Hi folks,
We at brainCloud, like many of you, have been following the Stop Killing Games movement with interest.
I am interested in what you think of it?
We are all in a similar spot I suppose -- caught in the middle!
As gamers - we love games - and it's awful when a game you love (or never had a chance to love) gets shut down and becomes unavailable to play.
As game developers (trying to make a living at this for us and our families) - any handcuffs to how we all work to make a living feels like overreach.
I definitely respect what the movement is trying to do. That said, I don't think many of the influencers that have jumped on board appreciate the technical complexities involved. We are far from the days of simply self-hosting a multiplayer server from home.
That said - how the backend is built (and what it's used for) has an impact. Custom solutions are often single-purpose and heavy - and of course require full-time devops and software maintenance to keep things running. This costs mucho $$$.
But that's where services like brainCloud come in.
Unlike custom-developed server solutions, brainCloud costs are elastic - scaling with the player count. And there's $zero cost for personnel to operate and maintain the backend - as the brainCloud team takes care of all that.
Which means that games can be operated for a much longer period of time before studio's need to make the hard decision to shut them down.
Take Anthem, for example - a game reportedly still drawing 15K daily players, yet slated for shutdown. Obviously, it's a AAA game with custom tech, but it illustrates a point: many games still have life and loyal players, but not enough revenue to support full-time ops and maintenance teams.
But on brainCloud? No problem. Our elastic pricing model is designed to scale with your player base — from indie games with just a few thousand users (on plans starting at $15/month) to larger-scale titles with millions of monthly players. And because brainCloud handles the backend operations for you, there’s no need for dedicated DevOps/Maintenance teams. As player activity (and revenue) naturally declines over time, costs decrease as well, helping studios preserve the long tail without breaking the bank.
Which is to say that I think gamedevs are being responsible, and are aligned with the spirit of Stop Killing Games, by using elastic BaaS services like brainCloud for their backend. We know that your games are your babies - and you want to see them live on...
Which is why we are also investigating the possibility of offering Sunset plans for games -- so that gamedevs who find that their games no longer warrant active development can better afford to keep them up and running (at low player counts) for players to continue to enjoy.
Anyway - I'm interested to hear your thoughts!
Paul.
