The new crop of games showcased at GDC is more resource-intensive — it’s almost like watching an IT arms race; they’re upping the ante for all online gaming companies. The appetite from the public remains relentless, and the pay-off can be huge. Consider that gaming industry research firm DFC Intelligence predicts that worldwide market revenue generated solely from online games is set to reach $26.4 billion in 2015, more than double the $11.9 achieved in 2009.

That’s where SoftLayer comes in. We understand the high stakes in the gaming world and have tailored our IaaS offerings for an optimal end-user experience that stretches from initial release to everyday play. Take a look at what game developer OMGPOP (a SoftLayer customer) achieved with Draw Something: Almost overnight it became the #1 application in Apple’s App Store, tallying more than 26 million downloads in just a few weeks. To put the volume of gameplay into perspective, the game itself is generating more than 30 hours of drawings per second. That’s what what we refer to as “Internet Scale.” When YouTube hit one hour of video uploads per second, they came up with a pretty impressive presentation to talk about that scale … and that’s only one hour per second.

Gamers require a high-performance, always on, graphically attractive and quick-responding experience. If they don’t get that experience, they move on to the next game that can give it to them. With our core strengths of automation and extensive network reach, game developers come to us to easily enable that experience, and in return, they get a platform where they can develop, test, deploy and yes, play their latest games. True “Internet Scale” with easy consumptive billing … Get in and out quickly, and use only what you need.

Some of the most interesting and innovative use cases of how customers take advantage of our platform come from the gaming industry. Because we make it easy to rapidly provision resources (deploy dedicated servers in less than two hours and cloud servers in as few as five minutes) in an automated way (our API), many developers have started incorporating cloud-like functions into their games and applications that add dedicated resources to their infrastructure on-demand as you’d only expect to see in a virtual environment. Now that Flex Images are available, we’re expecting to see a lot more of that.

As I was speaking with a few customers on the show floor, I was amazed to hear how passionate they were about what one called the “secret ingredient” at SoftLayer: Our network. He talked about his trials and tribulations in delivering global reach and performance before he transitioned his infrastructure to SoftLayer, and hearing what our high-bandwidth and low-latency architecture has meant for his games was an affirmation for all of the work we’ve put into creating (and continuing to build) the network.

The rapid pace of innovation and change that keeps the gaming industry going is almost electric … When you walk into a room filled with game developers, their energy is contagious. We ended GDC with an opportunity to do just that. We were proud to sponsor a launch party for our friends at East Side Game Studios as the celebrated the release of two new games — Zombinis and Ruby Skies. Since their NomNom Combo puzzle game is one of the most addicting games on my iPhone, it was a no-brainer to hook up with them at GDC. If you want a peek into the party, check out our GDC photo album on Facebook.

To give you an idea of how much the gaming culture permeates the SoftLayer offices, I need only point out a graffiti mural on one of the walls in our HQ office in Dallas. Because we sometimes get nostalgic for the days of misspent youth in video arcades playing Pac Man, Donkey Kong and Super Mario, we incorporated those iconic games in a piece of artwork in our office:

If you are an aspiring game developer, we’d like to hear from you and help enable the next Internet gaming sensation … Having a good amount of experience with our existing customer base should assure you that we know what we’re talking about. For now, though, it’s my turn to go “Draw Something.”

-@gkdog

In gaming, I remember it all started for me back when my parents decided to buy me the first Nintendo console. Pointing that light sensor gun at unsuspecting ducks and watching them fall was all the rage … It marked a big step in the evolution of home gaming. What initially seemed like a good investment to keep me out of trouble soon turned into a headache for my parents. I frequently begged for more games, and they were not cheap. Look at how much new video games cost these days, and you’ll see that not much has changed in that regard. The fire to play all the latest games was never extinguished, so a chunk of my income was always earmarked for the next amazing game I needed.

As for movies, I also found myself collecting as many as possible to rewatch whenever I choose. While each individual movie didn’t cost as much as a video game, the aggregate costs definitely built up over time. My family and friends warned me that my “extravagant lifestyle” is reserved for the rich and would only lead me to financial ruin.

Fast forward to today, and I can say that I’ve learned a lot and found ways to sustainably feed my addiction without driving myself to financial ruin. How is it possible that I am able to live like a king without breaking the bank? It’s all thanks to content streaming, made possible by the Internet. I no longer have to buy every single game to have the ability to play whenever I feel like it with services like OnLive that actually streams numerous games to my TV (and a few other supported devices). Beyond the fact that I save money by not buying the game, I don’t even need the latest computer hardware to play the more graphics-intensive games like Crysis:

You might not be familiar with OnLive just yet, but most people know about content steaming from companies like Netflix and Amazon. You can stream countless movies to your devices to watch movies on demand for a monthly fee or on a per-movie basis. With these services readily available, it’s possible for just about anyone have the “kid in the candy store” experience of pulling up essentially any content whenever we want to watch or play.

If either form of entertainment appeals to you, you can agree that our quality of life has improved over time significantly. The streaming services provided by companies like Netflix and OnLive have really taken advantage of the technological capabilities offered by high speed Internet, which also reminds us of the significance of web hosting. To offer customers complete satisfaction, deciding which web hosting company to go with for a business is often a very difficult decision, especially since there are so many out there. It would make complete business sense to find an extremely reliable company to ensure the success of such services and having worked in the industry, and I can assure you with much pride that SoftLayer certainly shines in this area.

As an employee, I see how we’re building our network to provide the best experience around the world, and if there’s ever a problem, we treat all outages with extreme urgency. Customers get better turnaround times, and they can provide better service for their customers. If some content streaming were to become unavailable, it wouldn’t be long before it became available again.

It’s pretty safe to say that the Internet has spoiled me … Now all I need is a crown.

-Danny

Our high speed, global network significantly minimizes reliability, access, latency, lag and bandwidth issues that commonly challenge online gaming. Once users begin to experience issues of latency, reliability, they are gone and likely never to return. Our cloud, dedicated, and managed hosting solutions enable game developers to rapidly test, deploy and manage rich interactive media on a secure platform.

Consider the success of one of our partners — Electrotank Inc. They’ve been able to support as many as 6,500 concurrent users on just ONE server in a realistic simulation of a first-person shooter game, and up to 330,000 concurrent users for a turn-based multiplayer game. Talk about server density.

This is just scratching the surface because we’re continuing to build our global footprint to reduce latency for users around the world. This means no awkward pauses, jumping around, but rather a smooth, seamless, interactive online gaming experience. The combined efforts of SoftLayer’s infrastructure and Electrotank’s performant software have produced a high-performance networking platform that delivers a highly scalable, low latency user experience to both gamers and game developers.

You can read more about how Electrotank is leveraging SoftLayer’s unique network platform in today’s press release or in the fantastic white paper they published with details about their load testing methodology and results.

We always like to hear our customers opinions so let us know what you think.

-@nday91

The past year and a half at SoftLayer’s newest datacenter have been incredibly stressful and rewarding. Those who endured have gained my respect. Personal differences have subsided and camaraderie has formed. Of course anyone would wonder how many tech nuts does it take to make a clan? And from the glue of hardship was born Team Orange DOW2.

You might wonder why people who work together so much (sometimes for 12+ hr shifts) want to spend more time with each other. I mean, haven’t you had enough already? The answer is that we already have so much in common and finding a few extra hours to hang out together online is a joy we can’t get enough of. Of course, the entertainment value of an innovative RTS like DOW2 is multiplied immensely when played with friends. Of the other SoftLayer members of Team Orange DOW2 I am the newest to multiplayer gaming and am impressed by how much tech goes into it. Numerous options for in-game chatting (Team Orange uses Mumble, which has the least lag and cleanest interface), hi-powered video cards (1.5GB onboard ram!), dual core procs running on Win7 RC, live-streamed replays with on-demand libraries, and much more.

Everyone has heard the theory that gaming has pushed the boundaries of computing, but I believe it is more likely that datacenters like SoftLayer have pushed the boundaries of networking and helped make advanced tech more affordable to the ravenous mass of online gamers. The number of mega-powered game servers hosted by SoftLayer is a testament to the unholy integration of gaming and networking, and to that all of us closet gamers must say, “moar please!”[sic]

You might wonder what a person does with 10 computers and how in the world you handle that in a home environment. Well here is a basic run through our world o computers. My wife being the average joe, has a desktop and a laptop. I on the other hand cannot get by with just 1 desktop, nope I need 3. If my desk didn’t give off a healthy hum and a slight vibration I just wouldn’t be happy. So my desktops are broken down in to a Windows Vista box, generally used for gamming and 2 Linux boxes running Slackware and Gentoo respectively. You might wonder why I need 3, and my response would probably be something like “Because I can”. I do however make full use of these different desktops on a fairly regular basis so I guess I can still justify them. Of course you really could consider my laptop to be yet another desktop, but then again, it is rarely used at home.

So as you have probably noticed, that’s only 6 of the 10. Now, 2 of the computers I have are media centers connected to the TV’s in the living room and the master bedroom. If you haven’t had a media center, you just don’t know what you’re missing. This brings us to the last 2 pieces of this network. The last 2 are rather old boxes that sit in the corner of a closet being as unobtrusive as possible; however they are the backbone of my home network, the fileservers. What good would 2 media centers be if I needed to have a duplicate of all files on each one of them? In the world of computers, the 2 fileservers would be considered dinosaurs, but for what they do, they are perfect.

Now that you have all these computers, they need to be connected somehow. This entire network is connecting to 2 separate gigabit networks. Why 2 you might add? Well I took a page from the SoftLayer book on that one. I saw no reason why the fileservers or the media centers needed internet access, so rather than deal with firewalls and the like, it was easier to put in a second network linking all the computers to each other while only the desktop computers were able to connect to the internet.

Is all of this overkill? Probably, but it sure gives me something to do. Now my current project might actually cut down that number a bit, then again, what fun is that? The current project is to get a 2008 server running with Hyper-V and a domain controller up and running. I figure since I have all these computers, I should be able to log into them all without having to create a separate user account on each. This project has been an experience for sure, but that’s for another blog.

-Mathew

Nearly overnight, the hacker lexicon got some new words and phrases. This guide will help you make sense of most hacker conversations you may hear that refer to Portal.

The Cake is a Lie

The artificially intelligent computer that runs the series of puzzles (known as the Aperture Science Computer Aided Enrichment Center) goads your character along by stating that “cake” will be served to you if you survive all the tests. However, graffiti on the walls of the center proclaim otherwise… stating that the cake being promised is a great, big lie.

Hackers generally use this phrase either as an icebreaker or as a description of a situation where somebody is motivated to do a difficult task for a promised but unverified reward.

I’m making a note here: Huge Success!

At the end of the game, the computer gives you your final review. At the beginning of the review, it says “This was a triumph. I’m making a note here: Huge Success!”

Like Trekkies shouting “Qua’pla!” (Klingon for “Success!”), programmers are now known to say that they are “making a note here: Huge Success!”

The Companion Cube

The Companion Cube is an inert storage cube imbued with a personality by the game programmers to trick game players into carrying this cube throughout a puzzle, but then requiring them to destroy it at the end. They did such a good job, however, that game players have become attached to this “Companion Cube,” going so far as to build little paper models or buy plushies of this “character.” Generally, you’ll hear a hacker talk about how they would never let go of their companion cube, or something along those lines.

Aperture Science Thing We Don’t Know What It Does

Programmers find long multi-word names for products to be humorous. The game developers played on this concept:

• It’s not the lab. It’s the Aperture Science Computer Aided Enrichment Center.
• It’s not a storage box. It’s an Aperture Science Weighted Storage Cube.
• It’s not a button. It’s an Aperture Science 1500 Megawatt Superconducing Super Button.

The joke is to take, say, a mouse, and turn it into an “Aperture Science Rotational Axis 2 Dimensional Vector Detecting Peripheral”.

Now You’re Thinking in Portals

With this guide handy, you can start to understand the conversations of your Portal crazed coworkers. You will no longer be confused when a coworker bursts out laughing when holding a slice of cake. You won’t wonder why he has a background with little hearts all over it, displaying a strange box. You can now safely laugh at any name longer than 4 words, knowing that it’s most likely a joke. This won’t help with any of the other strange things developers say, but at least their conversations should be a little more transparent now.

For more information, check Wikipedia, or better yet, Watch the trailer and play the game.

-Shawn

Shooting Up the Neighborhood
The kids in my neighborhood would get home from school, crank out the homework and household chores, then bail outdoors in all kinds of weather and play some version of battle games, be it “cops and robbers”, “cowboys and Indians”, “World War II”, etc. In addition to politically incorrect game names, we’d use toy guns and plastic knives and swords to pretend-shoot each other and pretend-hack each other to bits — all in good fun and while using vocabulary that our parents didn’t care for. I’m sure the toy makers made a modest profit from our recreation.

Just last night, my son (age 14) approached me and announced that his homework was done, his room was straight, he was ready for his tests, etc., then asked if he could get on his Xbox 360. After I had him help with the dinner dishes, he headed upstairs much like I would head out the front door when I was 14. I went upstairs a little later and he was logged on to Xbox Live with the voice headset running and he pointed out that about 11 of his hockey teammates were also online and playing Call of Duty 4. So instead of pretend-shooting each other outside in the cold January air, they all get together online and do it. Don’t ask him what kind of language gets used either – it’s probably the same as my generation. From what I understand, the toy makers in this case make a lot more money than those of my youth.

Passing Notes at School
In yet another politically incorrect part of my upbringing, somewhere around 5th and 6th grade, somebody thought it would be a good idea to pass ballots around the classroom. They’d write a question at the top of the page along the lines of “Do you like Gary?” and they’d put two columns below. Other kids would sign under the “yes” or “no” columns depending on how they felt that day.

This is basically virtualized with Facebook, Linked In, and Plaxo. We get prompted to accept others as friends and recommend each other with these networking tools. With all the applications, pictures, messaging and so on these go way beyond our childhood note-passing but the concept is the same. Virtualizing this concept has unlocked untold riches. How much? Microsoft’s investment in Facebook extrapolates the value of Facebook to be $15 billion. That’s a nice chunk of change for virtualizing the passing of notes at school.

All This Virtualization Requires Servers – We’ve Got ‘Em
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not real good at whiteboarding new ideas. Tell you what – you think of something from childhood that can be virtualized into billions in valuation, and SoftLayer will provide the servers and connectivity you need to achieve it.

-Gary