Tech revolutions in game development: First engines, now backends

Teemu Haila is the CPO and co-founder at Metaplay.

We live in an era where game makers have access to sweeping, powerful ecosystems of off-the-shelf development tech and tooling that empowers them not only to work more efficiently, but also to a standard never seen before.

It wasn’t always this way. The first generations of engines and middleware offered speedy, cost-effective alternatives to proprietary tech, but at the expense of quality and custom feature sets.

Today, however, we are collectively endowed with a range of flexible ready-made options that exceed the quality and precision delivered by proprietary technology.

Self-made vs. off-the-shelf

For years before the arrival of the current third-party options, teams would build their own engines and tools – and a brave few still do. But the effort, expertise, headcount, and budget needed to create and maintain your own tech can take significant studio resources away from making your games.

Equally, the arrival of third-party engines has over time established a new common language of game making convention. A relatively standardised, consistent ecosystem woven together from tools, APIs, SDKs, and services that work in relative harmony now exists around the major engines.

That movement, in turn, has brought all manner of gains in terms of quality and performance, meaning creativity has been afforded more breathing room, as teams spend less time fighting technological fires. The end result, then, is more exceptionally crafted, positively received games that bristle with lasting growth potential.

And now something very similar is happening with backends, as a new generation of powerful, quality-focused options has emerged to offer a true alternative to in-house.

Of course, ready-made backends have been available to game makers for some time – but developers were often faced with a stark decision: to embark on the journey of building a backend tailored to their needs, or save money buying a generic off-the-shelf option.

Fortunately, as with game engines, the new wave of off-the-shelf backends tends to match or even beat proprietary approaches in terms of ability and flexibility – and the potential gains for games is immense.

The live service engine

Today’s backends offer developers and publishers a means to schedule and implement update content, provide and adjust economies and commerce systems, deliver items and in-game currencies, manage player accounts and logins, and support the likes of cross-save and cross-play.

They equally power moderation and messaging, friend networks and clans, user-generated content, implement achievements, live ops testing, and more.

In the era of live service games as the medium’s commercial norm, then, having a quality backend in place is clearly critical.

Without their backends, commercial giants like Monopoly Go, Stumble Guys, and perennial chart-toppers like PUBG Mobile would be significantly undermined, while breakout hits like Baltaro would have struggled to punch through to the mainstream.

A game might not exist without an engine to make and run it, but backends are arguably just as important to a title’s success, legacy, and impact. From one viewpoint, backends can even be seen as the engines of live ops, and we are currently in an era where live ops power most of gaming’s biggest revenue generators.

It is self-evident, then, that today’s successful games need a robust, flexible, multifaceted backend. Live ops titles large and small simply couldn’t function without a quality backend – today players expect the likes of online functionality and content updates, and will likely spend their time and money elsewhere if you aren’t able to provide them.

Some might note that there has been a resurgence in the likes of single player and couch co-op games, and they’d be right. But even devoutly solitary single player titles can enjoy the commercial and critical gains offered by in-game events, IAP maximisation and effective player support. 

Outperform proprietary?

The shift to a new era of third-party backends that bring quality and performance, as well as efficiency and convenience, is profound.

That is because building a proprietary backend requires tremendous expertise across all manner of specialties from security to commerce, and incredibly complex engineering to keep things running reliably.

For those reasons and many more, building a backend can get very expensive indeed. In fact, when we surveyed 125 senior game developers at large US game studios on the resources they invest in backend tech and tooling development, we found the average cost was a staggering $21,662,784.

That expense can come in no small part from staff costs, with the survey revealing that the same large teams – meaning those with over 50 staff and feature-complete backends – typically paid individual staff focused on internal tech and tools an annual salary of $138,864.

And the typical size of an internal team at the studios surveyed was 52 (a number that demonstrates that many outfits that contributed to the study had many more than 50 staff).

The other investment you need to make in building your own backend is time. The same survey found that the teams had spent an average of three-years working on internal tech to date.

Even if you have the money, headcount and time, there are also hidden costs to consider. When we spoke to that group of 125 C-suite and team lead studio staff, it was found that one-in-four experienced increased crunch as a result of building their own solutions, while one-in-five observed a resultant drop in revenues.

Anyone who has spent much time in the games industry will know crunching teams suffer in tandem with their output – and anyone at all can see the problem with revenue decreases.

Plainly, then, building your own backend presents a perilous journey. But picking an off-the-shelf option is about a great deal more than simply offsetting the challenge of engineering internal tech.

Integrate early, maximise impact

Whether you’re looking to build or buy your next backend, you’ll want to commit to your choice before much – if any – progress starts on the game itself.

Switching backends mid-development is notoriously complex, and can set titles a way back in their production roadmap, as so many points need to be reworked and reconnected.

If you’re building your own, then you’ll want to start months – or even years – in advance. Picking your preferred new-generation off-the-shelf option might ideally come around the game design document (GDD) stage, or even earlier.

The savviest studios make their tech choices early, and backends are no exception. Thinking smart and getting ahead will maximise the benefits you reap from your chosen backend. There are a spread of backend options out there, each with distinct leanings – so at Metaplay we’ve built up a guide to making that choice.

In the future, as games become ever more live and connected – potentially across many more devices and platforms – backends are only going to become more important, and their democratisation more impactful.

As the dominance and control of platforms like iOS and Steam appears to be being increasingly diluted – and as web gaming makes its return to the medium’s fore – the very notion of what a gaming platforming is is shifting.

More studios are also protecting their revenues and claiming ownership over their player communities by hosting their own webshops; another movement away from the major platforms, where backend choice is critical.

And increasingly, games, series, or publisher portfolios are being presented as platforms of their own right, from Ubisoft Connect to the delivery of Fortnite. As those instances increase, so too does the need to have a powerful, fully featured, reliable backend. Making those yourself is tough.

Or you can pick one off the shelf and join a revolution that echoes that time all those years ago when a new era of powerful, flexible, quality-focused ready-made game engines and tools changed our industry forever.