Google and Ubisoft Teaming Up for New Project

American multinational technology company Google is partnering with industry titan Ubisoft to build an open-source tool, dubbed "Agones," that will make multiplayer game development easier for more studios.

The news comes courtesy of a new blog post from Google, who say the new open-source project will use Kubernetes – which has emerged as the de factor open-source – in order to host and scale dedicated servers.

The blogpost reads:

"In the world of distributed systems, hosting and scaling dedicated game servers for online, multiplayer games presents some unique challenges. And while the game development industry has created a myriad of proprietary solutions, Kubernetes has emerged as the de facto open-source, common standard for building complex workloads and distributed systems across multiple clouds and bare metal servers. So today, we're excited to announce Agones (Greek for "contest" or "gathering"), a new open-source project that uses Kubernetes to host and scale dedicated game servers."

Interestingly, Google has enlisted the help of Ubisoft for the project. While the French publisher and developer is one of the leaders in the industry, for logistical purposes, it's surprising Google didn't bring on one of the American industry giants, such as Electronic Arts or Activision. Maybe Ubisoft wasn't Google's first choice, or maybe Ubisoft is the best choice for the job, whose to say.

As for Agones, it is said to be designed as a batteries-included, open-source, dedicated game server hosting and scaling projects built on top of Kubernetes, with the flexibility a developer will need to specifically tailor the specific needs of its multiplayer game.

As you may know, most multiplayer games connect players and group them via a matchmaker service, sorted by things such as rank, and that service then instructs the creation of a short-lived dedicated game server within a cluster of machines. And so what Agones will do is replace this with what it has built with Kubernetes, for a result that will simplify operations, chiefly by making everything run in one place. It does this by taking the traditional server model for multiplayer games, which requires more than one server by using account management, inventory, marketsplaces, etc., and running each and every operation under one platform.

Carl Dionne, development director of Ubisoft's online technology group, accompanied the announcement with the following statement:

"Our goal is to continually find new ways to provide the highest-quality, most seamless services to our players so that they can focus on their games. Agones helps by providing us with the flexibility to run dedicated game servers in optimal datacenters, and by giving our teams more control over the resources they need. This collaboration makes it possible to combine Google Cloud's expertise in deploying Kubernetes at scale with our deep knowledge of game development pipelines and technologies."

As Google notes, Agones is still in a very early stage. For a more details on the project, click here.

Source: GamesIndustry