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Games Infrastructure: A Business Perspective

Games Infrastructure: A Business Perspective. Greg Melloy Business Area Executive, Games IBM Asia Pacific. The Games Industry growth patterns have common characteristics, well described by management theory. Mature Phase Retaining profitable customers Managing costs. Size. Growth Phase

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Games Infrastructure: A Business Perspective

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  1. Games Infrastructure: A Business Perspective Greg Melloy Business Area Executive, Games IBM Asia Pacific

  2. The Games Industry growth patterns have common characteristics, well described by management theory • Mature Phase • Retaining profitable customers • Managing costs Size • Growth Phase • Getting customers • Meeting demand • Start-up Phase • Business development Time

  3. The growth curve however is not smooth. Over time, one or more industry transition points may be encountered. Many games companies are facing this transition phase. • New Technology • New Markets • New Entrants • New Revenue / Cost Structures • Government Regulation Size Time

  4. New Technology is causing this change?

  5. Games Developers and Operators in growth led transitions are requesting • Scaleable, flexible systems to accommodate change • Open systems versus “rip and replace” technology transitions • Predictable cost structures • Interoperable systems to easily enable new offerings • Linkage for new and old delivery systems and to CRM and Billing systems • Established supported systems • For complex high performance or connectivity issues, who can support difficult technical requirements? Who has done it before?

  6. The heart of the matter Increases in Game Development • Complexity of games continues to increase • Target complexity has increased via step function • Cost of title development increasing • Development timelines increasing • Development team dynamics changing

  7. Development: new techniques and new tools New challenges • New consoles CPUs vastly different from traditional CPUs • Radically different handhelds • Umpteen phones • Online everything • New input: video, touch, sound, voice, text • AI, Automated GM, Guides, Physics v.s. Animation Continuing challenges • 3 major game consoles • PCs • Handhelds • Need to support them all • Development needs to be on single platform, multi target • Iterative development cycle slowed down by … everything … • Faster, more polygons, better sound

  8. Team Collaboration Throughout The Cycle Develop Iteratively Manage Requirements Manage Change Player Monitoring and playtesting Simulation and Modeling Asset Analysis & Reuse Preparation Game instrumentationand Management Test Data Modeling Automated Functional and Stress Testing Visual Construction Discover Daily builds Code & Script Development Develop Visual, music and SFX Integration Community Web Site Development Continuously Ensure Quality ModelVisually Use 3rd party Components

  9. Distributed development • Distributed development now a fact of life • It’s not as bad as they say • Ease of communication and collaboration is key • Wikki • Centralized • “Share This” functionality increases ease • Internal Blogs • Instant Messengers (with audio, video, file transfer etc) • Reduces risk of games being created in cultural isolation

  10. TextFile Project Measure Progress and Quality of Each IterationCode is automatable, is Art? Display in production dashboard Automatically collect results across your development tools Requirements Models TestAssets Code Integrate with Human feedback Project Plans There are few tools that do this today

  11. Game Platform Convergence being driven from without and within

  12. Continuous developmentGame builds take a long time • Artists need to see their work in the engine in real time • Art and code • Dynamic asset insertion • Transition from nightly build, to Continuous incremental builds based on checked in change • Builds done in the room, not under the desk • Tools, Art, and code all maintained in repository • Regression and automated testing done as part of build process

  13. Increase the use of automatMonitor system performance and availability while driving builds with automated test harness • Automated Test tools allow for the scripted simulation and execution of a game client • Measure response time of a typical (Robotic) end user • Identify and isolate scalability and performance problems Live player PC Robot Driven PC Robot Script TMTP GameServer Reuse test scripts, set performance thresholds start ... T 1 Recorded game process ResponseTime stop ... T 2 Continuously test and retest

  14. IBM Case Study with BigWorld • 2000 Servers at the IBM Deep Computing Capacity on Demand Centre • Large scale testing facility for MMOG Alpha & Beta Test phases • IBM Rational Tool Integration under review

  15. Risk Reduction Risk Time Address Risks Earlier in the Project Lifecycle Risk Management Period Risk Resolution Period Waterfall Iterative Develop Iteratively

  16. Eclipse: Open source, multi language, multi OS development environment Designer Artist Developer Tester Develop Iteratively Continuously Ensure Quality Focus on Architecture ECLIPSE • Role-based user interfaces • Common models for integration across lifecycle • Artifact sharing via Rational Team Unifying Platform CustomerExtensions 3rd PartyISV Tools Manage Change and Assets Project Manager TEAM UNIFYING PLATFORM

  17. Online Games add a new Dimension • Millions of Concurrent Users • Truly Global Deployments bring global issues • 24x7x365 • Customer care in local language at local times • Global billing • Multiple concurrent cultural norms, histories, mythologies, acceptable behavior

  18. Developing a Solution Overview • Bringing it down to the function level

  19. Identifying Integration Points • How will you integrate between these functions? • Staying cost effective

  20. The World as it seems to be today • Games developed using internet service model we all learned in computer science school • Community, billing and support designed and implemented only after online engine and client complete • Change is occurring as this cost model is not sustainable

  21. This is what a real game infrastructure might look like • Several engagements that IBM has had in the online games space can fit into this model • NHN • CRM • Warner Bros • Registration

  22. Infrastructure: New methods for Online scalability • Difficult to maintain world state across servers AND performance • Cluster programming techniques fraught with risk • Current cluster technologies, MPI, not ready for game time • Fibre based Centralized storage too expensive • NAS centralized storage too slow • Bandwidth to player still small for foreseeable future Just some of today’s issues Technologies addressing these issues • New Grid technologies, enhance existing game engines • Automated provisioning • Grid and Peer to Peer file systems • Parallel content distribution

  23. Responsive Load Management Systems • Your game servers could load balance the game DYNAMICALLY • Game servers allocate resources AUTOMATICALLY • Servers partition the game for OPTIMALPERFORMANCE Game map zone : Blue Game map zone : Red Game map zone : Yellow Huge User Movement From Map Zone BLUE To Map Zone RED Grid Resource Dynamically Re-allocated with Optimal configuration

  24. New Grid Technologies Path toward boundless virtual worlds • Allows players to SEE objects managed by other servers • Allow Players to INTERACT with the entities on other servers • Remove the performance impact of smart NPCs/monsters • Eliminate limitations of “shard” architecture • Allow dynamic real time load management • Easy to code to • Enhance performance Server 1 “Interacting” with Entities in other servers Server 4 Server 2 Range of sight For player #1 Range of sight For player #2 Server 7 Server 3 Server 8 Server 6

  25. Players Asia server cluster Service Provider #1 Europe Service Service server cluster Provider #2 Storage cluster Provider #3 USA server cluster Technologies exist to create truly global games • Taking your game global adds an additional layer of complexity • Network requirements to ensure synchronization • Distributed server resources

  26. Games Developers and Operators in growth led transitions are requesting • Scaleable, flexible systems to accommodate change • Open systems versus “rip and replace” technology transitions • Predictable cost structures • Interoperable systems to easily enable new offerings • Linkage for new and old delivery systems and to CRM and Billing systems • Established supported systems • For complex high performance or connectivity issues, who can support difficult technical requirements? Who has done it before?

  27. Thank you for listening Web Seminar: ibm.com/vrm/event/mmog2ibm.com/solutions/games

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