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Xfire Overview February 05, 2004 Jakub Wojnarowicz |
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Summary: Tired of the hassles involved in organizing your friends to play on a single server? Sick of playing alone because you don't know if your buddies are playing at all, never mind where, what or if the server is full? Xfire is for you. We explain how this amazing instant messaging client is going to do revolutionize multiplayer PC gaming like Xbox Live did for consoles, and we talk with Dennis "Thresh" Fong about his involvement with the project.
 Setup | Page:: ( 1 / 2 ) |
Conversations
Jon: Yo man, you up for some ET?
Jakub: Sweet, I haven’t played that in weeks. Where’d ya wanna play?
Jon: Umm… lemme fire up All-Seeing-Eye. Crap, NF and VDP don’t seem to be running, and JZ is full. Go to [obscure server name full of squares and ASCII symbols].
Jakub: WTF? Where the hell do you see that?
Jon: Sort by name, scroll down to the 2nd page and it’s halfway down.
[pause for 30 seconds]
Jakub: Don’t see it. What resolution you at?
Jon: 16x12. Look, just remember the IP address…
Jakub: Fat chance, the only IP address I remember is 127.0.0.1. Crap, I’m at 1024 b/c my good monitor fried itself. Lemme scroll down some more. Ah, found it. Cya there.
[2 minutes later]
Jakub: Dude, where are you?
Jon: I was telling Chris and the guys how to get there, then the server got full.
Jakub: Ugh, let’s start over.
Sound familiar?
How many times has the above happened to you? You’re trying to play a game, your favorites are full or offline, or you just installed and you need to find a server to play on. You’re trying to organize your friends to meet somewhere, using AIM or ICQ, combined with Ventrilo and All-Seeing-Eye or the internal browser. By the time you get everyone organized, the server is full or something comes up.
Or say you’re late to the party. Everyone is playing Headquarters in Call of Duty, but you have no idea – they all look like they’re offline, or are “Away”. Your only option is to be an ass and call, interrupting a perfectly good gaming session, or you could logon to the Ventrilo server and interrupt the team chat. Neither is a particularly elegant solution. No wonder Gabe and Tycho won’t shut up about Xbox Live, along with everyone else who’s tried it.
Xfire
This is where Xfire comes in. It’s an instant messaging client for gamers. “Oh great, another…” I know what you’re thinking. If Dennis “Thresh” Fong himself hadn’t convinced me to try it out, it wouldn’t be on my computer right now and you wouldn’t be reading this article. Having actually tried it though, if I could have only ONE chat client, this would be it. It’s small, it’s fast, it’s quiet and most importantly, it makes playing online with my friends a whole lot easier.
How does it do that? That’s easy – Xfire tells you what game your buddy is playing (you can see the full list of supported games here -ed.), what server, how many people on that server, what the ping time is, and who the other players on the server are. If you have the game he’s playing, all you have to do is click ‘Join’ and you’ll connect immediately.
Not only that, but it will show you if any friends of your friends are playing. They won’t appear on your contact list until they’re playing a game, but if you hover your cursor above their names it will show you who the mutual friend you have is.
Finally, unlike almost every other chat client out there, Xfire won’t interrupt your games when you get a message. How many times have you had a game interrupted because AIM just has to pop up that stupid “Away” message window? Yeah, I know how you feel.
SIDEBAR: This is a short article because this is a small, simple, and vital app for any gamer.
| Interview | Page:: ( 2 / 2 ) |
Dennis Fong: Well, my game playing habits have changed quite a bit since I stopped competing professionally. I no longer only play just one game seriously, but rather several different ones casually. Because I don't "practice" anymore, I also much prefer playing with my friends than with random people on servers.
As I played a larger variety of games, I realized that it was a HUGE hassle to actually get a game going with my friends... even if we were playing from the same place! Some classic situations I experienced daily:
-I feel like playing, so I message a friend I see online to see if he wants to play too. It turns out he was already in a game and ends up crashing out of it because he received an IM while playing.
-I know some of my friends are playing, but I don't know what or where they are playing. When I look for them online, I can't find any of them because they've all turned off their IMs. (As most games crash when you receive an IM while playing)
-We're all on IM and decide we want to play, so I find a game server to play on, paste the server IP into IM so they can join me, turn off IM, then connect to the server. I'm playing for a few minutes before I realize my friends never connected. It turns out the server filled up before they could join and they couldn't IM me to tell me what happened.
Xfire essentially solves all of those problems - and it is designed to be free and super lightweight (it's only a ~400k download). You can see when, what game, and where your friends are playing. You can join them with just one click. And our IM doesn't screw up the game. Some games like CS (via Steam) do have built in buddy systems that work well - but only for their games. The benefit of Xfire is that it works for all types of games, including FPS, MMORPGs, and RTS.
FiringSquad: The instant messenger market is quite crowded already, wouldn't it have been easier to try and make a plugin for one of the big three messengers, or perhaps tap into their networks like Trillian?
Dennis Fong: Making Xfire as its own app is actually A LOT easier than trying to make it a plug-in for an existing IM. We can design our IM from the ground up as opposed to having to work around their technology. It's probably also a good bed that we would not have gotten any support from them. As for interoperability, that is something we are looking at, though we'd much rather focus on building gaming-related features rather than attempt to do what Trillian already does well.
FiringSquad: The Xbox Live interface and connectivity have really impressed a lot of people with their elegance and functionality. Do you think PC Gaming can compete with its myriad apps like Xfire, Ventrilo and All Seeing Eye, or is the Xbox's unified system the better way?
Dennis Fong: In a sense, Xfire is a lot like Xbox Live - we have a lot of similar features, only for the PC. Xbox Live makes it easier to play with your friends, and that is our goal as well.
FiringSquad: What features do you hope to implement in Xfire by the time the end of the beta?
Dennis Fong: One of our top priorities is to build in voice communication support. We will also be spiffing up the Xfire UI at some point, though right now we're focused on adding features that gamers really care about rather than worrying about aesthetics. Other than that, we pretty much upgrade Xfire every week with new features and support for new games.
FiringSquad: Have any final thoughts or comments? Thanks for your time and for Xfire!
Dennis Fong:Come find me on Xfire... my login is "thresh11" :)
SIDEBAR: Tell us what you think of Xfire on the forums!