Introduction
The gaming industry was valued at 198.40 billion in 2021. It continues to grow exponentially with the potential to reach a value of 339.95 billion dollars by 2027.
Gamers are passionate individuals who often wait for years for the launch of a new game or are excited to play a game that they are passionate about. And, if they do not have a great firsthand experience, it will have a drastic effect on a gaming company. A CDN is a great way to ensure a seamless user experience, and the success of your gaming company depends on users.
CDN is a state-of-the-art technology that incorporates cloud computing, edge computing, and machine learning for efficient content delivery. It allows gamers to play seamlessly and assist game developers to scale at a global level.
What is a CDN for gaming?
A content delivery network consists of worldwide servers that store, and cache data for quick, efficient, and fast content delivery in a specific geography. It improves the overall infrastructure thus improving the performance, and efficiency, reducing ping times and minimizing latency.
How does a CDN for gaming work?
Turn Hours-Long Wait Times to a Few Minutes
The only thing that will turn off a gamer is a low speed and low latency. A developer takes years to create a game, and when it finally launches it’s hard to wait for it to load.
With CDN the files are loaded and cached on the nearest server. As a result, the queue is distributed to multiple servers called PoPs, so the long tours wait time is over.
Improving the Pregame Experience
Gamers often suffer due to low downloading speed and high buffering. In the early days, the poor pregame experiences included issues related to inserting a disc, and today it is the slow downloading speed of the games or high buffering time.
Here’s an example,
In 2015, the video game Star Citizen’s players were expected to be 100GB down. Massive downloads like this result in losing patience, and there are many cases where the games need gigantic pre and post-game downloads. However, having a CDN in place can help improve the pre and post-game experience by storing content local.
Consistent Speed and Performance
Even a lag time of milliseconds can ruin the user experience when it comes to gaming. Since online games require a lot of player input therefore it needs consistent speed and performance.
CDN ensures high performance and consistent speed by delivering massive files instantly. This is essential during the time when traffic spikes which can hinder speed and slow down the speed.
A developer has no control over the speed and performance of the player’s internet connection, the only option he has is to improve the overall infrastructure. Therefore adding a CDN will speed up overall performance. This is important for particularly those geographies where there is poor internet connectivity. A great gaming CDN can assist the players in performing efficiently. The distributed servers work efficiently with load balancing so that the performance doesn’t suffer.
Superior Server Placement
Once the game is designed and launched, a lot of guesswork is required in the gaming industry because game developers never know where the game will be most popular. And, if you deploy a server based on your guesswork, it will be costly and ultimately a waste of money and time. On top of that, finding the right professionals who can build and manage the global infrastructure is even the most expensive.
A CDN can remove all the guesswork and saves you cost and time. If your game catches on in India, then you can decide to invest in a new server in India. CDNs have servers all across the world that distribute data seamlessly.
Defending Against Attacks
The gaming industry is one of the biggest revenue-generating industries worldwide. In 2015 gaming industry was prone to DDoS attacks, and as a result, the most popular game become targeted.
Such situations can be drastic to the company and require an extra layer of protection. However, a CDN can save you from any attacks that can be ruinous for your company. The proxy server can detect DDoS attacks, and saves your main server to come under attack.
Retain Users and Revenue
A gamer will always choose your company compared to others, only if he faces low latency, high speed, and low buffering time. A great user experience goes long in the gaming industry because a lag of even a million seconds can turn a gamer off. A great UX keeps the gamer stick to your company and as a result, your revenue improves.
Below are some of the hacks that can help you retain users:
- Quick launch. For gamers to return to your game, it should provide a great first experience. The first thing that turns the gamers off is lag time, and delays in downloads. Use CDN to avoid that;
- Reward progress investment – The more money a player puts into a certain game, the longer he will play. A sense of progression makes people committed to a process, therefore if you launch loyalty programs, you can encourage the players to commit to processing. As a result, they come back to games;
- Think Social – Encourage your players to log in via Facebook or any other social media platform. Studies show that socially engaged players are more valuable than anonymous players. It boosts the sense of competition, progression, and zealousness among friends. Secondly, when they work towards achieving the same goal, they stay committed to progressing further.
Reduced Ping Times
The game performance is directly proportional to low ping times. A CDN lowers the ping time as a result the gamers can play without any delays and efficiently which keeps them engaged. The high ping times can destroy the popularity of the games. The massive backlash can be avoided with CDN which reduces ping time and latency.
There could be several gaming-related issues, including a congested network, infrastructure issues, and cyber security attacks. These issues are not in the control of the game developer, however, what he can do is improve the infrastructure with CDN. A CDN improves the overall performance and enhances availability by deploying various servers at different geographies. Thus the user can access from the closest data center, as a result, it reduces the low latency and ping times.
Good Monetization
The golden rule for good monetization in the gaming industry is to ensure a great user experience. A UX increases the number of players. The gaming industry is a booming business, and it has unprecedented potential for scaling profits.
In the past game, developers have been focusing on improving the quality of graphics and original plot, however, recently improving the project’s infrastructure is crucial because it is the only that can make or break the game’s reputation. Listed below are the main features that will help you improve your revenue:
- High-speed downloads;
- Growing player base for profit growth due to the in-game purchases which include in-game currency, paid upgrades, and additional content;
- Network support;
- Scalability.
Scalability for Growth
A great CDN can handle large traffic surges. It allows you to avoid guesswork and you can clearly determine the number of servers you might need to cope with the traffic. Since the servers are available across the world, therefore a visitor can be directed to the nearest server, thus delivering the content fast and quickly.
CDN like CDNvideo and CDNetworks|Wangsu have distributed data centers across the world. If the main server is in Canada, and its offshore server is in each country, and if a visitor tries to access data in India, the server located in India will respond to his query rather than the main server in Canada.
Successful games attract gamers from around the world, and it’s important to invest in the required infrastructure to handle the growing workloads. CDN encourages optimal resource management and allows you to minimize expenses by redistributing workloads among the CDN server worldwide.
Conclusion
The game developers are striving to improve the technical aspects of the game since they have already put a lot of effort into improving the visuals and graphical aspects in the past.
Today games are loved or preferred based on how quickly they load, and how instant a game can actually start playing it. This makes CDN one of the sought-after technology, and it continues to play a critical role in the gaming industry. The kind of CDN developers choose depends on the features of the game, therefore it is essential to do some analysis and research about the specific game and its target audience.
