CCU questions.

hexdump

Hi,

We are developing a game where easily could have some thousands of players playing it. The game is Turn Based.

In a turn based game are players allways connected to the server? Or CCU will be counted just for players sending a message to the server?

I have been reading a bit about online games and I have seen games having 200k-500k CCU's, so it seems 100CCU (basic license) too little.

I'm I missing something?

P.D. Unity user here.

Thanks in advance.

dreamora

If you have a game that can attract 200k CCU, which is about 10-20M monthly users, then paying a larger subscription than the barebone basic one will definitely not be a problem (or if it is, it will not matter as the game would not survive its first 7 days of being live but that would be very sad)

hexdump

Hi!,

First of all, sorry if I sounded a bit rough. It wasn't my intention to say that licenses were expensive or anything like this, and I must clarify I was talking about Photon Cloud service, not the server package that is sold to install in our own servers.

Our studio is not big, we don't have lota experience with online games but our next game will be. As I said our game will be turn based and free, this is why we expect a lot of users online at the same time (CCU). The problem is that we don't have reference numbers in android/ios market to make a guess about how many players could be online but at first the highest tier (5000 CCU) seems not enough in our opinion.

One of the problems is that we can't afford to invest a lot of money if we are not more or less sure that we will recover the investment. This added to the unknown average amount of CCU in a android/ios game make us a bit esceptic about the viability of the game. On the other hand, I have read there's a 1 month photon trial with unlimited CCU where we could test what we really need to feed users. This is a plus.

Could anybody bring some information about average numbers of CCU in a android/ios game? I think this won't be as big as a desktop game, but we really don't know.

Could anybody explain what does "For Pros 2000 .. 4000 CCU are available at $169,-, 5000+ at $199,- per 1k CCU and month" really mean? Doen't really understand the price range .

Any information would be really appreciated.

dreamora

With a turnbased game, the question is really to what degree photon is the best suited option cause turn based + mobile normally means asyncronous and photon is realtime multiplayer which is at least in the games I've seen so far the exact opposite (either you interact with the others in realtime or you do it at any later time)

What exactly is it that you need.

As for the pricing: Best drop the support a mail, I'm sure they are open to find a solution for your needs.
you can also host it yourself and get the unlimited ccu theoretically but basing on your description you might not have the required background at least right now and the financials to pay the elastic cloud. At 4k CCU photon is a steal, a normal cloud will easily cost you much more than that.

Also that your game is free might be true for its price but obviously you must have some monetize otherwise you will not be able to sustain the product as you need to recoup at a 5 figure+ revenue rate per month for it to stand a chance to ever make it back

hexdump

hexdump wrote:

Also that your game is free might be true for its price but obviously you must have some monetize otherwise you will not be able to sustain the product as you need to recoup at a 5 figure+ revenue rate per month for it to stand a chance to ever make it back

Yes of course .

From your answer I understand I need to get to know photon a bit more. It is a bit dissapointing to hear that photon is not really suitable for turn base games (This is because of my ignorance, thinking that it did not depend on the cloud provider) but if it is more real-time oriented it could be a problem.

Thanks a lot for all the insights. I think I will send an email to photon team asking them about suitable ways to integrate a turn based system in photon. By the way it is not really a turn based system (well, kind of ). In the game when you do something you need to wait X to do other things. It can be seen as a mixture of turn based and real-time.

Cheers.

dreamora

Photon is suitable for turn based too.
The question is just if it really makes sense because the rooms will be closed when the players leave, so you can not take a turn and let the other player enter the room at some future point to do his turn etc (asyncronous turnbased games like outwitters etc)
If the game naturally is meant to be all in the game all the time and taking concurrent turns for example (newer Civilization games, baldurs gate, XCom 3 etc style) then photon is perfect or a very strong fit

Tobias

The simpler and less interactive a game is, the more (and simpler) options are available to implement the server side.
A truly turn based game is hardly interactive and could also be implemented as web service (think php, google app engine, etc). It's maybe easier to get developers for php than for C# and a particular framework. Of course all the logic must be implemented anyways, so this won't save a lot of work in all cases.

Photon can be used for turn based games of course. It has matchmaking, room and player properties, solves serialization and the reduced lag improves the impression as the gap between turns is minimized.


In your case:
- many players but only 2 per match (not an MMO with seamless world)
-> perfect match for room based games like Photon's Cloud
- player's actions have a cool-down phase but no fixed turns
- you are a small team


A web-service wouldn't really work and Photon is a fitting choice.

There are no accounts and rooms are not persisted by Photon. However, this leaves room for other middleware and existing accounts, like Facebook or Game Center or similar. Just use their API to find a player's name and send it via Photon in-game.

While Photon was built as client and server development framework, our service Photon Cloud does not allow you to modify the server logic.
If that's needed, you would use our SDK and then run your game logic in a Photon instance on a machine of your choice.

Photon Cloud pricing is per month and CCU and as you are a small team you should qualify for our "Indie" pricing, too. Click the underlined "Indie" to see your options:
https://cloud.exitgames.com/realtime/Pricing

You can change your plan anytime, so dev with 20ccu, beta with 100 or whatever needed. From 500 CCU upwards, the limit is not a hard cut anymore. Instead, we accept any player and get in contact with you to discuss the next steps. This is what "CCU Burst" means.


Hope this helps.