Creating and selling multiplayer online games (Interview)

We’re talking with Victor Zhou about the explosion of the .io game genre. We talked through all the details around building and running one of these games, the details behind Victor’s super popular game called Generals — which he eventually sold, and we also covered the economics behind creating and selling one of these games. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: DigitalOcean – Check out DigitalOcean’s dedicated vCPU Droplets with dedicated vCPU threads. Get started for free with a $50 credit. Learn more at do.co/changelog. GoCD + Kubernetes – With GoCD running on Kubernetes, you define your build workflow and let GoCD provision and scale build infrastructure on the fly. GoCD installs as a Kubernetes native application. Scale your build infrastructure elastically. Learn more at gocd.org/kubernetes Rollbar – We move fast and fix things because of Rollbar. Resolve errors in minutes. Deploy with confidence. Learn more at rollbar.com/changelog. Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com. Featuring: Victor Zhou – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X Show Notes: When Agar.io came out in 2015, it inspired a new .io game genre that has since exploded in popularity. I experienced the rise of .io games firsthand: I’ve built and sold 2 .io games in the past 3 years. How to build a multiplayer (.io) web game - part 1 How to build a multiplayer (.io) web game - part 2 Generals How I Became a Programmer - My unlikely origin story iogames.space agar.io slither.io diep.io “kingz.io” was discussed but no longer has a web presence Socket.io plays a crucial role in .io games Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!