The first quarter of the year is usually a great time for the video gaming industry as studios begin to promote upcoming releases at events like the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco or E3. As the years have gone by, the video games that have gone to market have become richer in content, mimicking movies and real life.
Video gaming has also moved away from traditional platforms (personal computers and consoles like the Xbox and Playstation) and revenue models have changed. Players can now enjoy their favorite titles on mobile devices and virtual reality headsets while also experiencing an extension in engagement by purchasing downloadable content (DLC). Essentially, the new way of video gaming has brought new use cases to how studios develop, harnessing the cloud and DevOps.
Here are a few use cases:
- Continuous Deployment: In the past, when video games were released they were in their final form, even if there were bugs. Today, the presence of a big is unacceptable and will receive backlash from passionate gamers. Thankfully, the integration of DevOps into gaming studios faster patching of issues without the need to release another version of the game.
- Cloud Storage: One of the nuances with gaming is the ability to start a game on one platform and finish it on another. That is the beauty of cloud, which allows for the support of an experience on multiple platforms.
- Collaborative Gaming: In addition to cloud storage, the cloud also enables more collaborative gaming. Though gamers have known about massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) for some time, the normalization of cloud in developing these games mean innovative features and scaling up to handle more users.
- Extended Customer Relationships: Finally, the new paradigm of gaming also means extended customer experiences. As downloadable content, social media, and customer communities round out the marketing mix for gaming firms, using the cloud and DevOps to build and continuously improve on customer engagement is the next step to beating the market.
What do you think? Are you an avid gamer or work at an entertainment firm that handles the gaming audience? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
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