GAME DESIGN & SCALING

JEROEN DERWORT&

FRANK TIJHUIS

GAMEBASICSFOUNDERS

2004

FOOTBALL STADIUM OFFICE

WHY ARE WE HERE?

WHY ARE WE HERE?1. Share insights,

contribute to startup scene, inspiration

2. Connect with universities, young professionals

TOPICS

JEROEN

Game mechanics

Technical Challenges

FRANK

Business challenges

Future

Questions & Answers

MSX

Started with MSX computers at age 11

Programming games was my passion from the start!

AVALON

200.000 downloads

ZDNET Shareware Award in 2000

www.avalonrpg.net

Who’s heard

of OSM?

PERSONAL PROFILE

Online Soccer Manager M.V.P.

Start in 2001

GAME BASICS

FREEMIUM GAMES

QUESTION 1

Which games are big on mobile?

QUESTION 2

What is the biggest Dutch game in the App Store?

QUESTION 3

Why is that?

OSM CORE LOOP

Improve Squad

Prepare

Results/

Rewards

RETENTION

DAILY RETENTION

33%

WEEKLY RETENTION

20%

MONTHLY RETENTION

12%

BUSINESS MODEL

Premium Tickets

Private Funds

Tickets

TECHNICALCHALLENGES

QUESTION 1

HOW MANY MATCHES ARE SIMULATED BY THE ENGINE PER DAY?

ANSWER

2.3M matches in 260k leagues!

QUESTION 2

HOW MANY DATABASE OPERATIONS PER SECOND DOES OSM HAVE ON AVERAGE?

ANSWER

20.000 queries/sec!

HOLY SH*T!HOW DO WE HANDLE THIS?

PERFORMANCE FIRST Designed with performance in mind

Powerful hardware

Scalable architecture

DESIGN WITH PERFORMANCE IN MIND Reduce number of queries

Optimize queries, can’t take more than a few milliseconds

Use caching!

De-normalize model

Engine: batch processing

POWERFUL HARDWARE

State-of-the-Art Datacenter

34 servers: web & database

Solid State Disks

Up to 128GB of RAM

Latest XEON processors

SCALABLE ARCHITECTURE Using the most performing technologies available

CDN & DDoS protection

Sharding of user data

Multiserver architecture

BUT, USE KISS!

FRANK TIJHUIS

Introduction

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

DAILY ACTIVE PLAYERS Online Soccer Manager

2004 - 2008

_______________________________WEB_______________________________

0

20,000

40,000

60,000

80,000

100,000

120,000

140,000

160,000

180,000

200,000

0

200,000

400,000

600,000

800,000

1,000,000

1,200,000

1,400,000

1,600,000

1,800,000

2,000,000

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

DAILY ACTIVE PLAYERS Online Soccer Manager

2009- 2014

_____________________ WEB_____________+FB + iOS +ANDROID______________

2004 2010 2014

Employees 2004 - 2014

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

Growing Pains

1 to 8 Employees

Growing Pains

8 + Employees

Growing Pains

8 + Employees

What happens?

Overhead

Structure

Meetings

Role Change to experts

Recruitment!

Growing Pains

Clustering the experts...

Marketing Design Testing

Development

Structuring GamebasicsMission

Gamebasics wants to gather football lovers from all over the world to allow them to feel as the manager of their favorite football team. Everyday and everywhere.

Structuring GamebasicsMarketing team(s)

Acquisition

Activation

Retention

Referral

Revenue

Structuring GamebasicsDevelopment Teams

AGILE (SCRUM / KANBAN, meetings, 'just enough' documentation)

Focus on delivery

autonomous teams

FUTURE

OSM 3.0!

Boss Coins

Rights

QUESTIONS?

www.jeroenderwort.nlwww.gamebasics.nlwww.onlinesoccermanager.com

Resources: