[Craig]

7 Questions with Wojjie of Game-Monitor.com

If you're into online PC gaming, especially first-person shooters, chances are you've heard about, or even visited, the #1 website on the internet for tracking game server traffic and statistics, Game-Monitor.com.

In this edition of Seven 7hings, we reveal an interview with the owner, designer and lead coder of Game-Monitor, who goes by the handle, Wojjie. We asked him all kinds of questions from the technical to the personal, from beginnings to futures and even if any big name game developers have ever contacted him with questions about his awesome server monitoring tool.


1. What prompted you to write the first line of code that would eventually become Game-Monitor.com?

Wojjie: I believe I was hosting a few game servers and also playing counter-strike at the time, and thought it would be neat to be able to search through all these game servers. The first version of Game-Monitor had the most simple search, and as I used it more, I developed it into something more complex that I used myself. Now I rely on the feedback of the community for ideas, or problems that need to be solved, and I try to solve them in the hopes of making everyone happy.

2. Did you have one specific game in mind when you started GM or have you always wanted to support the status of numerous titles?

Wojjie: I started off by supporting Condition Zero, and Counter-Strike, followed by Multi-Theft-Auto shortly after. Shortly after that, I decided to make Game-Monitor automatically add games from Steam, to try to cover as many titles as I could.

3. What are some things that game developers could do to make your life easier with regards to accurately monitoring online game traffic? Have you ever been approached by any game developers for assistance and/or inquiries about your product as it relates to their games?

Wojjie: There are a few things that they could do to assist me, and it all has to do with the way one queries the servers. Some query protocols look like they were slapped together as quickly as possible with minimal thought, though some have started off with their flaws and slowly progressed to more well constructed protocols.

I do wish more developers would document their protocol throughly (Steam has done a good job with this).

I also wish developers worked more with the community and provided access to their server lists openly to everyone (ET: Quake Wars actually provided a feed on one of their web servers for people to use, since their actual server lists required some authentication). That is one thing they need to understand, people like to show off their servers/game/etc online, which is good for promoting their game for free. The only way this could work against them is if they are not prepared, where any bugs or lack of quality code will break everything.

Map changes render a server unresponsive and may appear down if queried at the right time, I wish they would make the servers still respond during this time, even if it is to say "I am in the process of changing maps and I started loading x seconds ago..." (in case the server is stuck loading a map for hours)

Lastly it would be nice if game developers used distinct separators for their data, and tacked any new data they introduce at the end of that section or sub-section.

As for being approached, the big game developers have never directly approached me, but I believe that this may be due to the site's previous designs, that make it look like more of a hobby site. We will see in the future if the new site will change that around.

4. It seems like a very intensive undertaking to monitor hundreds of thousands of game servers. What type of server hardware is running Game-Monitor?

Wojjie: Collecting data on that many servers and providing it instantly to the public to search through is very intensive. In fact most of the queries done on the databases at a given time are comprised mostly of queries updating it.

As for the specifics of the servers, I rather not divulge that information as I would not want the competition to know.

I will divulge some information though, for instance:

- Game-Monitor is probably using less servers than the competition
- the newest database server probably costs less than a real high end gaming machine
- each server that Game-Monitor runs on typically has a single task that it specializes in

5. According to Alexa rankings, Game-Monitor is doing very well with regards to visitors, website rank and worldwide reach. How surprised have you been at the amount of traffic your website is generating? Did you always feel there would be a high demand for this type of information service for gamers?

Wojjie: To be honest, I have been surprised by how much traffic has grown over the years Game-Monitor has been running, so surprised that I have been preparing for the launch of the new site for a while now (in terms of handling the traffic).

After Game-Monitor first took off, and the community grew, I did realize that there was a demand for this type of service. Due to the audience I think the site caters to, I did not know there would be as much of a demand as I have been realizing lately.

As for the audience I think the site caters to, I feel I tend to aim the site more at the higher end gamers/visitors with the slew of features. For instance, if you look at the advanced search, some people will be overwhelmed by the options and power that is provided to you, and it only gets better on the new site. The new site will have so many search options, that it will make you consider downing a can of Jolt before attempting to tackle all the features/options provided to you.

6. What are some features we can expect to see in the future at Game-Monitor? Are there any features that have been too hard to implement at this time that you'd like to have someday?

Wojjie: I have always wanted to add player rankings, and even did a test run a while back. The main problem with this feature is that the data collected grows really fast, and can cost a lot of money to set up the servers needed to tackle the task (the way I want to), or many weeks of tweaking and coding. For now, I thought the other features are easier to tackle and more important, since many games seem to be coming out with ranking systems of their own, which tend to provide more useful information and are more efficient, since they are coded directly into the game.

As for other features to expect, there are plenty that I would love to share, but can not go into or too deep into. Here are just a few:

- different types of graphs, ie: bar graphs
- more customizable images/modules
- more server monitoring features
- more types of feeds for webmasters to use
- customizable subscription packages with instant setup
- a more web2.0ish interface

7. What do you do IRL? Are you a programmer or just an insanely talented hobbyist that gets his geek on late at night writing code? And can we expect any other Wojjie creations in the near future that are not related to Game-Monitor?

Wojjie: Currently, I work on Game-Monitor most of the time, otherwise I do some contract work, or develop/work on my other sites and ideas.

I would like to develop a web2.0 game, an image upload site, and some flash games of my own. I don't have a time line on any of these though, as there are quite a few exciting ideas I have for Game-Monitor that I would like to develop.

In Conclusion...

As a gamer, a community server provider and a stats nerd, I'd like to sincerely thank you for not only taking the time for this interview, but for taking the time to create Game-Monitor. It is an invaluable tool that I think anyone that calls themselves a PC gamer should have bookmarked in their web browser.

Wojjie: Thank you, and I appreciate you interviewing me, and found it a pleasure answering your questions.