Croquet is on a mission to enable the rapid multiplayer evolution of the web and gaming. It delivers the multiplayer platform for web and gaming and its transformational synchronized computation architecture creates bit-identical user experiences that are synchronized, low latency, low bandwidth and innately multiuser by moving compute from the server “beyond the edge” to user devices.
Croquet won the “Startup to Watch” Auggie at AWE USA 2022 and won WebXR Platform of the Year at Polys WebXR Awards in 2023. Croquet products finished in first and second place and were voted “Product of the Day” on Product Hunt in 2022.
Interview with David A. Smith, Founder and CTO, Croquet.
Easy Engineering: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
David A. Smith: Croquet is an infrastructure and development tools provider. Croquet makes development of multiuser experiences for web and gaming simple for 17M+ JavaScript developers on more than 200,000,000 active websites with Croquet OS, a low latency, cross platform Operating System built with multiuser at its core. Any application built on top of Croquet will be multiuser by default.
Croquet’s competitive advantages:
- Developers no longer have to build networking solutions. Multiuser is as easy to create as single user.
- Developers benefit from automatic multiuser, rapid time to market, performance, reduced development costs and lower operations and networking costs.
- Croquet’s decentralised reflector network will ensure super low-latency regardless of geography.
- The foundation of this network already exists and will scale through crypto economic incentivisation.
E.E: What’s the news about new products?
David A. Smith: Croquet for Unity
Croquet recently announced the launch of Croquet for Unity, a JavaScript multiplayer framework for the Unity platform that provides developers a transformational new way to build and operate innately multiplayer Unity experiences without writing and maintaining multiplayer code or deploying servers.
Croquet for Unity doesn’t just level the playing field between the independent game developers and the AAA studios that have their own multiplayer infrastructure. It gives the indies a powerful tool that surpasses what the AAA studios can provide, making multiplayer game development as easy as single player game development.
Croquet for Unity launched in beta in April, with a wider release planned for the summer. Developers can join the beta at croquet.io/unity
Croquet for Web
Croquet recently launched a WordPress plugin for Croquet Metaverse Web Showcase, which enables website designers and bloggers to easily add 3D virtual worlds to any WordPress website or blog in less than 15 minutes. Any WordPress user can drag images, videos, and PDF files into the WordPress block to add their content into the virtual 3D space, and talk with others using Dolby Spatial Audio Chat.
Croquet Metaverse Web Showcase users have been showcasing their businesses, academic papers, art, photos and so much more, giving their website and blog visitors a Metaverse experience that’s immersive and engaging.
E.E: What are the ranges of products?
D.A.S: Croquet products are powered by Croquet OS, the Multiplayer Platform for Web and Gaming. Croquet’s products:
Croquet for Unity: Developer tools for multiplayer games.
Metaverse Web Showcase: a free to use fully immersive Metaverse world that can be embedded in any website in minutes
Metaverse Web Showcase for WordPress: a new WordPress block which allows people to embed a multiuser, collaborative, 3D space into a WordPress site.
The Microverse World Builder: a development platform for the Open Metaverse that extends the next generation of Web and Mobile.
Croquet OS: a platform and synchronization system for multiuser Metaverse experiences. It allows multiple users to work or play together within a single shared distributed environment, and it guarantees that this distributed environment will remain bit-identical for every user.
E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
D.A.S: The Metaverse, Web3 and Gaming Compute Architectures Market
The traditional compute architectures fail in the Metaverse, Web3 and gaming. Companies have been throwing resources at servers, resulting in increased latency and complexity. The cloud market has been around for decades, but no company has delivered a simple solution that eliminates compute on the cloud and moves it to the user device.
The Multiplayer Market
Multiplayer development is three times more difficult than single player development. Netcode is time consuming and fragile. The multiplayer market has been around for decades, but no company has delivered a simple solution that eliminates the complexity of building multiplayer games, web apps and digital twins.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
D.A.S: We all know that the Web will be immersive and multiuser, and it’s the only platform capable of delivering the Metaverse, which will grow from 200 million active websites. This is the evolution of the Web to the Metaverse.
E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?
D.A.S: Croquet OS is a new computer architecture for Web, Web3, Metaverse and Gaming. Croquet’s core innovation is to move bit-identical compute from the server to the user device. By turning the client server model on its head with compute on the endpoint device Croquet delivers automatic multiplayer, presence, low latency, low bandwidth and a wide variety of cost savings in development and operations of multiplayer applications and games.
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2023?
D.A.S: In 2023, AI tools for the Metaverse, Web, Web3 and Gaming will proliferate and accelerate the development of virtual worlds, further fuelling the rapid growth of the Metaverse that Facebook catalyzed when it rebranded to Meta in 2021.