Back in June, Unity announced that they will be making a partnership with Google Cloud to make it easier for game developers to make more connected online games.
The term connected games refers to games that connect that player to other players and to the developers as well. This can refer to multiplayer but also features like new updates and daily quests for the player to partake in.
Connected games can be divided into four categories:
- Dynamic Single Player: Single player focused games, with “live” features like social, leaderboards, and content updates.
- Turned Based Multiplayer: Asynchronous, turn-based gameplay, with more than one player.
- Real Time Multiplayer: Real time, session-based gameplay.
- Persistent Game Spaces: Real time game sessions that persist.
Partnering with Google Cloud will allow Unity servers and infrastructure that is reliable and customizable for developer’s needs. It will also be more accessible as Unity reports that developers will not even need to be experts at using cloud to the program for games using the engine.
Through their tight relationship with Google Cloud, Unity states that they wish to "democratize connected games. From a robust global network that enables low-latency player connectivity, to worldwide synchronized databases, Unity developers will be able to take advantage of Google Cloud — right in Unity — without having to master the cloud".
Both Unity and Google Play are hard at work in their new-found partnership. One of the first projects to stem from this relationship is a new open matchmaking project simply called Open Match. The first release of this will be coming out this summer.
What developers can expect can from this project is:
- Team-based matchmaking, so you can create groups of players and match them with other groups of players.
- Game modes, for games with different match types, e.g. Free-for-All, Capture the Flag, or whatever your game supports
- Latency awareness, so you can group players by their relative networking performance
- Time in queue, so you can prioritize players that have been patiently waiting
The main focus of this project is to make the matchmaking flexible. The system will make it easier for developers to fix commons problems with developing but also allow for their own custom solutions. Open Match will also be fully scalable.
