Multiplayer games are one of game development’s greatest challenges. The reward for success is likely an exorbitant bill from cloud providers or complaints from players due to sub-par peer-to-peer networking solutions.

Edgegap offers automated game servers and distributed orchestration services that not only optimize performance but also contribute to significant cost savings and a reduction in infrastructure usage.

This article aims to explore various solutions provided by Edgegap, demonstrating how they can help your gaming business thrive while contributing to environmental sustainability.

Understand Game Requirements

It is crucial to ensure that your game servers are not over-provisioned, as this leads to unnecessary costs and resource wastage. By accurately determining the exact amount of CPU and RAM your game requires, you can optimize resource utilization.

You can either load test a single instance while developing, or you can wait a few days after being in production to see how much resource your games use in average.

Edgegap’s dashboard provides a metrics section where you can monitor resource usage for these load tests, and the Edgegap team is available to assist with detailed analysis, helping you make informed decisions. Implementing solid load testing practices for single instances and understanding your game server behavior are vital steps in this optimization process.

Leveraging Multiple Game Server Sizes

Adopting a strategy of multiple game server sizes (small, medium, large) is a practical approach to reducing costs and saving energy.

This method is particularly beneficial when matches are initiated with fewer players, supplemented by bots. By doing so, you can allocate just the right amount of resources required, preventing resource wastage and contributing to cost efficiency.

For example, if your server supports 10 players but your matchmaker will start a new server when there are only a few players (and fill the rest with bots), you may be fine with half of the resources a full server needs. You can create various server sizes, and call each size in your (or our) matchmaker based on how many players are playing.

Embracing Instant Instances

While standby instances provide a safety net for sudden spikes in demand, leveraging instant instances can lead to substantial cost savings by eliminating the need for unused servers.

To maximize the benefits of instant instances, it is imperative to ensure that your container and game server binary have optimal boot times. Edgegap ensures your container is cached and ready for deployment, but optimizing your container and binary is a crucial step. This includes selecting the appropriate base image, minimizing unnecessary libraries, and embedding large assets (when needed) directly into your binary to prevent lengthy download times at startup.

Furthermore, integrating your CI/CD pipeline with Edgegap's platform can lead to even more efficiency.

This setup allows for automatic updates and deployments, ensuring that your game servers are always up to date with the latest assets and configurations without manual intervention. By doing so, you ensure a consistent and high-quality gaming experience for your players while simultaneously achieving cost savings and reducing your infrastructure footprint.

Efficiently Closing Servers

Just as important as quickly launching game servers is the ability to stop them efficiently. Otherwise, you’re paying for wasted cloud resources.

Relying on timeouts can lead to resource wastage and additional costs.

Edgegap supports various methods for instance termination, including API calls from your game binary or requests from your matchmaker/lobby. This ensures a graceful shutdown, preserving the integrity of your game server and preventing undesired behavior during the shutdown process.

This also ensures that your game servers uses less computing resources, which means less electricity used and thus, minimizes it’s environmental impact. It will be your (small, but always important) decarbonization effort; especially if the traffic of your game reaches high volumes.

Conclusion

By embracing Edgegap’s innovative solutions, gaming companies can achieve the ideal balance between optimal performance, cost efficiency, and environmental sustainability.

Through careful resource allocation, utilization of multiple game server sizes, instant instances, and efficient server shutdown procedures, Edgegap empowers your gaming business to thrive in today's competitive landscape. The added bonus is you will contribute to a greener planet.

Harness the power of Edgegap’s automated game servers and distributed orchestration’s platform to elevate your multiplayer game’s experience to meet your ambition. Ensuring satisfied players and a better margin on your bottom line with less expensive hosting costs.