From Hobby to Hit: The Ninja.io Journey with Rens Rongen

as a game developer, like how do you be okay with things that you're putting out into the world, right? Like say I'm done with this. Is there a process in your mind? Are you pretty confident in your ability to just just gotta publish it? Gotta get it out into the world. That's to be a point where you have to say, okay, now we're gonna put it out there. And in my experience. Welcome to the Hey Good Game Podcast where we chat with the creators of your favorite games that you secretly play in the cracks of your day. I'm Nate Cadleck and I am so excited to speak with Rens Verongan, the creator of Ninja.io. Rens is a software developer by trade, creating custom solutions for clients and further developing their internal content management systems. And aside from his corporate work, he also creates games with zapper.io and Ninja.io being the most prominent. Ninja.io is a fast-paced 2D multiplayer shooter web game reminiscent of classic arena style movement shooters of the 90s and early 2000s. And you can go play this on the website or in Poke Games and it has all kinds of content ranging from character customization to multiple game modes. Rens, it's really great to have you on the pod. Thanks for having me and looking forward to this conversation. Yeah, me too. We usually kick things off with what's your favorite game to play these days? Yeah, what's my favorite game? Obviously, I need to test my own product, so I do like to play my own game from time to time. I guess lately I've been more into casual games. So it's not one game in particular. It's more like Ninja that I've been mostly working on is just really the type of game that I want people to be able to dive into. You should be able to play it in like five seconds when you feel like it. It's like one of those games you play when you're taking a short break at the office or you're doing whatever during the day and you're like, okay, I want to spend five minutes. I'm on my desktop so that could be it's because it's really a desktop game I have to say. It's not a typical mobile game like Candy Crush that you just open up and start with. So the type of games that I play, yeah, it's typically that type of game. It's also really the focus of the type of projects that I work on. But there have been some games that I really enjoy playing as well. From time to time I still like to open up a sold out which is also a 2D shooter multiplayer shooter. It has also been a big inspiration for Ninja that I owe. So I took a lot of elements from that game when I worked on Ninja. And it's still a game. It's a casual game. It's free to play. It's one of the projects that I still like to open up from time to time. But other than that, no, there's no real, let's just put it this way. I don't really commit to games the way I used to. Especially like 20 years ago you would buy a DVD or you buy a game and just really dive into it for days, weeks at a time. And nowadays, yeah, I don't have the time for that anymore. But apart from that, it's not really that interesting to me anymore either. Yeah, I can really empathize with that. I am scared to ever buy like a switch because I just know all my days are going to be gone. So I'm kind of curious. Ninja.io, what inspired that sounds like you kind of took some games, some inspiration. But I got to say I did start the game within five seconds, but I also died within about five seconds, too. So it went quickly. Thank you. So you survived pretty long then for five seconds. Not bad. Yeah, what inspired it? I think it goes back all the way to childhood. You know, when you're your kids, you have a very rich imagination. And I used to draw a lot of think of ideas or I would play a video game and then I would enjoy it so much. I would make drawings about it. And then as games evolved a bit more and I'm talking about the late 90s now. I find out that, okay, you know, a lot of these games you can play, but then also there came the ability to produce content for those games. So if you think about Warcraft 2, for instance, goes back a long way, but it included a world editor. And that was such a revelation for me being able to just, hey, not only can I play these games, I can also develop my own content for these games. So that I got really into that as a kid. And then, you know, later in the early 2000s, the multiplayer gaming really became a thing. And then it was a thing like, okay, Warcraft 3 came out and not only could you produce your own content, which you could also share it with other people. You could create worlds and then share them either on the internet or in a lobby in the game server. This was quite fascinating to me. Like, you can just sit at home as a teenager. A new movie came out, say, "Lord of the Rings." You got inspired by that. And then you make some world, a gaming world, for instance. Let's say something that is based off of some scenario in the movie, to be able to put that into a custom map and then share it with other people with friends or with complete strangers. I found that amazing. And this became more and more of a thing. Like, hey, if you want to make really interesting maps for games, then it's a good thing to be able to code into a no programming language. That's how I got into scripting. First, just scripting Warcraft 3 maps. But later, Starcraft 2 came out and things became more and more sophisticated. And then I realized, like, okay, if I want to make a really fun content, it's important to be able to control what is happening in that content. You can only control that by actually learning to a program. So this is how gaming and content development took me into programming. And from there, I moved to producing web content. Back in the day, it was flash. The flash player was really ubiquitous around 2008-19. Maybe you remember the new ground's website at the time. There's newgrounds.com. Yeah, I do remember that. Yeah, so you had all these custom videos that people made. But also, lots of little custom casual games that you could play for free. I started producing content for newgrounds for a while. Just little games, site projects. I always had, it was attracted to the idea of multiplayer games. So that you can actually take other people, produce something. You include other people in your project. I think my first experience with that was back in the '90s. Still with worms. Worms 1 and 2. These were games produced by a team 17, I believe. Trade the keyboard or share it. Or join a game together. It was like turn-based. So one person would play the next one and the next one. I really liked that game. But I didn't like the turn-based components. I really liked more the idea of having a real-time 2-day site-scrolling shooter. So I just imagined what that would be like. But later, this game called Soul.GameOut and a 2-D shooter. You could also create your own maps for this game. Was multiplayer or were you free to play? And I thought this was amazing. It's just easy, especially we used to play it at school a lot between classes. It was a lot of fun. And Ninja is, I guess, the weapon carnation of what I envisioned a game like that would have to be. So as I got more into development and as Flash kind of disappeared. But it got replaced with more sophisticated technology, HTML5. And suddenly there was the right technology to implement multiplayer in the browser. Quite a convenient way. That took me to actually start working on this 2-D shooter idea. That eventually became Ninja I/O. It was a process of years, I guess, of just playing things and slowly coming up with an idea. This is something I would like to realize and take my time for it. Yeah, that's actually kind of spans quite a long time. How long ago did you start building Ninja.io? It was around 2016. Yeah, about 2016, I think, that I noticed some new category of games appearing, the.io games. So maybe you remember A-Guard.io, games like Slider.io. Yeah, absolutely. All right, everyone. Quick break. Attention game creators. Have you ever thought about selling your game? At Hey Good Game, we're looking to acquire and steward some of the most popular and beloved games on the internet. Even if you're just curious, we offer a fast process to getting you an offer. Just provide some basic analytics and revenue details and we'll quickly get back to you. If you move forward with us, we usually close within 14 days. Visit Hey.Gigi and see how we can take your game to the next level together. And now back to the show. The real-time multiplayer browser games, and they seemed quite simple, but it just worked. They were very addicting and very easy to play. No downloads required. Just go to the website or click it in your favorite's bar in the game, essentially. It was just like just like that. You're playing and it was a lot of fun. This is too difficult to make, but it's a lot of fun. I can do this. So I thought, okay, let's see what we can do. Around that time, cool new server technology came along as well. No, the ES. So you could do JavaScript to go in the backend and in front-end. So it seemed like, okay, I can use the same technology on both sides of the front-end and in back-end. So this could save some time because obviously he has a new developer. You have to be very limited, limited amount of time to do things. I just saw some opportunity there to, with my limited amount of time, really produce something. Unfortunately, there was quite the amount of feature creep, I guess. So slowly, but suddenly it became a bit bigger and bigger than from then on, around 2016, it gradually grew from a hobby project into a more serious project. Then at some point I decided to partner up with Poké to reach a bigger audience. I have it published on their website, and it was an exciting process to take something that from the, I guess the hobby room, where you're just sitting on your computer to a large audience. It was a fun process. - Yeah, it's actually quite comprehensive of a game. I mean, even the graphics, did you do all the graphics yourself as well? - Yeah, so I did do all the graphics. It was a gradual thing. First of all, I had to settle on a graphics engine to actually display things. And I used Pixie JS for that, which I think is now quite a common graphics framework. But at the time, it was quite new. But the reason it was interesting is because it very much mimics the old Flash API and with my background in Flash, it was easy to make that step. And yeah, secondly, obviously it's a 2D game. And making 2D content is just more, it's not that difficult to do. If you have some Photoshop skills and you're willing to engage in some trial and error, then you can come up, eventually come up with some decent content, I guess. So yeah, and then it was an idea of adding customizations to the game. So once you have the Ragdoll ready and you have the Ragdoll physics implemented, and you can start playing around with how am I going to animate it character and developing custom graphics for the game, creating the manual items. But this is also an iterative process. So every time I think, oh, I'm not so happy with this, or I show it to someone, they say, maybe you should try this, maybe you should try that. After say Pokie was also quite helpful with that, in a sense that there has been some back and forth about, hey, maybe you should design the user interface more like this, maybe make these buttons bigger, make it this way. So it's more user friendly and they have some empirical data to actually back up their claims about how to properly set up a user interface. So it was quite valuable to also engage in that, you know, the process of discussing and improving the graphics and how it's displayed. So yeah, I'd imagine normally when I design anything, really, it's, I have to sleep on it and then I might hate it. And then I got to go back and redo it. And I can't imagine like, unless you're a trained designer, you're kind of leveling up your skills so quickly over time that you get so much better, it's like running, right? Like you're just exercising muscles for the first time and I'd imagine that you probably went back again and again, just like updating the things because your skills are increasing at the same time. And as a game developer, like how do you be okay with the things that you're putting out into the world, right? Like how do you, I'm done with this? Like is there a process in your mind or are you pretty confident in your ability to just, just gotta publish it, gotta get it out into the world? That has to be a point where you have to say, okay, now, now we're gonna put it out there. And in my experience, it's good to put it out there early because then you can improve based on a feedback that you get. Just keeping it inside and keeping it indoor and just trying to iterate and iterate. I think is, you can go a long way with that, but at the end of the day, the feedback from players is really valuable. So the first time I put it out, the graphics were lower resolution, things were quite different. Five, six years ago. So it really has been an iterative process. I was very nerve-wracking in the beginning to just put it online because if you're a bit of a professionalist, it feels like it's never ready and it's never good enough, which I have. So yeah. (laughs) And I think there's so many probably shelves and that project's lying hidden behind people's doors, simply because they're not comfortable putting it out there. But I think once you do it, maybe people actually like it and then you can always start improving it because you have to just accept that it's never gonna be perfect. And perhaps the first iteration is gonna be pretty crappy, but you have to be okay with that. Just say, okay, maybe it's gonna be crap, but I have a time and a willingness and a readiness to improve it. And I think it's really important to just go for it and keep improving. - So when you did actually publish the game for the first time, what was your launch process? Did you just put it out in the world? Did you have a domain already for it? Yeah, walk me through that process. The very early tests were actually done before I had a domain. So I would just give people like an IP address or I would open up the computer so people could join some people I knew from the video games that I played or some friends. Just say, hey, could you join? I just wanna test this feature real quick. I guess you could not really say it was released at the time. Only when it came to a point where I thought, okay, now I'm at a level where I'm comfortable, I'm getting there, like I'm probably gonna release it. I still didn't have a name for it. And that took a long time to actually come up with that name and also to get the domain name, that's another thing. I had some interesting names in mind, but some of them the domains were taken and oftentimes the domains were just not affordable either. Especially if you're looking for dot com domain, for instance, it's very hard to get a good name nowadays all taken. Then I saw this dot IO gaming market was there and dot IO domains were still somewhat affordable at the time. So at first I wanted battle dot IO actually because it's a shooting game and it seemed like a cool name to have. But unfortunately it was taken like a week before I had. I got the idea of, yeah. I could never really, I have a suspicion that Blizzard Entertainment might own it. I'm not sure, but I have a suspicion because of the battle dot net on there. So I could never get a touch. So yeah, and then I thought, okay, actually Ninja dot IO is also a cool name and it's short. It has to be kind of marketable and easy to remember. So yeah, I was lucky to be able to get that name. And that's also the name on which it launched. At first, I, it was just a few people because there was no big release or anything. It was just, this was before I was even partnered with Poké. So it was literally, I put it online. I had some colleagues try it at the time, some friends, but what's slowly but surely it started to naturally build a bit of an audience. And that was pretty exciting to see it slowly gain traction. I guess word of mouth people played or it's cool they played and they tell each other. And I think a lot of the growth happens this way. - Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. So if you were to think back to your first thousandish users that all came from word of mouth essentially. - Yeah, yeah, I think so. How many are playing today? - So right now there's usually between 100 and 200 people online simultaneously. So that's sometimes 2115, sometimes 90. So it fluctuates sharply. It really depends on what day it is, what time. There's quite an American audience. So usually when it's around the evening hours in America as getting a bit busier, there's also quite an Asian audience. So it kind of fluctuates on which part of the world plays and what time it is and that particular part of the world. It feels like the game was released twice because this initial release was just a very, a bit of a stealthy release, I suppose. Once I released it on Poké, everything changed at once. So maybe there were like 100 people online simultaneously before but right after the Poké release suddenly dates, okay, it's gonna happen on this day and suddenly when it really was on their front page, suddenly it became like a thousand simultaneous players and the servers, it went kind of bad the first two days because I didn't anticipate that influx of people. And so it took down the game essentially. It became unplayable for the first two days and they took quite a while to recover from that to find out, hey, you know, there's, I'm just not used to this level of visitors and yeah, I took quite a bit of fine tuning and I didn't sleep much for two or three days and when that happened. - So you launched on Poké, do you have an idea of what the peak players over the week or over the month? - Yeah, about a thousand players online simultaneously and it came through about more than a million players in the beginning. - Oh wow, that was quite exciting to witness how long ago was that? That's now, I guess, about two years ago, two and a half years ago, I guess. So yeah, it did really well in the beginning. Visitor-wise, an unfortunate side effect of the release, I guess the development process was that this was also a learning process for me. This is actually the first real multiplayer thing that I made and I also was really getting into JavaScript at the time, getting into the multiplayer programming. So I built a significant amount of technical depth in that period. So I found it difficult to then adapt to a larger audience, to kind of adapt the game along the way and to keep it. There was a lot of problems with latency issues especially in the beginning and obviously you can scale up the servers but then you scale up the cost as well and that is a big challenge. I think I really underestimated just how much of a challenge that is and the game is by nature quite complex, at least technically, it's quite complex the way it's set up. It's not a good first project to set up basically because if I had to do it again, I would do it completely differently this time. - What would you do differently? - I would be more organized about it. Probably set up maybe design documents and think really well about how to set it up rather than doing things by trial and error, which was really what it came down to in the beginning. I just wanted it to work and then move on to the next feature. Just, okay, I just wanted to work. I don't really care if it's going to be well designed, it just has to work and it has to be stable and then I moved on to the next thing. I guess I was more interested in creating a content rather than setting up a technically sound product but then it comes back to by June the but later and I really noticed that when it grew, these things become much more important as your audience grows and that's the big challenge. becomes much more important. So I found myself a bit in a bog down by all the technical challenges, which slowed down development for a while. And that's still a challenge. It's kind of the main reason why I've decided to move on from Ninja and focus more on a new project or perhaps make a new version of the game. I'm really thinking about that because it's something you have to decide, do I continue with what I have or do I make a new incarnation that is more sustainable. So I'm still playing around with where to go, but it was definitely exciting, especially the early days of the off-short release. It's just an experience. Talk to a lot of game developers, and one thing that's come up a number of times is just how, because that sounds like a big endeavor, like redoing your game in it in a modern way. How do you think about working with other people or partnerships? Do you ever find it lonely developing by yourself or do you enjoy it? No, I do enjoy it. It's because when you work on your own, you have all the freedom, essentially, to do as you please. It also means that you're more likely to make mistakes because when you don't work alone, someone can always help to point out, hey, maybe you should do it this way or that way or so, but I always had the preference of working alone. It also has to do with allocating time. Often you get in at least, I'm not sure how it works for you, but I tend to get in a creative mood where I'm like, okay, now I feel like doing it. It's not always something that's easy to plan. If you work together with someone, you have to constantly kind of communicate and how do you say this. You have to kind of interact about, okay, when it's this going to happen, when is that going to happen? That should be much more organized. In my opinion, sometimes, stifles creativity. It's just last fun, at least to me. I just like to put the result out there and then get whatever feedback rather than have this process where you're, I guess, also, you have to come to certain compromises when you work together. It has its good sides and it has its bad sides, but in my current situation, I think I still, it's my preference to work on these projects on my own. Yeah, I agree. I think that there's sometimes, if I'm left to my own whims of full creative process, no constraints, I can get in a little bit of trouble, but having partners, you do have to have a little bit more organization and process. When you did Poke reach out to you, how did that partnership start? That's a good question. Actually, I did some research before. So I had to game at some point, it's kind of naturally spread, especially with web games, you have this where other gaming websites will kind of I frame your website. So it will be, whether you like it or not, it will be kind of wrapped by their website. So I saw that happen a lot. And this is in one way nice because it naturally grows in the audience, but I noticed also that some of the more bigger gaming websites, they don't generally work like that, especially the more professional websites, they work on a, you know, with contracts. So you do have to be willing to engage in a degree of exclusivity, I suppose, because once you engage with a publisher, they prefer to have just published on their website. So there will be last natural growth, but the growth by the company itself will be, you know, it will come through their channels essentially. I'm not sure if I was first to reach out to them or if they reached out to me, you know, at some point you get this discussion going with some of their people about, okay, you know, when could we do it? How can we do it? What criteria have to be met before we can do it? There's obviously some, there's also certain limitations like one of the things I personally like about the game is the ability to chat with people. It's very free. Like you can just kind of join the game and you can, you know, like the old games, like or an old tournament used to have this. Some of the other real-time shooters, I just really like the ability to sometimes just chat with random people. There's also some options on shit talking going on like, oh, oh, you shot me this and that. Oh, what's going on? I think that's part of the fun and there's also a social aspect to it where people, you know, can talk to each other and they get to know each other. They play around the same time maybe, they join the game at the same time and at some point they become friends or they, you know, they just play together for long periods of time. But, you know, before I diverge too much, when you work with publishers, they might not like this a lot because at the end of the day, people will be chatting there and somebody might say something nasty. There's certain risk involved with having this open communication. So, certain aspects of the game had to be toned down a bit for them to be able to accept it with their website. Language filters, like no cursing or at least catching the curse words. And unfortunately, a lot of time actually goes into just preventing abuse, preventing people from abusing the game and the system using offensive language. And setting, you know, you can create your own custom games inside Ninja, like your own custom servers. People might use offensive server names, things like that. You have to really be, their publishers don't like this type of stuff. So, you have to go through this process of making it difficult for those things to happen. So, that was, you know, part of the onboarding process, I guess. But, you know, once all of that is done, it gets really exciting to see, you know, to get your product out there and to see it reach a large number of people. I think that's so cool about browser gaming is that there's just an easy way to reach a lot of people. As long as you have a compelling thing, you know, it might naturally grow or you can work with publishers. And it's a very easy process compared to, I guess, many other types of publishing, like in the music industry, for instance. So, although I do think there's a lot of analogies between the music industry and gaming industry could go into that. But yeah, so it was definitely an interesting process. If you were a game creator looking to partner with someone like Pokey or someone else, what are the things that you've had to learn? Oh, KidoKey, a quick break. Are you a fan of games that challenge your mind and sharpen your skills? Dive into the world of a good game? We're brainy fun meets creativity. Like SidoKoo, but need a bigger challenge? Check out Coral Conquest. It's a fun test of logic and math skills. Then, get ready for cross-burddle. It's a match-up of crossword and wordle. A new take on word puzzles that will keep you guessing and engaged. You'll find those games and others at hay.gg and now back to the show. And all along the way, that might be a source of someone else. Yeah, I think it's just important to be ready, especially, you know, to be at a point where you're willing to put it out there because once you actually published it, this iterative process becomes more difficult. It's put out there and you cannot just all in five minutes, let me change the line of code here and put a new version back online. But getting there, I think just get in touch with them and ask as far as getting in touch with Pokey, people who are very friendly, you could always get in touch via Discord or just have a team's conversation. I would say just contact them, get in touch and they will guide you along the process. Make sure you have an original and fun project. I think that's important. But it can be even before you're able or even before your product is product is ready, it's possible to get in touch because they will also help you along the way. They can help you improve your product, get ready for it. They will give you advice on all sorts of things. They're also very useful, you know, dashboard where you can help you debug your game. It can help you get feedback from players. So yeah, it can be a part of the process even before you decide you're ready to publish. But it's a matter of reaching out, I think. So on the marketing side of things, you know, I notice that you have a Discord community. Is that something that you are active in? Do you try to get user feedback from that? Or how does that play a role in Ninja.io? Yes, it used to be played quite a big role actually. Especially, let's say a couple of years ago after the launch on Poké, I really used Discord to get feedback from players. I also used it to create like a sense of community involvement. For instance, I developed a map editor for Ninja. Early during the development process, I still don't feel that it's ready to be used by regular users. But I did allow people the opportunity to all just send in your designs on Discord. And perhaps if I like it, I will add it to the game. So this was a nice way to get people creatively involved. Or if you have ideas for customizations, just send it to me. And this led to some interesting emails and messages that I got people sending. Oh, you know, people making draw, you know, these elaborate drawings about their vision of a world in the game or a weapon in the game. So it was definitely interesting that way. Oh, that's wild. Yeah, people were organizing tournaments in the Discord. And later someone built their own build a website that would communicate with an engine at IO API to facilitate tournaments, things like that. And actually that was really productive part of it. Yeah, right now, because I'm a bit in, I'm still thinking about where to take it next. So I haven't been really active on Discord a lot. I also found it to be quite a distraction because at the end of today, you join and there's people start chatting. And before you know what, you're in a conversation for two hours. And in the beginning, I found it very useful, but I also found it very distracting. So right now, I'm in between like, it can be very useful. But unfortunately, I had some very nice people who are willing to do some of the community management. So I'm very, very grateful for that. They actually spend a lot of time just maintaining the Discord server. And so it can be very helpful, but it's kind of up to, I found it too distracting lately. Like, when you think about monetizing games is. like monetize through ads for the most part, or you charge in different ways? - No, Ninja.io is fully monetized by ads. So Ninja.io had the advantage that there's, well, you have basically quick battles. So there's around the drop-in battles essentially, you join the game, you just join a battle, and then this battle lasted usually about 10 minutes, unless someone is very good and fast, and he wins the game sooner. But then there's a short break that where you actually get to see the leader board, and you get to see who was the best players, and you can chat a bit with the people in the server. And during that, that's the perfect time to show some advertisement. So at London itself, it's naturally very well to video advertising. So in a one-hand, people find advertising generally very annoying, it's just one of those things. But at the same time, when you do it in, during a moment where there is no gameplay, it's just a scoreboard, and it's quite an intense game, it's quite an action, and there's quite a lot of intense action going on. So people like to take a short break, and they lean back, and then they get to see a short advertisement video. Most people found that bearable. It's a 20, 30 second video, and so the stats for the ads are actually pretty good, in a sense that people generally watch the ads and finish them because it doesn't actually interrupt their game, it's just, they're taking a break. It's a bit like the television, there are a movie, there's a break, and you use it to drink a glass of water or whatever. So that's the only way the game is monetized, really. I thought about perhaps selling customizations, but never really got to that point. It's still an idea, but if I start working on a new project, and maybe it's not worth to invest a time anymore, but I'm still balancing things in my mind like, "Where do I want to take it? Do I really want to invest much more time?" This is going to be something new and sad, but yeah, for now it's just advertisements. I guess it's also the most easy way, there's not much liability, because when you actually start charging money for things, then obviously you have to deliver products, things can go wrong, and you obviously have a responsibility that you, that people get value for their money. So this liability aspect makes it a bit more complex, and you have to kind of be willing to deal with that. Although there are many great services that provide this virtual shop idea. So yeah, advertising worked pretty well for Ninja. Do you tend to kind of manage that process yourself or do you use the third-party advertiser for managing that? I always use the third-party, third-party for it. So for instance, in the beginning I worked for a while with Ad in Play. I still do actually for Zapper, but for Ninja, once I started working with Pokey, I also used their advertising API. So this is partly because obviously they have, on their own website, they have their own partners that they work with, and there's some revenue sharing going on. So when people join Play on their website, in return for getting the audience that you get, you have some revenue sharing. And then when people play it on your own website, then you get a bigger share of that revenue, because obviously this is your own traffic. But it depends really on what publisher someone is working with. Yeah, I found it convenient, because then you don't have to worry about configuring the advertising system too much. Just they take care of everything. You can just focus on the game development aspect, and that's a thing to wait, should be. When you're producing something and putting it out there into the world, there's just like an amount of serendipity that can happen. I'm curious if you have any interesting stories or opportunities that have come your way just by being more public and publishing games? I guess, especially it's fun to see the people producing video content for it, and then seeing YouTube channels that mainly focus just on making some videos for your games. It's very fun to see these games, or to see this happen. I have to say, Ninja, it did quite well, and it's still doing quite well. It never really reached that status, that some projects have, where they become really, it becomes a meme, or it reaches a large mainstream audience. This never happened for Ninja. It's just a browser game that quite a few people know, but it never really became like a meme engine in that sense. But it's still fun to be talking to someone about games, and then it turns out they actually play your game, and they say, oh, yeah, oh, you made that game. Yeah, enjoy playing. It's kind of fun experience. Yeah, and also the ability to be in touch with other game developers. So once I put it online, I got invited to do some Discord servers, and then there's suddenly other developers in this server, and who's the video games I've played for years. And suddenly, you're able to talk to these people. That was really a fun experience. Like, I talked to someone who developed a well-known browser game, or a well-known app, and you can share ideas with these people. And I really found that a cool consequence of being involved in this, that's suddenly, oh, yeah. It's kind of when I was a kid, I used to play these games, and I really looked up to the people who developed them, because they're like gods, in a sense, that they put this product together. I'd play it every day, and now you're basically interacting with these people, and you're noticing, oh, they're just game developers. People who have a passion for this, hope it's just like I do, or for many, it's a profession. It's really fun to share ideas, and to talk to other people who are really into this. Because it's not that common. My real environment, every day life, I don't know many people who are really into this stuff. So it's good to be able to get in touch with someone like you, for instance. You're really into this, and fun to talk about these things. Yeah, what's next for your runs? Well, right now, super busy. Also with real life things, we just had a big renovation behind us, and my wife and I are expecting our first child. I'll congrats. Thank you. It's three weeks from now, roughly. Wow, it's coming soon. So super busy preparing for that. So this is going to be dominating my life for the next while. I don't know exactly how long time. Yeah. It doesn't stop. Probably never stops, but it's going to be particularly intense, I think, the next few weeks and months. But yeah, I am working on a new project. I really like the idea of being, for people themselves being creative and allowing other people to be creative in a multiplayer setting. So that's something I'm working on, like a real time drawing a game, where people can participate, join a room and do things together. This time I'm setting it up much more. Tell me in for that. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, yeah. I hope it's going to work out nicely. Yeah, just from what I'm trying to really set it up decently this time and minimize my technical depth. I learned a lot also from my current job. People are really professional in a way that they work and it's more corporate setting. You learn a lot. When you just develop on your own and you're sitting at home and doing things your own way, it's not always the best way to do things. People really think about what is the right way to go about software development and then go about setting up projects. So I learned a lot by working for especially my current employer. It's just a great learning experience. And I also incorporate those ideas and this knowledge into my future projects. I'm sure of it. So yeah, that's one of the things I'm working on. This new, I kind of really name it yet. I have an aim for it, but I kind of really share it yet. That's fair. But do you have an expected release date that you're trying to aim for? Yeah, I hope sometime early next year, but I really, I know that this is always optimistic. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's really optimistic, but maybe I'll go about it like Ninja. I'll set up something simple and naturally and see how people react and then take it from there. I don't think things will have to be a big bang. Like a release doesn't have to be like a big bang. As far as ninja development is concerned, I will keep it online. So it will definitely keep running. But right now, pain to maintain. So I'm going to keep it running and keep fixing bugs, but it's not going to be my main focus for a while, I think. So yeah, that's it was a great learning experience. And it's still a great to have it online and I'm going to keep it that way, but it's time for the next day and I think. Love it. Well, I'm thankful that you've built Ninja.io. It's what brought us together and really excited to hear about that story. If people want to contact you online, if you want them to contact you, where might they find you? Well, they can, they're free to join the Discord and ask questions there. Maybe I'll randomly log in and see you there. They can always send me an email on the email address on my, on the Ninja.io website. I also have an Ninja.io Twitter where they might react. So I don't really have a dedicated company or development social media right now. I think I'll save that for the next project. But yeah, people always free to get in touch. I like it. Free to share ideas. It's always good to hear other people's ideas. Yeah, I agree. Can I keep us motivated and inspired? Exactly. Really appreciate you being here, Renz. Yeah, me too. It was fun to be here. And yeah, enjoy the conversation. Absolutely.