Google and Ubisoft Are Teaming Up To Improve Online Multi-Player Video Games (fortune.com) 52
Google and Ubisoft announced on Tuesday they have a new project intended to improve the performance of fast-paced, online multi-player video games. From a report: The search giant said it teamed with Ubisoft -- the publisher of popular video games like Assassin's Creed and Far Cry -- to create a gaming developer framework intended for coders that work on online video games. The project is called Agones, which is Greek for "contest" or "gathering," and it will be available in open-source, meaning developers can use it for free and also contribute to the underlying technology. Google pitches Agones as a more cutting-edge way for developers to build multi-player games that don't crash or stutter when thousands of video gamers play at the same time.
Each time people want to play their favorite first-person shooter or other computer resource-heavy online video game with others, the underlying infrastructure that powers the online video game must create a special gaming server that hosts the players. The Agones framework was designed to more efficiently distribute the computing resources necessary to support each online gaming match, thus reducing the complexity of creating each special server while helping coders better track how the computing resources are being used.
Each time people want to play their favorite first-person shooter or other computer resource-heavy online video game with others, the underlying infrastructure that powers the online video game must create a special gaming server that hosts the players. The Agones framework was designed to more efficiently distribute the computing resources necessary to support each online gaming match, thus reducing the complexity of creating each special server while helping coders better track how the computing resources are being used.
what about letting us have lan servers and our own (Score:5, Insightful)
what about letting us have lan servers and our own hosted ones that can run the mods and maps we want to run?
Re:what about letting us have lan servers and our (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
More than just data mining, for psych assessment, they will know more about you than you know about yourself and exactly how to motivate and control you. Of mixed mind about this, they will clearly target the playgrounds of the psychopaths and the narcissists, player versus player or as I like to call it purse versus purse. No point targeting pve player versus environment because that is cooperative game play, unless they have pvp elements. Now with passing off information to three letter agencies, individu
Re: (Score:2)
More than just data mining, ...
More than data mining, being able to take the game back after the implied rental period has expired.
Re: (Score:2)
I mean there's still a lot of games around that use P2P networks between the clients for multi-player. A lot of console games do it, where the connection to an actual server is only for things like game statistics. Even modern MMO type games do it. Take Elite: Dangerous as an example, there they do it most likely to cut server costs. But it's still an always online game. The offline m
Re:what about letting us have lan servers and our (Score:4, Informative)
what about letting us have lan servers and our own hosted ones that can run the mods and maps we want to run?
There are still a handful of games which do this. The most recent release of Unreal Tournament does so, as does Civ VI. A great resource is this page:
http://www.langamelist.com/ind... [langamelist.com]
Which lists out games exclusively by the ability to do LAN-based multiplayer.
Re: (Score:2)
Amen!
* Where the fuck is the map editor???
* Where is the mod support???
* Where is the ability to run our OWN servers?
* Where is the ability to set our own MAX players?
Ubisucks can't even do what Valve's L4D and Team Fortress was doing for over a decade ago.
Truncated title (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly this (Score:2)
Outside of a few enclaves, there's little push to make games connected online. Those enclaves tend to be centered around large media companies.
Don't get me wrong, I've done plenty of multiplayer, but I don't like it exclusively. I'd rather the devs spend an extra six months polishing gameplay over polishing netcode. Or give the networking funds over to the story devs so I can have some of my in-game actions reflected meaningfully in the story. None of this pallet-swapped outfit or "moral compass" bull. Mean
Re:Exactly this (Score:4, Interesting)
Outside of a few enclaves, there's little push to make games connected online. Those enclaves tend to be centered around large media companies.
Don't get me wrong, I've done plenty of multiplayer, but I don't like it exclusively. I'd rather the devs spend an extra six months polishing gameplay over polishing netcode. Or give the networking funds over to the story devs so I can have some of my in-game actions reflected meaningfully in the story. None of this pallet-swapped outfit or "moral compass" bull. Meaningful reflection.
You must be old, like me. Players in their 10's-20's don't care much for single player games anymore, it's all about online PvP (in whatever form that takes for any given genre) for the vast majority of them. Just look at the top grossing and top played games (including F2P games like LoL, Hearthstone, Fortnite BR, etc). All multiplayer. The last "Huge" single player game I can think of was Zelda BotW. Doom, Fallout 4 before that but none of those have any staying power with the general gaming public.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, dear God (Score:1)
We're doomed.
Google - of the "always in beta, and dropped like a rock for a new idea" fame, plus
Ubisoft - "Buggy, grindy, repetitive with hellish DRM - but at least we're not EA".
There's no way this can turn out as anything good for users.
Google has too much money (Score:5, Insightful)
Because that's what we needed. Another [wikipedia.org] gaming [jenkinssoftware.com] network [zeroc.com] library [pocoproject.org] that will once again abstract too many important things, be insufficiently tunable for different game genres, and impose an invasive obnoxious data un/marshalling scheme on every game object.
And have nothing whatsoever to do with anything profitable at Google, and so it will be abandoned a few weeks after it's published.
It's official (Score:5, Interesting)
I've said it previously, but this really hammers it home. GOOGLE IS EVIL. Pairing with a purveyor of super obnoxious DRM. Ewwwwwww. Ubisoft is disgusting. I won't play their games anymore, even ones I legitimately purchased.
Re: (Score:2)
Ubisoft already has Uplay - which by all accounts I've seen (I refuse to install *another* game store/library app) is a miserable piece of software. I'm not sure Google - who is also evil - would be able to fix that train wreck.
Two wrongs don't make a right... Two evils don't make a good.
Yeeeeeeah, no. (Score:4, Funny)
Those are not two names I usually associate with a good user experience... much less an improved one.
Unless, of course, you define a good user experience by not having to worry about lugging around that darned heavy wallet.
Re: (Score:2)
I despise Ubisoft, so the only conclusion I could reach from the title was that Google was buying them and shutting them down. Imagine my disappointment when I read the summary....
agones (Score:2)
It's pronounced "agonies".
Ubisoft and Google (Score:2)
P.S.: the 3rd is from acquisition
A nice game company should (Score:4, Interesting)
When the game is no longer supported push an update to let people host the game, use p2p. A way to keep multi player working within a user community.
Pushing a big brand party political data mining ad company onto a game is just not useful branding.
Oh boy (Score:2)
Re:Oh boy (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, the two companies I love the most getting together
Just wait until the collaboration between EA and Comcast, powered by Oracle!
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure SAP will consult on that collaboration, since the must be doing it in the Microsoft cloud.
Re: (Score:2)
Ubisucks doesn't even fix their crap (Score:2)
Anyone who has played Ubisucks games knows they don't even fix their bugs -- I'll be surprised if this will be any different.
Google for "rb6 las vegas 2 sound bug" [google.com] and you get tons of complaints.
Why would I trust them _this_ time??
Same old Ubisoft (Score:1)
Add Google to the mix and we'll get ads for Ubisoft games that aren't compatible with our systems while spewing right wing hate.
I am starting to think that Ubisoft falling under the hostile takeover might well be a good thing. Maybe the entire company will suck into a hell gate, ala DOOM.
Will never buy any Ubisoft game (Score:2)
Ubisoft games are notoriously spammy. Their obnoxious UPlay popups during games which you can't turn off, default cursor positions on DLC you don't own during menu navigation, fake in-game inbox full of notifications on DLC and promotional material, and start pages with promotional links you have to click through before actually getting to the proper game menu, what a shabby way to treat a customer who paid full price for their games.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep. Ubisoft has been on my "not even if it's free" list for a good decade now. I ran into 1-2 games back then that were unplayable due to their shitastic DRM. Ended up pirating both and they actually ran significantly better. I slipped up with Assassin's Creed 2, and UPlay was just awful. Luckily Assassin's Creed was so shitty that "Don't Buy Ubisoft Games" was well reinforced in my mind.
I spend 20 minutes sneaking around my target, I get directly overhead, and drop silently in for the kill. CUTSCREEN!!!!!
Re: (Score:2)
I'd been avoiding Ubisoft games for years because of their shitty DRM, but there was a Steam sale where they were practically giving away Anno 2205. I'm a sucker for city building games, so I took the bait.
I really shouldn't have to then use sysinternals tools to determine why the hell a game that's installed needs privileged access in order to run. I'm sure it has to do with whatever spyware DRM the game came loaded with, but at that point it simply wasn't worth it.
It's not like there isn't a million o