Data Centers and the World of Online Gaming
Posted by Scott Sargent on Tue, Feb 08, 2011
Out of personal curiosity, I recently stepped off the beaten path into an area where data centres play a major role - the online gaming industry.
I came across an
insightful article from 2009 By Robert Lemos of
CIO.com, which begins:
"The online universes of Blizzard's World of Warcraft and CCP Games' EVE Online may not look similar to your data-center operating environment. But you can score big from their data-center lessons learned."
I have experience in this areas as a customer, and I've beta-tested a number of popular online games prior to release. But how much do we actually know about what goes on behind the scenes to maintain multiple online worlds?
Big Industry, Bigger User Base
With a subscriber base of millions, who invest hours of time in-game each week, successful gaming companies have learned to care about their "rabid user base". From experience there are several reasons for this:
- Many gamers are extremely IT savvy, and understand (or at least grasp) how data centres and computer rooms operate.
- Gamers are some of the most critical customers you will ever see, but also highly influential to their peers. Word travels fast, especially now via dedicated forums and social media. If a particular game has inordinate amounts of downtime or bad connectivity, it can adversely affect your user base.
- If your subscriber numbers start to dwindle, financially it could be game over.
Virtual Data, Real Issues
The article by Mr. Lemos points to the importance of a disaster recovery plan for the 'real world', such as the Tornado experienced by online gaming giant, Blizzard. At the time, they had only a single data centre for their hugely popular World of Warcraft game (in beta at the time).
In a separate example, Turbine Inc. relocated their data centre and it did not go as planned, causing extra day of downtime.
Suffice it to say, there are data centre challenges shared across all industries, and some that are entirely unique to world of online gaming.
Read the full article from CIO.com.