Strategies For Optimizing Your Online Gaming Performance
Online gaming is one of the world’s favorite pastimes. There are roughly 3 billion people playing online video games today, generating profits of around $362 billion for the gaming industry as a whole.
This should come as little surprise if you’re a gamer yourself, as titles like Call of Duty, Minecraft, and League of Legends routinely make headline news in the gaming world. Recent additions to the online gaming world have been welcomed, too, with titles like Helldivers 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3 (which offers multiplayer campaigns) have recently shaken up the industry.
However, if you’re a developer looking to break into the world of online gaming, you’ll need to ensure that you have the right tools to support players. This is crucial, as releasing a game with poor latency or server queues is certain to generate bad press and turn folks away from your new release.
Latency
Poor latency will undermine gamers’ experience and completely ruin your game. Players won’t stick around when they experience packet loss and will switch to familiar games if your game stutters and has poor FPS. Poor connectivity will undermine your player’s load speeds, too, meaning your incredible game design will be completely side-swiped by high ping.
At its core, latency is about efficiently sending information from your servers to gamers’ devices. When this exchange is slow, gamers experience “lag”. Sometimes, this is due to the gamer’s poor connectivity and is out of your control. At other times, your servers may be at fault for lag spikes and high ping.
Before shipping your online game, consider upgrading your server hardware. This may mean that you need to purchase and install more physical servers around the world — particularly if you expect to experience an uptick in your player base from locations far from your current servers.
If you’re looking for a case study to follow, consider taking the approach adopted by Helldivers 2 developer, Arrowhead Game Studios. Arrowhead predicted that they would need, at best, a server capacity of around 250,000. This was based on estimates taken from their first game, Helldivers, which maxed out at around 7,000 concurrent players.
Despite their best intentions, Arrowhead had to foot the bill for increased server capacity quickly when a staggering 700,000 gamers logged on to play the game. By adopting a conservative approach to sever capacity, Arrowhead was able to quickly pivot towards hosting more players without jeopardizing their long-term financial security.
In the future, developers may not need to fret so much about server queues and connectivity due to advances in 6G technology. 6G offers 10X the speed of 5G and helps servers handle bigger bandwidths. We’re unlikely to see 6G until 2030, but when it does arrive gamers and developers around the world will rejoice thanks to hyper-connected infrastructure (like servers) and greatly improved data download speeds.
Data Transmission
Every developer has a slightly different way of delivering data to gamers. However, striking on an approach that works for your game can be tricky. Get the ball rolling by optimizing your assets and giving players greater control over what they wish to prioritize.
For example, if you’re about to launch a PvP first-person shooter like Call of Duty, you’ll probably want to offer graphic settings that prioritize performance over visuals. This reduces the amount of strain on gamer’s devices, as they will only need to render the most crucial assets like enemy players, walls, and weapons. Extras, like hyper-realistic grass and shade, will be left out as these will only bog down performance.
If you really want to dig into the details of effective data transmission, consider upskilling your computer science skills. This will teach you the basics of computational geometry and help your team solve issues related to computer graphics and performance. Here, you’ll learn the math and code that underwrites your favorite games and will be in a perfect position to turn your understanding of data and programming into visual effects that gamers will love.
Battle Passes and Paid Content
Online gaming is booming, but many developers still go bust when they launch a new MMO or FPS. Services like stream charts show that, despite its hugely hyped release, titles like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League have fallen to a player base of around 200 players per day 4 months after launch.
While it is impossible to say exactly why big online titles have flopped, the gaming community has made it clear that they will push back against games filled with microtransactions and paid battle passes — particularly if the game costs upwards of $70 on release. This is currently killing big titles like NBA 2K and may threaten to put folks off your new release.
Rather than pushing microtransactions, consider offering alternative ways for folks to “earn” paid features like skins and calling cards. This incentivizes players to invest time and effort into your game and ensures that gamers who have the skill and dedication to succeed in your online titles are rewarded with recognizable items that distinguish them from other players. This will keep folks playing for longer and help you deliver a product that people love.
Optimizing gaming for online play can be tricky. However, with proper planning, you can increase your server capacity and shift your location to properly support your player base. This is crucial, as the online gaming world is highly competitive and gamers demand low ping, minimal packet loss, and perks when playing multiplayer titles with friends.
