Indie Game Developers: Prepared for the Deluge When Your Title Hits?
iPhone apps aren’t the only pieces of code that often emanate from a garage and, with good fortune, enable developers to crack the big time. But in a hits-driven world, how does a savvy independent developer prepare – technology-wise –for a game suddenly going viral?
Indie game developers rightly fret about hitting the wall – about lacking the infrastructure to properly support a wildly popular new title. Without question, smaller game developers building massive multiplayer games need infrastructure and often have to ramp up quickly. They can’t spend much in advance, since they need to marshal their resources for the title itself. Herewith, a few words to the wise:
1. Face reality but prepare optimistically. Embrace IaaS and do it early. Puns aside, rapid scalability is the name of the game. If your title catches on, you’ll need to add substantial horsepower overnight. IaaS enables you to start small but quickly increase compute power with essentially no upfront costs. You can literally boost your capabilities within days or even hours.
