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Technology behind Video Game Scaling

By January 22, 2021January 1st, 2024No Comments

With the constantly growing reach of video games and the massive player base, game developers need to check and test their games with virtual players, real-world people and versatile scenarios before commercial launch. Technology plays an important role to expand the outreach and performance of the video game. In this blog, we are going to see how one can take advantage of the latest technologies to ensure that their audience and video game players get benefits from their games.

CLOUD PLATFORM TO MEASURE SUSTAINABILITY:

The main advantage of cloud computing is its potential to scale. One can build an amazing game experience with the right choice of Cloud. Companies and organizations can build secure, safe, and scalable games on the cloud network. Game developers can also avail themselves of services cloud offered to build their gaming applications. Cloud technology can be configured to take care of security of the data to be processed in the entire process. 

BENEFITS OF CLOUD COMPUTING IN THE GAME INDUSTRY

Cloud Computing helps businesses with their operational process. It has got new and advanced opportunities for game development and solutions for scalability challenges caused by older methods. Here we will look at some benefits cloud computing has for the gaming industry and will help game developers as well.

  1. Security: Cloud computing companies enable high-level security to the game industry to prevent any data leakage issues and hacking. Data in a virtual environment is safer than other ones.
  2. Device Compatibility:  The main advantage of using it is its nature to scale. Now users can have a great game experience on any device, preventing any scope of graphics distortion, insufficient memory, processing power issues. 
  3. Access Multiple Games: Cloud can help users to play multiple games simultaneously. It helps to make the video game industry more powerful and dynamic with the real end-users. 
  4. Can be Played on Multiple Devices: Not only on Console but Games can be played on a variety of devices like Laptop, Mobile, Tablet, etc.
  5. No chance of Piracy:  With Cloud, games are stored in a virtual environment, so it is less likely that there will be unauthorized access or any chance of piracy as people can access it with their personal computer and most of the games are not available in physical form.

As we have discussed, Cloud can be helpful to the gaming industry. Now we will see some automation tools that can also be used to check if a certain online game sustains the maximum number of target players. These tools can be helpful for the developers to look out for performance-based challenges and bugs that could impact the loading time for the video game.

  1. Apache JMeter: 
  • A Java-based application that is used to test both dynamic and static performances.
  • It tests strength by proving heavy loads on a large group of services, individual servers to check the execution of various load types.
  • Can be applied to test FTP, SOAP, and REST for web based games.
  1. HPE LoadRunner:
  • This can be used to check for performance before the video game launch.
  • It gets together with JUnit, IDE, etc.
  1. WebLOAD:
  • This is a useful tool for game developers with a huge player load testing requirements. 
  • It enables testing based on features like automatic correlation, DOM-based recording/playback, and JS language.
  1. Loader:
  • It is a free cloud-based service to test load and stress by building concurrent connections.
  • Real-Time Monitoring game experience is possible here.
  1. Load Complete:
  • It is a desktop tool and can be used for testing web based games to check scalability and performance.
  •  Gives a test analysis report after every test.
  1. Rational Performance Tester:
  • The Performance test production and analysis tool, developed by IBM.
  • It can support the development team to approve the scalability of the web based games and applications.
  • Real-time reports for instant execution of problems.


Now the question arises is it possible to test 10,000 virtual users using rational performance Testing? According to an article published by IBM, it is not a necessity to test 10,000 virtual users one can also test for 1000 users. When the website is under production it is not anticipated to go through a high loading test. Rational Performance testing can help to optimize load handling for high volume tests.

IMPORTANT FACTORS THAT CAN BE CONSIDERED WHILE SCALING

Let us now see some factors that can be checked while scaling in the video games. 

MANUAL TESTING

With the ongoing trends and changes happening around game testing automation, many companies and professionals have put their faith in automation testing but there are certain aspects of manual testing that cannot be ignored. With the variation in the game testing methods, there is a debate if manual testing should be implemented while going for automation or not 

  1. Manual testing is carried out by testers that means testing is done keeping the human behavior and perspective in mind. Validation, user flow, look & feel, and basic human judgment are something that we cannot ignore.
  2. Broader View of the overall application: A human mind tends to have exploratory behavior that can help to check the overall flow of the mechanism. It covers the expansion for the testing. 

GAME SECURITY TESTING

Online game testing should ensure user security and provide a hassle-free user journey. It is important to perform game testing while scaling to ensure that there is no data breach while thousands of users connect with your game online. Having a good online reputation in front of a community of testers enforces trust and ensures your game reaches an even wider audience. Any sort of errors and flaws should be prevented with the help of game security testing. Checking for any loopholes in the applications and servers can help to prevent any system crash or breach of valuable information. A security tester needs to check for authentication, authorization, confidentiality, integrity, and resilience to prevent the loss of sensitive data.

GAMER COMMUNITY SUPPORT FOR YOUR GAME

During scaling, beta game testers play a vital role. Beta gamers are logged in through different systems, hardware, platforms, and devices which helps to measure the scalability of the game and cover wide tests related to your game. With Beta Game Testing it is possible to check the scalability of the game and know the real experience testers faced throughout the gameplay.

CONCLUSION:

With help of greatly evolved and still evolving technology, video games are reaching new heights, attracting more and more audiences each day and also creating new challenges for the developers when it comes down to managing them and their massive communities. It is always best for the game developers to explore their options around testing the game for functionality, security and performance with help of suitable tools and technologies in the planning stage itself.