Talking multiplayer scaling with industry experts

Multiplayer gaming has become such an important cornerstone of our social lives and Unity is determined to continue lowering the barriers to entry for developing these games. 

To do this, we want to open up conversations around key elements of multiplayer development across the industry.

One topic we’ve been focusing on lately is scaling a game server. Attempting to manually predict how much capacity you’ll need, as well as when and where you’ll need it, can cost a lot of time and money. 

It’s an issue that many of the best teams and minds in the industry have been working on for years, so we sat down to talk with some of the people who have been at the forefront of working on top multiplayer titles to get their thoughts on how to successfully scale a multiplayer hosting solution. 

A great range of talent participated in our roundtable discussion. Unity’s Larry Rye (head of solutions architects, Game Services) and Tom Penrose (head of developer support engineering – Multiplayer Suite) led the conversation. Our panel was:

• Fred Gill - Head of Tech, Respawn Entertainment
• Bryan Gibson-Winge - Technical Director, Psyonix 
• Joe Morton - Lead Programmer, Velan Studios
• Johanny Clerc-Renaud - Lead Programmer, Bohemia Interactive

We want to thank these four for taking the time to sit and talk to us about their thoughts on hosting. They delivered invaluable insight from their time working on some of the best multiplayer games ever made and we hope that you will find their experiences educational and informative. 

We touched on topics including:

• When to start making multiplayer technology choices
• Preparing for a multiplayer title launch
• Graceful degradation of service
• Using shared memory to control capacity
• Adapting for the games-as-a-service model

Hear the full conversation here.

You want to deliver the optimal experience to your players when you build your server functionality. Freeing up time to focus on factors that give your game an advantage is essential, which is why many of the best studios in the world, including the experts in our roundtable discussion, use Multiplay. 

In our blog post on how to scale a game server using Multiplay, you can learn how to automate the process of making sure you always have the right capacity for the amount of players in your game.

This will help you reduce operating costs, save time for your team and deliver a better experience to the people playing your game. 

You can find out more about scaling servers with Multiplay on our docs site.

Unity Gaming Services can help you get your game online even if you’re not looking for a hosted solution, and provide other critical services to help your game thrive without building the backend yourself.

Get started today with solutions to build, grow and manage your game.