Game Hosting Guide

A quick update: Back in February we reported that the FPS Rantings blog from blog network B5 Media was shutting down. In fact, it was just going on hiatus, and is now back and being regularly updated by Michael Leano.

A strange story from Gizmodo: A Brazilian gang kidnapped one of the leading players of GunBound, a turn-based RPG-style multiplayer online game, hoping to obtain his password and sell the account. One of the criminals’ girlfriends arranged a meeting with the gamer via Orkut, the Google-run social network that is huge in Brazil. When he showed up for his date, the gangsters snatched him:

After sequestering him in Sao Paulo, they held a gun against the victim’s head for five hours to get his password, which they wanted to sell for $8,000. And yes, the story gets even better. Surprisingly enough, after five hours the hostage wasn’t talking. The group leader had a gun against his head all that time but the guy didn’t say a word. At that point, the crooks gave up and decided to let him go. The Brazilian police then caught the four suspects, aged 19 to 27.

How many gamers would refuse to give up their passwords with a gun to their head? Hero or idiot?

The Planet, whose Insomnia 365 unit hosts many game server providers, has completed a direct connection with GameRail, a “performance network” offering low-lag connections to online gamers. With the new connection, GameRail subscribers will have low-latency connections to game servers at The Planet, which has six data centers in Houston and Dallas.

GameRail’s business model is to deliver superior performance to its subscribers by peering directly with ISPs, universities and game server providers (GSPs), reducing congestion that is often encountered on the public Interent (see diagram). Low latency (”lag”) is crucial in multiplayer first-person shooter games like CounterStrike, where a slow connection can muck up gameplay and/or leave a player at a competitive disadvantage.

“With the addition of The Planet to our network, our subscribers will see a substantial increase in the desired content titles and game play environments they prefer,“ said GameRail’s Vice President of Business Development John Alden. “The Planet’s powerful network performance and reliability provide optimum connections for serious online gamers.“

“The Planet has always been a destination for competitive online league gaming events,“ said The Planet’s Vice President of Technology Will Charnock. “With this peering connection, GameRail is able to extend the reach of our customers to additional cities with a hyper-competitive, low latency and smooth connection to the online gamer.“

GameRail is still in the testing phase but getting closer to “live status,” the company says. It now has network facilities in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Palo Alto, Seattle and St. Louis. GameRail made network equipment upgrades in April. “Because of the tremendous response from both access peering and game server partners, we quickly outgrew our phase 1 network equipment even before our formal launch to end users,” the company said in a May 3 announcement. “We just completed an upgrade to Foundry Network XMR core routers in each city. These routers are carrier-class and allow GameRail to peer with a huge number of companies.”

To make it easier for its end-users to locate servers, GameRail recently worked with Game Monitor to create a web interface that identifies more than 4,000 game servers hooked up to its network.

Online multiplayer computer gaming is one of the fastest growing entertainment activities in the U.S., with more than 40 million people now playing regularly. GameRail introduced its “bypass network” in January to delivers a direct connection from the game player to the game host.

GameRail is operated by Progression LLC, a facilities-based network operator with interconnection facilities in eight major US markets including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Palo Alto, Seattle and St. Louis. The company’s lead investor is River City Internet Group (RCIG), a St. Louis area technology company. Robert Guller, President of The Broadband Exchange Building in St. Louis, is also a significant investor. 

Guild Launch has created a free full featured guild hosting application. While designed for use by the MMORPG gaming community for games such as World of Warcraft, the service is also suitable for creating FPS gaming communities, clans and PvP team web sites. In addition to basic guild features like guild forums, guild roster, calendar, file library, bank, and news, Guild Launch has created a selection of widgets. Premium upgrades include Ventrilo voice communications, domain names, and increased storage capacity. Guild Launch says it was founded “to provide quality guild hosting services to a rapdily evolving and demanding online gaming market.”

ClanTemplates.com has announced its Big Battle 3 design contest for clan templates and sigs, which it describes as “a fun and exciting tournament for signature designers to battle against each other for bragging rights and ultimately US$80 for the winner! Each round you design a sig and submit it to battle your opponent/s.” More details on the ClanTemplates development blog.

Global Netoptex, Inc. announced that its Online Game Services Inc. (OGSI) business will use the global IP network of TeliaSonera International to expand into the European game hosting market. OGSi will support more than 25 titles from multiple publishers and developers. While specializing in MMO games, OGSI also offers clan servers for games including Counter Strike, Doom3, Half Life 2 and Battlefield 1942.

“We selected TeliaSonera International Carrier in order to expand our operations into Europe and support the initial release of online games this summer,” Derek Wise, GNi president and CEOWise explained. TeliaSonera International Carrier in partnership with IXEurope will also provide GNi with high density colocation facilities located in Frankfurt, Germany. GNi, with OGSi, is one of the leading providers of managed Internet services in the United States, offering robust, highly competitive infrastructure and bandwidth to the games industry.

Online Game Services Inc. has been refining its game hosting service provider business model since its inception in June 2004. The company now works with a number of online game companies, providing them with fully managed dedicated game hosting services.

eSports event organizer Cyber Evolution (CEVO) said it will continue hosting its online video-game competitions with Dallas-based dedicated server provider Layered Technologies (LT). “Since CEVO relies so heavily on the reliability and scalability of LT, we could not pull off our events without LT,”  said Charlie Plitt, CEO of CEVO. “This is why we renewed our partnership with LT for 2007.”

CEVO holds online video-game competitions in North America and Australia for both amateurs and professional gamers. With a base of over 30,000 registered members, events typically have 2,500 gamers competing for up to $30,000 in cash and prizes. CEVO’s whole online experience comes through the Internet Platform provided through the LT platform, which stores player, team and match data on highly secure and accessible database servers. Layered Tech’s infrastructure operates the live virtual environments for each competition. Since launching in 2005, CEVO and its sponsors have awarded over $150,000 in cash and prizes to event participants.

The B5media blog network has decided to shut down FPS Rantings, its blog about first-person shooter games. Here’s the announcement from B5media’s Matt Scott:

Well folks. Due to a lack of traffic and readership, the powers that be have decided to close the pages of FPS Rantings. It’s been fun and I hope you all enjoyed reading my thoughts and sarcasm regarding the genre of FPS games.

Is there no audience for FPS blogs? Part of the issue may have been the focus of FPS Rantings, which covered a broad range of FPS titles but seemed geared to everyday FPS gamers than competitive gamers. eSports sites such as GotFrag seem to have plenty of readers, as does TwitchGuru (which has the advantage of being part of the Tom’s Hardware Guide network). See our directory of gaming news sites for more reading.

The PC Gaming Blog over at 451 Press has  an item on Reducing Lag in Online Gaming, with 10 tips on ways you can improve your gaminge xperience. Many will be well known to experienced gamers, but the list covers a range of variables that involve hardware (Upgrade Your Computer, Check Your Network Cable, Increase System Cooling), configuration (Close Background Tasks, Reduce the Screen Resolution) and connectivity (Seclect Low-Pinged Servers, Get Better Bandwidth/A Better ISP). Sam also shares a tip from the Filefront Forums that may be new to many players: renaming the .exe can route around game detection functions in popular graphics cards that can imapct the performance of some games.

Online game hosting specialist Online Game Services Inc. (OGSI) has been acquired by long-term Global Netopotex Inc. (GNi) in a deal valued at more than $3 million, positioning GNi to provide “pay-as-you-grow” game hosting solutions to the fast-growing industry for massively multiplayer games. While OGSi specializes in MMO games, it also offers clan servers for games including Counter Strike, Doom3, Half Life 2 and Battlefield 1942.
“Acquiring OGSi is a natural progression,” said Derek Wise, GNi’s president and CEO. “By combining their expertise in the games space with ours in managed services, we achieve increased economies of scale and efficiency to better serve our customers.”

“Combining our two companies clearly strengthens our ability to serve the game industry with innovative hosting solutions,” said James Hursthouse, CEO of OGSi. “We’ll also be taking our ‘pay-as-you-grow’ model into new areas such as interactive TV, video and music services, and social community websites.”

OGSi currently has more than 1,000 blade servers packed into 12 cabinets in 365 Main’s San Francisco data center. OGSi has been developing its game service provider business model since 2004, hosting sites for Ping0 LLC and GoPets Ltd. with the new Hellgate London online game. With its acquisition by GNi, OGSi expects to have over 4,000 additional servers operational for games clients in 10 datacenters worldwide by the end of 2007.

“We’ll be building out these gaming dedicated hosting infrastructure in other data centers operated by 365 Main,” said Hursthouse. “Our goal is to provide the industry with every excuse not to build data center infrastructure in-house. It’s a drastic reduction in risk and cost.”