Before he founded zeuz and dedicated himself to multiplayer hosting and operations, Manuel Karg spent many years working in mergers and acquisitions. So not only is he well versed in the technical challenges of multiplayer development, he’s also an expert when it comes to portfolio management, modelling and mitigating risk, and balancing single and portfolio risks.
In this video, Manuel digs deep into which risks matter most, which can be minimised, and which can be mitigated in order to prepare your game for any level of success.
Summary
Multiplayer game development is an expensive, time-consuming business. Successful titles can take years and millions of dollars to make, and commercial success is far from certain.
Yet even with the stakes as high as they are, it’s easy to get so involved with day-to-day challenges that you simply forget that the seemingly small decisions you make right at the start of development are going to impact a game’s hosting costs and per-user profitability.
That’s why rigorous cost forecasting is so essential. And it’s also why it’s so notoriously difficult. Because from game type and game design to game mode, even small creative decisions are likely to have profound implications for the game’s entire life-cycle. The same is true of your technical decisions. The client/server architecture and the choice of game engine and server operating system are going to have similarly long-term consequences.
As in any industry, there’s no risk-free formula for success. Risk is something to be managed and - when possible - exploited. And that’s where Manuel’s experience and insight comes in: you may not be able to predict the future, but you can prepare for it.
With the right ongoing modelling, sophisticated forecasting techniques and a well-tailored hosting solution that combines the cost-efficiency of bare-metal and cloud servers, you can minimise your costs by as much as 75% whilst still being ready to meet any level of success.
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The video was preceded by an ad for Improbable, but it doesn't cover how to deal with Improbable's Spatial OS. Spatial OS requires you to host on Google, and you're charged for every transaction with their system. The first three games to run on Spatial OS, including the popular Worlds Adrift, had operating costs so high they had to shut down after a few months. This presentation is just about normal hosting.
What he's plugging is a system where you have some number of dedicated servers, which you get at a good price, and, for peak loads, rented “cloud” servers, for which you pay more per hour when using them.