Playpod is the first Cloud gaming project in the Middle East

Industry game These days, it is progressing very fast and is on the edge of technology. These things happen all over the world, and in our country, this industry has become a growing industry in recent years. One of the new projects in this industry is the Polypod project from the smart land of pod. Follow our conversation on this:

Please introduce yourself and give a brief biography of yourself:

I am a dynamic believer. I have been working in the field of graphic programming and making computer games since 2007. From 2009 to 1397, I was the CEO of Daneshbanian Baziyan Pardaz Company, and from 2013, I became a partner of Microsoft and wrote two books for Packet UK Publishing in the field of graphic programming and game development. For a few years, I was a technical consultant and developer of IPTV, Plowout and Stream projects in radio and virtual media, and almost since 2017, I have been working on the project with Fanap Group and Pasargard Financial Group. Playpad The first cloud game console in the Middle East.

Where did the idea for Polypod come from and how did it join Fanap?

I was the CEO of Daneshbanian Bazipardaz for almost ten years. The main activity of the gamer was working on the game engine and game development, and almost the last few years I was in the gamer, I worked on cloud gaming professionally. The future of the gaming industry was predicted Cloudgaming Go. As is the case in many other industries like Music، the movie، Book And… is in progress. The issue of clouds is also being seriously discussed in the game, and its technical problems are also being resolved. In 2015, I had an NVIDIA tablet with which we experienced Batman for the first time on Nvidia’s cloud gaming platform, and this experience made me seriously research and develop this project, and after two years, the project went to Fanap and Pasargad Bank arrived. PolyPod was born as one of the main pillars of Podp Smart Land, which is one of the ambitious projects of Pasargad Financial Group.

Who make up the target audience of the Playpod?

In 2017, when Polypod was launched, there were not many similar foreign models. Of course, GCluster patented the first cloud gaming in 2000, and later other big companies like Sony and Nvidia produced similar models, but there were not many similar models when we started. All I knew was that a project called Yeti had started at Google, which was later renamed Google Stadium. Naturally, cloud gaming was unknown to many people, and it took a long time for us to introduce the audience to what revolution PlayPod has created. Of course, gamers are very smart and communicate very quickly, and since the start of the Playpod project, we have reached over 100,000 users in a short period of time, and over time, we have now reached about five hundred thousand users, considering that costs are still high. We did not do anything serious in the field of media advertising, and in fact the word of mouth project went viral among gamers. Users who are on PlayPod are users who do not have the ability to purchase and access game consoles. Due to the economic conditions, this group of users is increasing every day. According to research, in the last few years, our users have not even changed their phones, which shows that people’s purchasing power has decreased, and this is where Cloud systems It can help.

How many users do you currently have and what part of these users are inside and what part of them are abroad?

We currently have 482,000 registered users and 40,000 monthly active users. All of these users are Iranian because it is possible to register only from inside Iran and users outside of Iran can not log in to PlayPod.

What were your human resource challenges to your team building process? What specialties are present in your team?

From the beginning, we worked as an SBU unit in Fanap Company, and now we operate as an independent company called Alpha under the Pasargad Financial Group. Acting as a SBU had its own problems and advantages. One of our big challenges was that we were always under a big brand called Fenap and Pasargad Bank, and if investor He was inclined to enter and was naturally concerned about the conditions of cooperation. Fenap has a brilliant history as one of the leading companies in the field of IT in Iran and Pasargad Bank has a brilliant history in the field of banking, support and investment. On the other hand, as an advantage, we had the full support of both. In the case of SBU, we faced many challenges, especially in the field of human resources. Aligning individual goals to achieve SBU goals while converging with company rules was one of our biggest challenges. Sometimes the result of a team’s years of day and night effort can easily be overshadowed by human relations problems, and if you can not lead your team in these critical traps, you will not be able to continue. We decided to create beneficial imbalance conditions before joining Alpha Company, when the temperature rises under control, unwanted interactions increase and here they show their problems and if you do not discover them at the right time, they can lead to irreparable damage. Get involved in the project. Creating a balance between human resource rolling and project scaling in situations where you have to move on the edge of technology was another challenge, and we tried to consider a technical and HR upgrade period until the golden age of the Polypod project. Do not miss.

What challenges did you face in attracting the support of Fanap Company?

Pasargad Financial Group and Fenap Holding are among the companies whose main focus is on the financial sector. Creating a project like PlayPod that revolves around the gaming industry may have been very difficult in the first place. We tried to connect this project with the department فینتک Specify clearly. At first glance, we may not have a high priority in the roadmap of Fenap Company or Parsargad Financial Group, but if we want to look at a higher perspective, the gaming industry has the largest volume of financial transfers in the world, a figure of $ 176 billion from the film and The music is much louder. For the Iranian gaming industry, if the right policy is made, similar conditions will definitely be created. VoD was not taken very seriously at first, but after ten years, many reputable brands have turned to it. One of the goals of 5G is cloud gaming and we are now investing in the future which we are sure will be formed soon and of course it is formed outside of Iran. Of course, it goes without saying that PlayPod can now be played on 4G as well, and we have made great efforts to optimize PlayPod for the Iranian Internet.

Please explain a bit about cross-border development:

We are seriously entering the GCC market as well as Europe. The problem is that in the context of sanctions, our situation is not favorable and we have to rebrand our product and proceed under a reputable foreign company. The situation was somewhat difficult for us, but it finally became possible. I remember when we launched this project, we immediately got an offer from the UAE to continue the project in the UAE. After three years, I think the project has reached maturity to become two domestic and foreign brands under one code base. Especially in the field of GCC, where Amazon and Microsoft have not yet started investing in datacenters to launch GPU partitioning. We implemented this GPU partitioning technology for Polypod from the beginning, and this attracted the attention of investors, because we are not just a cloud gaming, but Alpha also provides the infrastructure for GPU as Service, Cloud Rendering, GPU Virtualization and GPU partitioning. These technologies are now popular with many data centers.

What are your plans for the future development of the domestic market:

It is very difficult to predict the future of the Iranian market for more than two years, especially in these economic conditions, currency instability and sanctions. Sometimes you have to take a step forward and assess the situation, and you may even have to go back and take another path. One of the requirements of the Polypod project is access to server hardware. We have been able to import this hardware over the last three years, which was very difficult with currency instability and sanctions. My expectation is that we will be able to provide easier access to unused data centers and hardware in Iran, because Polypod can generate many times more VOD traffic, and of course, it will help us to scale in Iran. Because with the launch of cloud gaming, many cultural and technical problems of the game will be solved, and in fact, a market will be created for the spread of the game widely throughout the country and on any smart device such as TV, mobile phone, browser and even old computer. In the field of content production, media Playpad TV Which is now available from within the Playpod, and we will soon see the release of a series of game-specific programs from this medium. The big vision we envision for the future of Polypod and we are working on its development is to build an eSport infrastructure. In my opinion, this goal is not far off, because we released many of these technical requirements in our latest update called Play Pro. Imagine the excitement created among the young generation of the society if a FIFA national league is held on the cloud game console and all people of all levels and economic power can compete without having to worry about providing gaming hardware with just a few clicks and their competition. Publish live.

What is the role of the regulator in the field in which you operate? Because you said you were suddenly filtered without any warning, what are the rules here? Have you ever broken the law that this happened to you?

We investigated this issue and almost from our friends in the High Council of Cyberspace we were able to revive the project on another website. But the interesting thing about the meetings was that our project was mistaken for a game download website, and that shows the need for people who have enough information about the technology of the day. Maybe it was our fault and we did not introduce our project properly. But, we did our best. Our expectation was that there would be an interaction first. Playpod is not a game download site, but a game console, and the concept of cloud game console was not seriously discussed and friends were not familiar with it. Now with site launch Playpad TV We also tried to introduce both PlayPod and its games and share cloud gaming news to raise awareness. I think the IT body is a few steps ahead of the regulatory body, and it would be better if there was a convergence and a coordination between the two bodies and they could move forward without sabotage. Anyway, we are the first in the Middle East and it will be an honor for the country. Not just for the Playpad team.

And the last word?

During the Polypod project, we were repeatedly asked in different parts of the project whether to continue understanding Shurman or not. To be honest, we did not see the attention paid to our project from outside Iran in Iran. The only focus was on Pasargad Financial Group and Fenap Holding; But it did not appear that we launched the technology even a year before major projects such as Google Stadium and Microsoft XCloud. Polypod was not seen among the more than 700 international projects in Startup Fit Forestart Luxembourg was selected as one of the top 20 projects in the final stage. It did not appear that we were the first in the Middle East to do so, and a year after launching PolyPod, Etisalat, in collaboration with Microsoft, added cloud gaming to its SIM cards. Last year, we were in the joint working group of FiveG, and we interacted with the operators at the level of our ability to clarify the technical and commercial dimensions of cloud gaming. Filtering is a death knell for a business, and I hope we do not see such behavior with entrepreneurs in the future.