We Could Learn A Few Things...

Come on, we all know someone who plays massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs). I'm lucky, in that I know *two* people who get lost in them -- science-fiction writer and former Dr. Dobb's columnist Jerry Pournelle and my nephew Austin. Jerry, of course, holds a PhD; Austin is working on his BA, and I can't help but think MMOGs have a role in his being a fifth-year junior.

But what I find interesting about MMOGs is the underlying technology that provides millions of players with performance and reliability, and reasonable costs and power requirements. I also find it amazing that, according to a DFC Intelligence report entitled Online Game Market, the worldwide online game is forecast to grow from $3.4 billion in 2005 to over $13 billion in 2011. But let's stay with the underlying technology.

Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment uses IBM System x3800 servers to provide enough computing power and memory to develop, test, and support its first massive multiplayer online role-playing game that will be built around Stargate, a MMORPG based on the Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis TV series, with playable areas based on historical and fictional human time periods and alien environments.

Then there's EVE Online from CCP Games. With a subscriber base of more than 200,000 players, CCP Games has deployed a cluster of more than 420 CPU cores that manages more than 150 million database transactions daily. EVE Online is set in space and your aim is to establish yourself as a force to be reckoned with, trusted by friends and respected by enemies.

Likewise, Codemasters, which is based in England, produces online games such as The Lord of the Rings Online and RF Online, in addition to all kinds of standalone games for PCs, XBox, and Playstation 3. RF Online connects gamers 6,000 miles apart across two continents through its hosting infrastructure, remotely managed from Boston.

Think about all these users and the performance and reliability of these systems the next time your network goes down at work.

-- Jonathan Erickson
jerickson@ddj.com

Posted by Jon Erickson at 04:29 PM  Permalink