Razer

Over at Gamescom 2010, we've picked out 7 questions randomly from the thousand odd questions which were submitted from fans worldwide, scribbled them onto a piece of paper and slid them under the suite door where Min-Liang Tan was busy kicking some ass in COD4. A little while later, we had the answers back by our Creative Director himself.

Richard Luu asks: Min-Liang Tan, what did you have to go through as you were growing up? What led you to become one of the greatest designers of the gaming industry? Any past life experiences you can share with us that made you the man you are today?

Min-Liang Tan: I grew up being told that gaming would lead to nothing and that I should focus on getting a real job. I spent most of my life fighting the system and sticking it to the Man.

Razer essentially is a great way for myself to say "f*** you" to all of you who never believed in us as gamers. Not listening to what people told me to do was probably one of the best things I ever did in my life.

Vittu Perkele asks: How much has Razer supported professional gaming by sponsoring and giving out prizes?

Min-Liang Tan: We are one of the first companies in the world to start officially sponsoring professional gamers - and our philosophy in this is to support only gamers who already use Razer gear competitively. Our belief is that we are looking to give back to the community by supporting the professional gamers who show great potential to bring eSports to the next level, and we have spent millions of dollars supporting tournaments and gamers worldwide.

Most professional gamers equipped with Razer are winning top 3 positions in tournaments worldwide and many many more competitive gamers choose Razer over all other brands. Unfortunately, there are marketing companies who pay sponsorships dollars liberally to force gamers to use their brands and we believe this is detrimental to eSports in the long run.

Klaas Hoorne asks: Where do you get all your inspiration from to make such epic designs?

Min-Liang Tan: We are inspired pretty much by everything around us, our designers look at everything from cars, to movies to historical architecture to draw inspiration. Most of all, being gamers, we're constantly inspired by the games we play and this translates ultimately to the products that we design and engineer.

Patrick Oandasan asks: With a lot of competition in the gaming industry (accessories; mouse, keyboard, headsets, mousepads, etc.), what makes Razer the top performer in these categories?

Min-Liang Tan: We don't check out the competition at all - our focus is primarily internal on our design and engineering - we're the leaders in gaming interface technology and our biggest competition is ourselves.

We are probably the only gaming hardware company in the world that has our own proprietary technology and dedicated design and engineering team. Unlike other brands who may just go pick up a stock design from a factory in China, we design and engineer all our products inhouse, our software is lightyears ahead of the competition because we don't outsource any of it. We have some of the most talented scientists and engineers who specialize in gaming user interface technologies. We literally pioneered this entire industry.

We don't just have one design team - we have three design and engineering labs worldwide - California, Singapore and China. Most of our so-called competitors don't have have one design team at all.

Our edge is in our technology and our talented scientists and engineers. For example, the Razer Mamba is the world's first mouse that achieved gaming grade wireless technology and after 2 years, no other brand has come close to achieving our 1ms gaming grade wireless technology.

The Razer BlackWidow that we just launched is a great example. Other companies have just gone to Chinese or Taiwanese factories, obtained a mechanical keyboard, slapped on a logo and called it a gaming keyboard while charging exorbitant prices for them. We designed and engineered the Razer BlackWidow from ground up - essentially the world's first true mechanical gaming keyboard.

Redd Cohen asks: Of all your insane Razer products, which one is your favorite?

Min-Liang Tan: I've got a couple of favourites - the Razer Mamba's one of them given that the technology behind the Mamba is light years ahead of the competition - 2 years since its launch and no one has come close to the benchmark set by it.

The Razer Orochi is one of the most beautiful mice we have ever designed - it's to date one of the designs our team is most proud of. We spent hundreds of design hours just focusing on how the light would play on the surface.

Finally, the Razer BlackWidow is one of my favourites in its minimalistic approach when we designed it - we focused only on the most important factors - the keys - and it's one of the coolest products we've come up with to date.

Jason Tsay asks: Can you explain a bit about the process of how a product gets designed at Razer? How do you decide on what products to make?

Min-Liang Tan: We have probably the top designers and engineers in the world for gaming hardware. We have three dedicated teams spread out worldwide and all of them are given the mandate to focus on design - we don't have price points or sales targets in mind, just a dedication to create some of the most phenomenal products in the world.

Our starting point is our technology - and we have proprietary technology that isn't available to most companies out there. For example our sensor technology is lightyears ahead of the competition and our motion sensing technology is ultra-precise - developed specifically for military and gaming applications.

Unlike most companies, we don't do focus groups, all innovation and development is done internally and concepts and ideas are developed and prototyped inhouse. However, once the concepts have been fleshed out, we create multiple models and product test samples. These models can run into the tens to hundreds - most other companies only bother doing at most 2 or 3.

For example, the Razer Naga had over 120 models made before we even created the first prototype. These are how some of the most awesome products have been created at Razer.

Once the initial test prototypes are made, we often test them in the field with some of our professional and amateur gamers - all of whom are under strict confidentiality agreements. After extensive testing, we whittle down the number of concepts and prototypes to those that we are satisfied with and iterate on them over and over again, oftentimes, this runs over years and years.

And we repeat this entire design loop not just once but over and over to achieve total perfection - a good example is the Razer Mamba that we announced and only launched 8 years later- that's what defines a Razer product from the masses out there. The constant pursuit for perfection that we're known for.

Fitry Yusoff asks: I believe Razer has a very strong branding identity especially the snakes logo. Just wondering what makes you to choose snake as Razer identity?

Min-Liang Tan: When we first founded the company, one of the first questions we asked ourselves was - "What should we call our first design?" We spent quite a bit of time going through this - we didn't want to call it some boring name like Razer 1.0 or Razer MX125 or something like that - we wanted a name that really lived up to the design.

A couple of beers, rounds of Quake later - we had it - we had a design that totally owned the competition - it ate up other mice - and what better name than a snake - one that chomped up other mice all day long. Our first product was the Razer Boomslang, and the rest, as they say, is history.