Backflip Studios Leverages Google Cloud Platform for Mobile Game Scaling

Backflip Studios is a mobile game development studio known for popular titles such as DragonVale, Paper Toss, and Ninjump. The company has grown from three to over 100 employees in the past five years. They are committed to delivering engaging mobile games and releasing frequent updates to keep players coming back. The company is data-driven and uses sophisticated data analysis to understand player behavior and improve game features. They have several new games lined up for release, all of which will utilize the Google Cloud Platform.

Backflip Studios, a mobile game development studio, faced a significant challenge in the rapidly evolving mobile games market. The company needed to launch games quickly and release frequent updates to keep players engaged. In 2009, most mobile games had minimal server infrastructure, but as games evolved to include frequent content updates, cross-device play, community events, player communication, and sophisticated data analysis, a robust server infrastructure became crucial. The unpredictability of user influx, especially when games were featured on an app store or review site, posed another challenge. Backflip Studios also needed to analyze the data collected from their games to understand player behavior and improve game features.

Backflip Studios turned to Google Cloud Platform to address their challenges. The platform provided a robust server infrastructure that eliminated the need for dedicated server engineers and ensured system uptime. Backflip Studios started by building their games’ server components on Google App Engine and later incorporated other elements of Cloud Platform, including Google BigQuery and Google Cloud Storage. The autoscaling feature of App Engine allowed the company to smoothly handle sudden spikes in user traffic. The company also used BigQuery for data analysis. They pulled data from the game engine, transformed it into a traditional database form, and ran queries to understand player behavior. This data-driven approach helped them identify areas of improvement and decide on new features and content. The simplicity of App Engine's architecture allowed the developers to focus on game development, as the database, server, and scaling components were automatically managed.

• The use of Google Cloud Platform has significantly improved the operational efficiency of Backflip Studios. The platform's robust server infrastructure and autoscaling feature have ensured smooth handling of user traffic, regardless of sudden spikes. The company no longer needs to worry about server setup and management, allowing them to focus on game development. The data analysis capabilities of BigQuery have enabled the company to make data-driven decisions, leading to improved game features and content. The simplicity of App Engine's architecture has made each game rollout easier and faster than the previous one. Overall, the company has been able to accelerate its pace of game development and release, thanks to the services provided by the Google Cloud Platform.

• Autoscaling feature of App Engine allowed handling of sudden user traffic spikes, doubling or tripling normal volume within minutes.

• Switching to BigQuery for data analysis resulted in faster data import and query execution compared to the previous SQL database.

• Development cycle for DragonVale was completed in just six months with a small team, thanks to the Cloud Platform.