Park student Zach Clark has created a living room gaming PC more portable and powerful than the world’s most successful gaming company’s next consoles, including the PS4, Xbox One, and Wii Universe.
Clark’s console-known as a steam box — is a console designed to run Steam software, a rapidly expanding gaming platform that supports a wide variety of titles including small independent games to highly successful franchises like “Call of
Duty.”
For the last few years major gaming corporations-including Valve, the inventor of Steam-have raced to create a marketable steam box of their own. Clark seems to have beaten them at their own game, utilizing guerrilla reverse engineering techniques in his basement. The process took six months.
The final product is a living room computer outfitted with Blue Ray player, Windows 7, high definition Blue Tooth headset, Playstation and Xbox controller adapters. The machine also features a “shield” function; when someone wants to watch television, a button switches game play from big screen to a small screen mounted on the controller.
“If you were going to buy a regular steam box right now,” says Clark, “ they’re about nine inches tall. Ours is thinner than the PS3, and thinner than the Wii U laying down. That’s why this one’s getting so much attention. It’s considered the thinnest high performance gaming PC in the world.”
Clark’s product has also introduced a potentially revolutionary means of keeping console technology up to date.
“Technology updates all the time,” he says, “The next consoles coming out, PS4 and Xbox One, will already have graphics cards that aren’t up to date.
“Our steam box has the ability to upgrade and keep up with technology because it’s a snap interface. you can easily take an old part out and then snap a new part in. This allows you to keep the technology up to par with the market, and it’s reliable. You’re also not stuck on the already outdated technology of newly released consoles.”
To top it off, Clark’s system is fan free. Careful construction of copper and aluminum cooling devices allow for heat to silently exit.
“There’s no noise on the box,” says Clark. “Laptops always have fans. I’ve ran this for 27 hours without anything going wrong. I was able to run a program called Arma 3, a US military simulator. There’s so many pixels in a set of trees in Arma 3, it’s equal to the entire pixel count of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare without the cut scenes.
“Most of the games that make money, like Call of Duty, are already on Steam. With Steam, you have the ability to fully utilize the games that are made, because they are always scaled down for consoles.
For example, on Xbox Battlefield 3 can have around 30 players online and run at around 30 frames per second. On Steam, you can have 64 players at 144 frames per second.”
According to Clark, the project began as the byproduct of self-diagnosed A.D.D.
“I was sitting in astronomy class,” says Clark. “And there was too much on my mind. I started sketching plans out. Within a couple weeks, I thought, this is good.”
Clark claims he was pushed to complete the project by Navy veteran and Park computer science graduate Brandon Dugan.
“There was a point in time,” says Clark “when I thought it was too much work. Brandon said it’s a good design and that I should do it. He said don’t let anything stop you.”
During the next months Clark went to work, summoning skills he learned in grade school.
“When I was little I always tinkered,” says Clark. “My dad had a computer I used to take apart and put back together. I taught myself how to take things off, change them, and make it faster. I was eight or nine. When I was in the military I was a machine gunner, so I didn’t do anything with computers really. When I got out I started messing with them again. It’s hard because technology always changes so you have to keep up with it.
“You should see my office now, it’s barely walk-able, you can barely get in it. I got parts here, burnt parts there etc. I’ve lost a couple thousand dollars in parts that have burned up. The people at Lowes probably know me by name. My buddy worked at a scrap yard, he got hold of a giant copper plate and that’s how I test out the heat stuff. When I was making the adaptor for the Xbox and Playstation controllers I bought 9 wireless adapters and ruined four of them. My sugar glider sat there and watched me build the whole thing.
“I’ve talked with people and looked on engineering sites to see how people manipulate things. I always say to myself, make it better. It’s been crazy. You learn from your mistakes.”
Clark says the project was low profile until Forbes Magazine came knocking.
“I don’t know how they heard about me,” says Clark. “I was in bed and my iPhone dinged. I read my email and it said Forbes wanted an interview. I freaked out, it was just unreal. I was in such shock I didn’t know exactly how to react.
“I tried to play it smooth but I couldn’t. I hadn’t told anyone about the project yet. I told people I was getting interviewed by Forbes, and they asked me, ‘for what?’ I said, ‘I’m building something.’”
Forbes released the interview at 10:42 a.m. Aug. 6. Clark says that afternoon over 5,000 emails bombarded his phone. Clark says in addition to the steady stream of unopened student life emails to his inbox, he still receives approximately 200-300 inquiries per day.
The day the Forbes article came out,” says Clark, “I was overwhelmed. I opened up my phone, read two and shut it off. I got so excited it stressed me out. I think I just wasted all my energy on a burst of excitement. “
“My phone died 5 or 6 times that day. I remember watching the battery drain even as it was on the charger.”
According to Clark, attention grew after meeting one of his personal heroes, Actor Adam Baldwin.
“I’ve been a big fan of his,” says Clark. “I was at a hotel in Kansas City and I saw him. I walked over to him and bought him a glass of scotch. He got teary eyed when I bought him one, he said ‘no-one buys me drinks, everyone thinks I just buy my own.’”
“We started talking for hours. He’s actually a big gamer as well. He did some voiceovers for marines and Halo, and is a big supporter of Ride 2 Recovery, an organization for disabled veterans.
“He re-tweeted the article, and that’s how it got crazy.”
According to Clark the response has been positive. Hundreds have requested preorders, and many have offered funding, including anonymous sources. Others have suggested utilizing Kickstarter, a crowd- sourcing website.
“It’s a self-funded thing right now,” says Clark. “I want to make sure it’s 100 percent efficient before I try to get the public to buy it. I’ve had a lot of positive response when I turn down donations. The whole box has cost me about 13 or 14 grand though.
“The reason it’s taking so long now is disabled veterans do not get paid enough, so when we do get paid we have to ration it to priorities, like nerve medicine for my legs. I have to take it all day just to walk. Sometimes my phone bill goes way up because I have to call Taiwan. They’re on different time so I have to stay up till 3 or 4 in the morning.”
Clark agrees that his life has dramatically changed in a relatively short time period. In October 2008, his life nearly came to an end while fighting in Iraq. After he was sent home, he described the following months as dark.
“I don’t like to talk about it,” says Clark. “I lost some best friends and brothers in that moment. The reason I’m doing okay now is because of them. When you’ve seen the worst thing you’ll see in your whole life, you want to give up. There’s a lot of vets out there that want to give up, and I was that way. In the end when you give up, you give up on the ones that saved your butt.
“I took over presidency of Student Veterans of America here at Park. I make sure no veteran gets to the point where I got. I meet with different veterans daily and talk to them about it, sometimes we’ll talk on the phone until one or two a.m. because I’ve been through the worst and I know what made me feel better.
“When you go through situations in life where it could be your last, you respect every opportunity you get. I’ve been able to go from the worst time in my life to saying, ‘Oh my gosh I can’t believe I’ve made it this far.
“So many people are pissed. I beat the company that owns Steam to the best steam box. And I just did it over summer.”
