Gaming has gone a long way from the arcade to mobile. In video gaming alone, there are an estimated three billion new users expected to join from across the world. The Asia Pacific region is a haven for video gamers, contributing to nearly half this number. The gaming industry’s revenue has not only significantly grown in the past years, and its increasingly mobile nature has also made gaming a social activity, one that links people worldwide.
Crunching the numbers, it appears that gamers spend at least one and a half hours a day using their consoles. This shows that more and more people may spend time on their screens but connect with each other through games. Users are at the heart of gaming, and it’s with this mindset that gaming developers are bound to gear their innovations.
On providing agile solutions to complex problems
In the webinar, “Game on with MongoDB,” MongoDB APAC Senior Solutions Architect, William Tan, and Tech Lead at gaming company Uptivistic, Dam Le, shared their experiences in the constantly evolving gaming landscape. Both speakers presented their takes on the changes in the gaming industry, particularly on the emergence of NFT gaming, the necessary shift of companies’ focus from databases to game development, and the user-centric approach to games.
In his presentation, Tan explained MongoDB’s three main assets for gaming companies, namely, agility, availability, and scalability. Working with MongoDB allows developers to get their products to the market faster and scale quickly. It helps the gamers to play both offline and online giving them a world-class gaming experience. This is especially true for mobile gaming, which often requires good Wi-Fi and a stable network. MongoDB Realm, allows users to store their gaming info in their mobile device so that they can pick up where they left off when they’re back online.
MongoDB provides the application data platform that game developers are looking for–an intuitive way of writing game code that supports all data formats available. The company’s Atlas Cloud offers sophisticated security and simplified data architecture, perfectly complementing blockchain technology when it comes to powering NFT gaming.
NFT gaming and beyond
Today, NFTs have become so pivotal in the gaming industry, Uptivistic’s Dam Le noted, is part of their innovative offering to users. From the more traditional paywall gatekeeping games from players, NFT gaming now offers a play-to-earn setup that puts users at the forefront of the gaming industry. Le provided a diagram tracing the relationship between core games, “tokenomics,” and NFT assets, basically highlighting the potential of NFT gaming to attract both gamers who are in it for the game, and traders and holders who just plan on investing in their token.
Despite its growing popularity, both Tan and Le surmised during the webinar’s panel discussion that NFT is not the only hot topic in the gaming industry today. Tan mentioned that more and more gaming elements are cropping up in non-gaming companies for greater interactivity with users and clients, while Le cited the Metaverse as an attractive potential for companies to keep an eye on.
Skipping the innovation tax for tech businesses
However, perhaps more importantly, beyond building databases, MongoDB allows developers and companies to focus on what they do best–building games. Simply put, MongoDB aims to ease the heavy lifting of constantly refining their database from developers and lets them focus on game development.
needless complex data architecture takes a toll on resources that could otherwise have been used productively. That complexity is ultimately a tax on innovation — the Data and Innovation Recurring Tax, or DIRT. or the cost of managing multiple technologies which leads to the cost of retaining, re-training, and persuading developers which also hampers the developers’ experience and impacts the overall productivity.
But the innovation tax is more than just an unsatisfied workforce. Structurally, it’s also the efficiency of the company’s databases and how these won’t overwhelm developers and engineers. The solution to outdated tech is to replace them with more agile solutions, which is the work that MongoDB does for its clients. In partnership with MongoDB, for example, Le said that Uptivistic saw an exponential growth of concurrent users, from 10,000 to 200,000 through the company’s optimisation of Uptivistic’s database and tech, allowing Uptivistic to focus instead on developing their product and the game.
The underlying thrust is that gaming companies and developers should focus on investing time in building games, not databases. While databases are a supporting component of any business, start-ups should be careful not to mistake this as their end goal, nor should they be pouring too much time into streamlining these processes when they should be focused on innovating their products.
MongoDB provides an enterprise-class, mission-critical application data platform. A cohesive, integrated suite of offerings capable of managing modern data requirements across even the most sprawling digital estates, and scaling to meet the level of any company’s ambition, without sacrificing speed or security.
Watch the webinar discussion here.
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Photo by Lucie Liz from Pexels
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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by MongoDB
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