:55

deployed on every platform that we're on, which is most of

25:57

them. We have payments built in on the

25:59

platforms where the platform. forms don't and discovery and all this

26:01

stuff. So yeah, I'm just excited to

26:03

see what people can make. You know, that's the

26:06

story of our kind of creative progress as humanity

26:08

is like people build these tools, which

26:10

enables the next group of people to

26:13

focus on a higher level set

26:15

of problems. So we've extracted out

26:17

some of this infrastructure for folks so people can

26:19

spend more time on their gameplay

26:21

and the creativity of that then futzing around with

26:23

auth and building social graphs and

26:25

all this kind of stuff. One of

26:28

the most amazing things about building in an

26:30

openly extensible way is that you get the

26:32

combinatorial creativity, the explosion of your primitives, your

26:34

platform with other tools that may be coming

26:36

online or maturing at that moment in time

26:38

and sitting here in 2024, if you just

26:42

contrasted to the version of Jason in

26:44

college who was building his own games,

26:46

right? And you hand him all the

26:49

open infra of discourse developer platform and

26:51

the recent kind of explosion in these

26:53

creative generative models that can

26:55

allow you to turn text into images

26:58

and text into audio and allow code

27:00

generation and so on. When you look

27:02

at how the production pipeline of building

27:04

an entire experience like a game has

27:06

changed with generative models and you combine

27:08

that with the Lego blocks of discord,

27:11

what are the kinds of new game formats

27:13

or new types of interactive entertainment

27:15

that you think are possible today that just weren't possible

27:17

maybe when you were in college? I

27:19

mean, there's so much that has changed. It's

27:21

kind of amazing. Like you think about it and

27:24

today, between, like you

27:26

said, the generative AI tools, social

27:28

and distribution infrastructure like app stores and something

27:30

like discord, right? Plus the modern game engines,

27:33

we can't leave those out the kind of

27:35

game engine you can get off the shelf

27:37

today, whether it's Unity, Unreal, Godot,

27:39

phaser, all these things. They're just incredible. I

27:41

mean, if I was to go back when

27:43

I was in college, which was almost 20

27:45

years ago now, like none of

27:48

that stuff existed. I mean, I built games back

27:50

then and it was like firing up C++ and

27:52

like reading the DirectX APIs and spending a week

27:54

trying to get a window to open with a

27:56

triangle on it. Like, I think what ends

27:58

up happening is because people

28:00

can be so much more productive and

28:03

the markets are so much bigger. I

28:05

think we're going to start to see more

28:08

and more games that are focused

28:10

on more and more kind of niche topics

28:12

and niche mechanics. Because if you think

28:14

about it, big games get big

28:16

budgets, so they tend to be less risky.

28:19

Smaller games can be more

28:21

risky because the budget dynamics are different. You

28:23

could imagine a world where one developer could

28:26

build an entire game like Stardew

28:29

Valley, which was one developer, but I think it took him like

28:31

five or six years. The next Stardew

28:33

Valley might be built by one guy in a

28:35

year. And if

28:37

you imagine what that means is you may

28:39

get 10 Stardew Valleys and they

28:42

may all have different themes and topics. So we

28:44

may all just get more

28:46

entertainment that's customized to our particular sort

28:49

of proclivities because so many more people

28:51

are making games. So

28:54

the cost is down and then the markets are bigger,

28:56

so there's more people than ever who are looking for

28:58

this stuff. Yeah, this is also I think one of

29:00

the most underappreciated parts of Discord, which is it

29:03

has unlocked, paradoxically, niche at

29:05

scale. Through

29:07

the server context, there are now thousands

29:09

and thousands of niche communities on Discord

29:12

who have then found people who love

29:14

each of those niches globally. And

29:16

what always struck me when we were looking at

29:18

the activity in these servers and what kinds of

29:20

apps and bots they were using is the

29:23

extensibility of the platform allows those niches

29:26

to do things with the platform and build a bot or an

29:28

app that's custom designed for that

29:30

niche community's use case. I think there's

29:33

one you told me about a while ago, which

29:35

was the Harry Potter fan fiction server, right,

29:37

which had an app that that community

29:39

had built for the friends who are

29:41

huge Harry Potter fans to roleplay being

29:43

at Hogwarts. I can remember that one.

29:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if I'm

29:48

asking you to channel your like inner will write,

29:50

for example, you know, one of the most successful

29:52

game genres of all time has been simulation, right?

29:55

The Sims, all the

29:57

tycoon games that allow people

29:59

to experience. this world

30:01

building desire where they're able to almost

30:04

use games as a tool for creativity. Where

30:07

the game is itself building and creating with

30:09

other people. Roblox of course has done a

30:11

phenomenal job at doing that in a pre-genitive

30:13

world. Minecraft. There's Minecraft,

30:15

Roblox, there's Sims. Given

30:18

how massive those genres were in a pre-generative world,

30:20

when you give the generative models to a

30:22

developer plus the insane distribution of Discord, 200 million

30:24

people on day one, do you

30:26

think we're going to see a new kind of genre there

30:28

of something that blends simulation, kind

30:31

of like the Sims with real life with your

30:33

real friends group? I mean it's

30:35

entirely possible. I think that these things are really hard

30:37

to protect. Right. And

30:39

as someone who makes more on the tool side of

30:41

things, what I think is definitely

30:44

going to happen is that because it's going

30:46

to be so much easier to create, we're

30:48

going to see more random stuff. So the

30:50

chances of something interesting happening I think are

30:52

going up. But the things that

30:54

sort of cause new kinds of games

30:56

genres to emerge are oftentimes changes in

30:58

distribution, business model, or

31:00

production capabilities. Right. And

31:03

so I think in this moment we're seeing some

31:05

of these things change, like Discord is offering a

31:07

different kind of distribution mechanism with

31:09

different context. Generative AI is

31:11

definitely changing the landscape for how people

31:14

produce games today. And so I

31:16

think we're probably going to see something interesting happen.

31:19

But yeah, I don't know. It's hard to predict. Yeah. This

31:22

is the most fun part about working on dev platforms,

31:24

right? You get surprised. Yeah. Okay. Just to

31:27

take a step back for context, the

31:29

Discord team finally launched in full

31:31

general availability after years of crafting

31:33

and honing the developer experience, the

31:35

embedded app SDK on March 18th. And

31:38

if I have my numbers right, just in the last

31:40

three weeks since launch, developers have

31:42

built over 20,000 new activities

31:45

on the platform and that's generating

31:47

4 billion minutes of user interaction per day.

31:49

And scale is sort of mind boggling. What's

31:51

going on? Why is this resonating so strongly

31:54

right now? And what are the top emergent

31:56

behaviors you were seeing in the first few

31:58

weeks? I think it's resonating because... because developers

32:00

intuitively understand a lot of this

32:02

that we've been talking about. They're

32:04

looking for distribution channels with

32:07

captive audiences on the other side with low

32:09

production costs, so they can explore their own

32:11

creativity and build products for themselves and their

32:14

friends and bring those to market. And the

32:16

games industry, I think, is in an interesting

32:18

situation right now in particular. So

32:21

this new channel, we thought people were gonna be

32:23

excited about it, and then at Game Developers Conference

32:25

a couple weeks ago when we announced it, I

32:28

was actually surprised at how much it resonated with

32:30

developers. We had a couple talks there, and the

32:32

lines were out the door. So as

32:35

far as what people are building, a lot of the

32:37

things that I know folks are working on have

32:39

not actually released yet since we opened that up, so

32:42

I don't wanna say anything that hasn't come to market

32:44

yet, but I think that

32:46

20,000 number sounds big, and it's exciting, but I

32:48

think in reality, what it signals to me is

32:50

a lot of excitement and curiosity, and we'll sort

32:52

of see how many of those come to market

32:54

and what that'll be. I suspect that there are

32:56

probably 20,000 people poking around,

32:59

I think there's thousands of them that

33:01

are actually really making something, and

33:03

so I expect we'll probably see hundreds of those things

33:05

come to market over the next six or eight months,

33:07

but without getting into specifics, some of them are

33:09

interesting new ways to stream games, and

33:13

some of them are new games, and some of

33:15

them are just interactive experiences, ways to enjoy different

33:17

types of entertainment together, and some of

33:19

them are silly things like comic book

33:21

related projects, and then there's a lot of stuff in

33:23

there that I actually haven't even seen, because there's so

33:25

much. I was talking to a

33:27

developer at GDC who is working on a Discord

33:30

embedded activity that is tinkering with some

33:32

of these new generative models that you were describing, and

33:34

one of the things he crystallized for me, which I

33:36

think kind of maps the experience we had in the

33:38

early days of mid-journey launching on the

33:40

platform, was this idea that game

33:43

development and sort of AI app development

33:46

have this very strong similarity in the

33:48

development process, which is you

33:50

pre-train a model, and then you

33:52

put it out with your community, And

33:55

then what the community does with the early days

33:57

of the model, and what outputs of the model

33:59

they prefer. Helps you then

34:01

sort of run a reinforcement learning loop.

34:03

To. Then improve the model as giving users what

34:06

they like. And. That's very similar

34:08

to the game sort of process right

34:10

where you put out a soft launch

34:12

title usually would live ups in South

34:14

Launch and then you start seeing which

34:17

parts of the multiplayer experience your community

34:19

likes and then you basically pipe that

34:21

into future live optimizers right? If you

34:23

had to describe why the discord. Platform.

34:26

As. Sound. So much

34:28

success with Gen Vi developers is a

34:30

fundamentally something similar about the game development

34:32

production process and a Ice. App

34:34

development that is so similar. That's.

34:37

Resulted in discord, basically hosting one of

34:39

the world's most successful consumer ai business

34:42

right now, which Comintern. Discussing Point:

34:44

I think both of those things make sense,

34:46

but actually think of using Mallow Bet there's

34:48

another interesting trend that this is kind of

34:51

part of which I think is this idea

34:53

of consumers wanting to be closer to the

34:55

people creating the things that they use in

34:57

their lives. And it's actually kind of a

35:00

broader I think dynamic of cocreation with consumers

35:02

as you're building products price. So I think

35:04

in the case of a I, there's quite

35:06

literally it like a direct feedback loop. Or

35:08

I think a lot of these models are

35:11

using sums up and thumbs down type reactions

35:13

on the outlets. To directly feedback and

35:15

improve the model. In the case of games it's

35:17

like a little one step removed were perhaps the

35:20

players are talking with the developers and they're using

35:22

the products and they're giving them feedback and I

35:24

know a lot of Debs used his court to

35:26

do early plate us and they hop on voice

35:29

sad and they show off build and they spend

35:31

time with their users but I also hear startups

35:33

doing it and other companies doing i two notches.

35:35

Games I think gaming in a I kind of

35:38

at the forefront of this but we see lots

35:40

of other tools. There's like a command line app

35:42

that I use as an engineer. Called

35:44

Work that has a Discord Server and they hang

35:46

out with their community in there and talk about

35:48

feature improvements and how to make their product better

35:51

and it just goes on on on. I think

35:53

the trend is actually that consumers. Want

35:55

to have. Say. And influence

35:57

over the products they build and it.

36:00

The car that as a product creator had

36:02

in a direct line of see back with

36:04

a tight feedback loop with your early adopters

36:06

really helps you say put your building and

36:08

make it better so it ends up being

36:10

i think this really powerful and a back

36:12

and forth right where you can improve your

36:14

product. People. Get excited about

36:16

it. You build evangelists and then. When.

36:18

You do go to market and sort a

36:20

long as you have this sort of built

36:22

in community energy that can help spread the

36:25

word around and sometimes the things will lead

36:27

into like Kickstarter is right, patriarch in other

36:29

stuff that is this whole sorta like community

36:31

driven product development saying. That. I think.

36:33

Discord. as part of or it may be helping

36:36

drive in some way but. It's another

36:38

one of those insisting, emergent. Things.

36:40

He coming back to the topic of like. He.

36:42

Build these you platforms and these tools

36:45

with something in mind. And

36:47

then other interesting things can happen with that in

36:49

a week. Again we really started are focused on.

36:52

Being. A place for people to come together and

36:54

play games with their friends. And that is still

36:56

the bulk of what people do today. But.

36:58

All these other interesting things happen right?

37:01

Company. Setting up servers to do code of

37:03

album with their consumers? Well, that's super cool.

37:06

There's. This company that I have the chance to work

37:08

with as an investor called Luma. It's

37:10

agenda to be. I modeled and before they even

37:12

had a website. Or a mobile app

37:14

the launched as a discord up and as

37:16

think what that. Resulted in was

37:19

in three or four days the at thirty

37:21

forty thousand people in the Comunismo a staff

37:23

of whom were from the games industry and

37:25

half who weren't. And

37:28

started. Using the model

37:30

in ways that didn't expect and allowed

37:32

them to realize that there was a

37:34

much broader set of uses for their

37:36

tool. And then that began a dialectic

37:38

that allowed them to then change the

37:40

focus or tweet that list of priorities

37:42

and they're frightened. Open road map than

37:44

ship that to that discord user base.

37:46

And when I saw that happening, I

37:48

realized there's this art in software development

37:50

of finding product, market said or non

37:52

retina. We used to talk about this

37:54

concept of remember of the highest expectation

37:56

user yeah, that a taxi And it

37:58

is remarkably. Hard. Find a check

38:00

sees the take time or the day

38:03

to get attention of users today. Early

38:05

on, but Discord is such a phenomenal duel at

38:07

aggregating these people in one place who care about

38:09

what you're building. That than the speed at which

38:11

you can interact with them is unbelievable. While.

38:14

The appeals process had three. Steps.

38:17

You idea with your community than your launch and

38:19

then you find a waiter. Actually Mana doesn't turn

38:21

entered sustainable business. You saw the first two parts

38:23

that journey what you think the last my looks

38:25

like on discordant. So. Our focus really

38:27

right now, starting with this indebted

38:30

ASS launch a few weeks ago,

38:32

is to bring to market the

38:34

full loop of Had A. As.

38:36

A developer billed as a sustainable growing business

38:38

on discourse buy and sell. Right now we have

38:40

all the parts and much of it isn't

38:42

developer preview and it can be rolling out over

38:45

the next few months. In that will begin with

38:47

how do you get your game listed in

38:49

our app directory and in our app launcher which

38:51

sees millions and millions and millions of people

38:53

everyday coming there a to find fun things

38:55

to do with their friends and ways to customize

38:57

their server and then once they have added

38:59

your app addy make my and so we

39:01

have in our own titles of were running payments

39:04

in. we have payments available to some apps

39:06

to days. You'll be able to directly monetize if

39:08

discourse on a phone that will run through the

39:10

phone payment systems on desktop. We have our own

39:12

stuff that we've built that you'll be able to

39:15

plug into seal get a sort of the expected

39:17

modernization has that you'd want out of the box

39:19

and then reengagement through there and then all of

39:21

back and dashboards in reporting is that that you'd

39:23

expect so you'll be able to build and launch

39:26

him on a ties into the whole loop as

39:28

a developer on discord and your apps for work.

39:30

And this is another one those things where when

39:32

we went in talks a lot of the people

39:34

who make apps and bought them to score. Today

39:36

many of them have been over the years

39:39

using off platform payment mechanism to try to

39:41

cobbled together whether it's to setting up there

39:43

are a website and implementing them to my

39:45

strife or trying to get people to go

39:47

to patron or whatever. but all the things

39:49

are super high friction for customers were the

39:51

gotta go off platform log and do a

39:53

whole bunch of nonsense and any of the

39:55

bill all the stuff A manages so what

39:57

we've done as we've created an easy one.

40:00

The solution inside a discord that works just

40:02

like you'd expect any off sort of work

40:04

were consumer can either purchase a one time

40:06

transaction in your app was make a subscription

40:08

seats ahead of decide how you want to

40:10

monetize your service for whatever makes sense for

40:12

you're. Looking. Back over the.

40:14

Than yours, that discord has been

40:16

around for this story of discord

40:19

has been consistently observing what the

40:21

biggest pain points. Of people

40:23

trying to communicate and do things. the love

40:25

with their friends and making just. Ten.

40:27

Times easier. And. This craft of

40:29

giving people a way to do what

40:31

they're already trying to do buy duct

40:33

taping are combining different tools all in

40:35

one place. While making for discord, doesn't get

40:38

become bloated, doesn't become slower, doesn't become.

40:40

More. Expensive has been this remarkable journey

40:43

of kind of. Ruthlessly

40:45

making. Where. People are trying to

40:47

do already easier and easier in one place. Yeah.

40:50

That's the journey of. I think most

40:52

great products and services are like how

40:54

do you make it so they were

40:56

some is trying to do is better,

40:58

faster and cheaper to sit right. Everyone

41:00

has the journey so we often talk

41:02

about removing objections are reducing friction in

41:04

the process for a person is trying

41:06

to accomplish something and whether that's a

41:08

and user who wants to open her

41:10

up and below quickly message their friends

41:12

or whether that's a developer who's looking

41:14

to build and deploy their app or

41:16

some creative project they're working on to

41:19

people. So. We just loves

41:21

that we get the opportunity to wake

41:23

up every day and help people spend

41:25

time with their friends and play games

41:27

in enjoy life mean that's what it's

41:29

about. I can't wait to

41:31

see where people both And maybe we'll check a

41:33

year from today and in so twenty thousand as

41:35

it's gonna be two hundred thousand. Accessibility of the

41:38

Mighty Rough Some pretty amazing stuff already on the

41:40

platform. Am so excited for first me as a

41:42

developer to get started on my psychotic this weekend.

41:44

Cost of Things have me us. Thanks for Common.

41:50

If you like this episode if you meet it

41:52

is or. How this goes out:

41:54

share with a friend or if. You're

41:56

feeling really ambitious? He can leave

41:58

us review free. Dot

42:01

Com/he is easy. You

42:04

know, candidly producing a podcast can sometimes feel

42:06

like they're just talking into. Avoid is if

42:08

you did like this episode. If you like

42:10

any of her episodes, Please let us

42:13

out. For Phoenix.