I’ve just returned from the FTTH Conference 2014 in Stockholm, which had a special focus on online gaming, and how the development of the gaming industry is tightly linked to high-speed broadband.
What’s really driving bandwidth consumption? The top three generators of peak-time Internet bandwidth won’t come as any surprise: Google, Netflix and Apple (according to network analysis by Deepfield). But in fourth place is a company that you’ve possibly never heard of, unless you happen to be interested in online gaming. Twitch provides a platform where anybody can broadcast multiplayer games. Launched as a specialised service for gaming content in June 2011, it already generates more peak-time Internet traffic than Facebook.
Successful gaming industries have emerged in places with exceptional Internet connectivity, like Sweden. “We completely rely on online distribution for the production of the content and we increasingly rely on online distribution for the delivery of the content but we are spoiled because we take it for granted,” said Per Strömbäck spokesperson for the Swedish Games Industry. “We are competing with Japan, the U.S., and South Korea – all places with great internet connectivity.” He describes good internet connectivity not as a success factor for games developers, but as a “hygiene factor” – essential to the preservation of its health.
Computer games are not new, of course. They have been in the living room for nearly 40 years. What’s changed is the accessibility of player interfaces and devices, and the constant availability of games on social networks. No longer just a playground for youngsters, the appeal of computer games has widened to encompass all age groups. Who would have guessed that middle-aged housewives everywhere would become addicted to Candy Crush?
New business models have also increased the popularity of online games. Online games don’t require expensive consoles and can be sold as a service – instead of being asked for a large sum of money up front, users can pay per month – or monetized through in-game purchases of time, items like maps, or customisation. “It surprises me the amount of money people are prepared to spend on cosmetic items in games,” said Stefan Lindeberg, venture capitalist and Board Director of Stockholm-based games development studio Fatshark.
Games developers have embraced the changes in the digital world. “The biggest impact [on games developers] is digital distribution,” said Lindeberg. Historically games developers published the game, put it on plastic, and sent it to stores around the world. Digital distribution has allowed them to self publish, making the game available globally on the day it is published. “There is no more plastic, a shorter value chain; the bottom line is we can get a bigger share of the income.”
Digital distribution has also given games developers a tool to combat piracy by requiring players to be connected to the Internet in order to play the game. The server communicates with the hardware to confirm that the player is authorised to play the game. Constant communication with the server also makes it possible to do a lot of interesting things mining the data in the game, says Lindeberg, allowing games developers to fix bugs and bring in updates more quickly. “If users get stuck it’s very important to understand why because otherwise they stop playing. It is death for the game if you lose your players because one part of the game is too hard,” he said.
As computers and consoles have become more powerful, video streaming is giving games developers freedom to make the games more visually impressive. “To make game look great in 4k high definition requires a huge download and the user might give up waiting for the download before the game is ready to play. We can download the game logic and stream the content to get user engaged as soon as possible,” Lindeberg explained. The separation of the game logic from the content in this way is an increasing trend in the industry, he says.
The challenges in digital delivery are not so much about bandwidth – gamers tend to seek out high-speed connections anyway – but about network delay and stability. “Playing a game together in real-time environment requires very low latency to give a good experience,” said Lindeberg. “If we try to solve a problem, or battle an enemy together, you need to be able to see what I do immediately.” Fibre to the home (FTTH) networks can help to solve that challenge because they tend to have much lower latency than other technologies – on the order of just a few milliseconds (ms) – which compares very favourably with DSL networks that see typical delays of around 30 ms.
Today the hardware on media consoles is good enough to do really immersive 3D multiplayer games. A unique virtual reality games helmet called Oculus Rift – developed in the U.S. and not yet available in Europe – was on display at the FTTH Conference, giving attendees the opportunity to experience immersive 3D games at first hand. Fatshark says it has developed software for this type of game but hasn’t released it because network connectivity is not stable enough to provide the sustained bandwidth rates that the game would require. “But we will [release it] one day…” said Lindeberg.
