Haptic is now one whole year old! According to 12-month old development milestones, we are attracted to novelty - and wow is that the truest statement.

Along with all the other funsies we have planned, we’re on the verge of launching our new game configuration experience, and woowee, what a doozy. We’ve loved all the feedback we got to make it extra special noice to use and we’re STOKED for what’s coming next out of the wee Haptic dev team (more on that later)!

Before diving into some of the incredible (like dayuuuum) milestones, I want to say THANK YOOOOUUUU to everyone who has been crucial to us blossoming into what Haptic is today, including our Discord community, and all the support they've given us!

OKAY. So. What the heck happened in the last year since launching? Come join me and read our enchanting journey - the quest we embarked on to forge Haptic.

Before any written code, any wireframes, and even the name Haptic, we have to talk about ~myself~. Just kidding, this is about us. We are three nerds who have known each other for going on twenty (20!!!) years. We met in middle school in the early year of 2003 and somehow (defying all odds) escaped the crippling distancing that is the fate of so many other friendships.

In the time since, we definitely built up our nerd cred! And not just by playing all the hottest games that smashed headlines (Half-Life 2’s 2004 and Minecraft’s 2011 were big years), but by also dabbling with code and computers.

Somehow, we each (individually) decided to pick up engineering, development, and design as hobbies, along with gaming. I think it took all of that interest, as well as an incredible trust and love for one another, to ever imagine successfully launching a project such as Haptic.

The decision to start actually spawned from the enthusiasm generated around Valheim. Meex excitedly texted the group chat to drop what we were doing and hop on the game server she just created. We loved it. The world was full of fun monsters, the idea was fresh, and the graphics were beautiful, unique, and didn't require high-end gaming rigs.

However, firing up the server manually via the command line, each time we wanted to play, began to get tiresome. So we were like “Why don't we make a frontend for it and learn some cool tooling while we’re at it? Let's make it more than just a project!"

After a few months of tossing the idea around, we decided to take the leap of faith - refusing to get conventional jobs and start hacking away on what would become Haptic.

We wrote our first line of code in June and committed it on June 27th, 2021. Wait a second, that date’s familiar… June 27th is also the same day we launched EXACTLY one year later in 2022. And now, another year later in 2023, we’re celebrating our first year, post-launch! Confused yet?

I’m not kidding - our initial goal was to launch Haptic in three months (wow, imagine launching this thing in 90 days?) That idea was scrapped fairly early as it was around the two-month mark we decided to go all-in on the project, and instead of making an MVP, we’d make an MAP (yup, a minimum AWESOME product).

So we knew well in advance that we would try and launch Haptic exactly 365 days after we started. Kind of poetic, isn’t it?

And you know what the site could have looked like, if we just made something simpler? You will now. Check out this late 90’s, ancient-looking design.

In reality, this would have never hit production with that kind of marketing copy. But, this was our design for a large time during early development. I'm so glad we decided to rethink this!

Okay but where did the name Haptic come from? It wasn't our first idea! The original name for this was McServers because, ya know, that's fun. Then as we got a little more serious, we were throwing around names like GigRig and some others that are easily forgettable.

But as time went on, our goals slowly matured and we realized we wanted a platform that wasn't just beautiful, but intuitive. It was at that moment we dug back deep into our gaming roots and remembered something fun. You know what made games more intuitive to play? Feeling.

Nintendo shook the industry with its Rumble Pak back in 1997, introducing a whole new level of immersion. We thought it was awesome. And intuitive gameplay has come a long way since then! Nowadays, it would be weird to play games without that kind of feedback. This idea of haptic feedback inspired us to design and develop software that's so natural to use, so intuitive feeling, that you instinctively know exactly what you're doing from the moment you start using it. At least we think so (please let us know what you think!)

Days before launching, we were scaling up our infrastructure to support hundreds of customers who would surely be dying to use our new, hand-crafted, chamfered-edged, gorgeous software.

So we cranked up the performance on all our offerings to 11, and when finally pulling the lever to go live, we were met with an absolute tidal wave of… (hold onto your butts) ...crickets. Yup, it was deafening (and a little heartbreaking) how little traction we got in those first days.

It wasn’t until mid-July, a few weeks later, that we got our first truly random user. And we were FIRED UP. I mean, the hype was palpable - our first real organic server went online, and it spun up flawlessly!

...

No, just kidding, it broke immediately. But we fixed it in a timely manner and the user was pleased with our quick response! It's amazing that, even when you think the software you build is shiny and perfect and no bug could possibly exist, you are instantly humbled. But it's not entirely our fault, code's true form IS spaghetti after all.

Haptic itself has grown a tremendous amount since our launch in June of last year. Since that first initial user, we've seen a steady, consistent upwards line.

Let’s take a graphical look at how Haptic has evolved since its inception.

1. Massive game configuration page redesign (coming soon)

2. New game - Terraria

3. Public Hostnames

4. Free trials for new signups!

5. Auto updating for Valheim (and all of our games soon)

Honorable mentions

• Enable Public Test Beta for Valheim

• Edit your Message of the Day for Minecraft

• Enable Command Blocks for Minecraft

• A new content writer (Ravenpenny)

• Countless, countless bug fixes

Here's a sneak peek of our brand-new game configuration page. We love how it turned out, and we can't wait for you to feel it yourselves!

We have so many plans for Haptic, it’s ridiculous. We’re not quite ready to outline everything, however, there are a few things you can definitely expect from us in the coming year.

1. More games - We want to drastically speed up the rate we support games, and we’ve already laid quite a bit of groundwork internally to make this happen. So make sure to vote in our Discord for which game we support next!

2. Mod support - We’ve taken a while to support this because we really want to get it right and not rush it haphazardly. We think we have a pretty good idea of how to make mods fun and easy to use and we’re excited to share more on that later on.

3. A freaking restart button - Yes, yes. We know. This should have probably been there from the start. It’s coming, we promise.

4. Extra goodies that we think are extremely innovative in the game server space. One in particular that we’ve been working on since day 1 and we’re so close to unveiling it. Stay tuned!

Working on Haptic has been an eye-opening experience and I’d really like to thank our growing (and surprisingly vibrant) Discord community for helping shape and teach us. If you haven't already, definitely go pop in there - you'll surely be greeted warmly. Speaking of our community, there are a few honorable mentions that really made the place feel like home. In no particular order:

• ThatMindlessGuy has just the most lovable personality, laughing at everything, and can find the humor in any and all situations. He's consistently entertaining to watch and, although claims to be "mindless", I personally have my doubts. Go check him out when he streams!

• Ravenpenny is our newest content writer and has really made our blog shine. His writing is remarkably concise, enjoyable to read, and easy to digest. He writes on his own blog as well as Haptic's and will be producing even more for us in the near future, so stay on the lookout for all his new work!

• TisSarahBarah latched onto us right from the get-go, immediately shouting us out on her stream (without us really asking her to). Her personality is completely infectious and will surely get you smiling while watching her. She's a delight!

• Jade has been absolutely critical in the early days of launching, immediately volunteering to be our Discord manager. She seriously helped make our Discord an actual place to hang out (instead of a dumpster fire it was almost destined to be). She's a prideful gif-warrior, so make sure to battle her in our gif-wars channel! She has yet to be humbled in there.

Go say hi to them!

These four individuals have been just so impactful to not only our community but to us personally on the Haptic team. Thank you. And again, thank you to everyone supporting us <3

Here's to another year of gaming. Cheers!