How IPM Platforms Improve Video Game Development

Gaming is a vast industry that is continuing to grow. Multi-player cloud-based games especially are becoming more popular and taking the market by storm. With everything going on in the world, it’s no wonder people are looking for a bit of downtime and a way to escape the tribulations of everyday life. 

Game developers face many challenges in order to get their games on the screens of as many global players as possible. An Infrastructure Performance Monitoring (IPM) platform can help meet these challenges head-on. Keep reading to learn more about IPM platforms and how they can solve common issues that game developers face.

Game Development Challenges

Online gaming has morphed into a multi-headed beast. Running backend services like chat, authentication, customer support, and matchmaking is essential for any multiplayer game. The challenge here is having the necessary microservices running on the infrastructure to make all this function correctly.

When the goal is to scale games globally, the challenges become even greater. One of the main concerns is decreasing latency and lag time. The infrastructure needs to be running flawlessly to make this happen. Developers must be proactive, not reactive to problems. An IPM platform identifies and alerts users to issues before they become real problems. 

When people all over the world are playing a game, often on shaky connections to the server, lag time is a big concern. Having a robust infrastructure is key to a good user experience, otherwise, frustrated players will go elsewhere to pass the time. 

Possible Infrastructure Issues 

It’s essential to monitor and manage the infrastructure without disrupting operations. Doing this well can be tricky for several reasons:

• Scaling operations to match increased or decreased demand is a balancing act of providing responsive gameplay and infrastructure costs. When not done correctly, users can be aggravated or money can be lost.
• Increased users require more data to be processed, and if the infrastructure isn’t capable, gameplay can become worse. This can cause user churn or even infrastructure collapse from the load. 
• Monitoring data and looking for trends can be time-consuming. By the time a problem is identified or changing demand for services is noticed, it may be too late to make the necessary changes. 

Infrastructure Solutions

One of the biggest mistakes a game developer can make is thinking they can manage all of their infrastructure needs on their own. Finding the right IPM platform is a necessity for a successful game developer. 

What Does an IPM Do?

The short answer: makes your life a whole lot easier. The right IPM platform monitors the entire infrastructure so that developers can focus on the essential things, like game development. 

An IPM platform monitors the entire infrastructure and gives real-time status updates on everything the infrastructure is running. It will alert developers to anomalies and possible issues before they become critical. An IPM keeps track of many things, but let’s hit the four big ones. An IPM gives information on: 

• Latency: The time taken to perform a request. The lower the latency, the less noticeable the lag. Get alerted if your latency times increase. 
• Traffic: The number of requests the servers receive. 
• Errors: The number of errors occurring concerning requests. Keeping errors low keeps players happy. 
• Saturation: The amount of capacity being used at any given time. Too much freed up capacity can be nearly as harmful as not enough through overhead costs. It will keep an eye on usage at all times, and send an alert if it’s ever becoming an issue. 

The Bottom Line

Game developers need an IPM platform that can improve user experience and help scale games globally. This will ensure that players are getting the relaxing, lag-free gameplay that keeps them coming back for more. To learn more about other industry topics, check out LogicMonitor’s resource page.