Connected gaming lets players connect with each other and, perhaps, a game’s creators via a range of interactive media. The device might be a mobile phone, a PC, or a virtual reality headset, to name a few. The makers are pooling creative juices and technologies from open source and elsewhere to multiply players’ gaming pleasure.

The domain is bustling with developers and artists of all stripes these days, according to Suhail Dutta (pictured), vice president of cloud services at Unity Technologies Inc. “For anyone starting out, I think there’s a lot that an individual creator can accomplish,” he said. “But given the world we’re in, we have these extremely rich communities that are helping each other.”

Unity’s platform fosters a community of gaming enthusiasts who ply cutting-edge technologies and methods to create novel gaming experiences. Its claim to fame is the popular licensed game engine Unity. It is collaborating with open-source developers and vendors like Google Cloud Platform to enable what Dutta calls “democratized development.”

Dutta spoke with John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Google Cloud Next event in San Francisco. They discussed the evolving genre of connected gaming and Unity’s work with Google. (* Disclosure below.)

Mario Bros ditch plumbing

Democratized development means keeping the plumbing in the basement, not on the desks of creatives with no interest or skill in dealing with it. “If you take a small studio, or even a large studio for that matter, that got into business to create their game, they don’t want to spend all of their time learning how to make an engine or set up a bunch of infrastructure,” Dutta said.

Unity has partnered with Google Cloud to raise the level of technological abstractions in its gaming technology. The idea is to hide the infrastructure to allow developers to focus on fun, creative parts that get players addicted.

Unity is collaborating with Google LLC on an open-source project called Open Match that will go live before the end of summer. Its purpose is to quickly match players in connected games, Dutta explained.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Google Cloud Next event. (* Disclosure: Google Cloud sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Google nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE