Data Center Colocation to Maximize The Great Potential of Local Game Industry

Although the gaming industry in Indonesia has been deemed promising since about ten years ago, its potential has clearly been growing even more rapidly in the past few years. Over 40 million people in Indonesia are active gamers, with mobile gaming being the dominant sector in terms of revenue. According to gaming market research firm Newzoo, in 2018, people in Indonesia spent a total of $1.1 billion on games, making it one of the biggest game markets in Southeast Asia.

As it has induced the rise of opportunities in various industries, the COVID-19 pandemic has also created a big opportunity for our local game developers. Since the pandemic started, there has been a 10-20% increase in the growth of Indonesia’s game developers according to the data published by Asosiasi Game Indonesia (AGI).

Bring Out The Customer Experience
Gamers are now considered a specific target market in various local industries that many brands, especially whose business cores support the gaming industry, have decided to collaborate with game developers and create special products for them. Several Internet service providers, such as Indihome, launched special bundling packages for gamers, providing specific benefits and features including in-game accessories. Last year, one of the most popular local coffee brands, Torabika, also offered Mobile Legend limited edition in-game skins as bonuses for purchasing their products.

The gaming industry is about providing the best customer experience, so what is important for game developers is the ability to interpret what customers need and combine ideas with technology to realize these needs. 

Good Game, Good Infrastructures
Nowadays, as more major gaming services have chosen to use cloud technology and shifted into a streaming model, customers rely greatly on network performance, making it crucial for the industry. If there is one thing that gamers hate the most, it is lag or professionally known as latency, a delay created by the time it takes for content to travel from one point in a network to another. High network latency causes sluggish and unresponsive display and controls, disrupting normal gameplay and annoying those who are playing.

To minimize network latency, game development companies need data center infrastructures, especially ones with proper architecture, technology usage, and environment management. For cloud gaming, the actual games are stored remotely in the cloud, so the streaming signal sent to the end-user and the input signals going back to the server need to be significantly fast to avoid generating lag.

Colocation data centers are equipped with advanced technology, such as edge computing architecture, and capable of physically shortening the distance gaming content and data have to travel. One possibility is for cloud gaming providers to place servers in several colocation facilities in different regions and cache their most popular content directly from the facilities. In addition, colocation data centers are also capable of increasing their server rack densities to be able to accommodate greater processing workloads.

Minimizing network latency should be one of the focuses of game development companies to ensure the best customer experience and, thus, increase the trust in their brands and products. With a market as big as what we see now and significant growth of the industry over the past few years, it is impossible for game developers not to carefully think about their data center facilities as an instrument to ensure reliable network performance. A combination of numerous advantages, such as high-density server racks, power and cooling efficiency, the right connectivity options, and a carrier-neutral environment, is the reason why colocation data center facilities have become a wise alternative for cloud gaming services providers to ensure high-performance gaming.