The technology behind the worldwide success of Mahjong Trails

Featured by DataStax

The key to success in a crowded gaming market is to exceed gamer expectations. Learn how the evolving tech stack behind one of the world's biggest games was key to its success, why prioritizing technology from development to launch is crucial, and more.

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Why is the technology behind a game so important? It comes down to the fact that ultimately games are pure entertainment, aimed at making players happy, says Henning Kosmack, CEO and co-founder of MegaZebra, the studio behind Mahjong Trails. But even the happiest user won't tolerate friction in a game - and in a media market filled with near-infinite content, it's easier than ever to drop a late game and never come back.

"Good technology won't make a good game," says Kosmack. "But bad technology will kill even the best game."

This is all the more important as user acquisition continues to cost more: the noise level in the market continues to rise and changes in user privacy, driven from Apple, have crippled targeted marketing in various ways.

"For a game like ours, it's important that once we have a user, ideally, they're so happy with everything that they'll stick around for a long time," he says. "Instead of constantly churning out new games that people could play for about two weeks, we're focusing on the long tail. This means constantly bringing new content and features into the game, which comes with additional technical challenges."

Kosmack also points out that the gaming market is volatile, in which languid, generally unloved games could suddenly go viral; and right off the bat, any studio should have the infrastructure to support it. It's not just about running smoothly no matter what size you reach, but being able to scale up and down as needed, to meet unexpected challenges. If it's not scalable and you're over-provisioned, your costs will hurt you. If it doesn't scale and you're under-provisioned, players get angry.

For all of these reasons, "you need to make this technology investment up front, and you shouldn't cut corners on it," says Kosmack. "You have to find the best way that works for you and your studio."

Mahjong Trails has been around for over a decade, and the infrastructure behind the game needed to keep up with not only the growth of the game, but also changing technological solutions and new innovations appearing in the market.

"Early on, we knew it could be mass market, and we knew it had to be scalable," says Kosmack. "We had Amazon Web Services servers and the Cassandra database, but we had to do all the scaling and we wrote a lot of code to do things that partners like DataStax can help you with today. 'today."

Scalability has remained crucial, and over time, MegaZebra's infrastructure has become very robust. Over the years, they gradually worked their way through the overall architecture to optimize whenever new technologies became available. For example, MegaZebra Dockerized where necessary when this technology became available, and replaced internal code when better products appeared. They were also collecting player data and integrating analytics and system logs from the start.

“At the start, we made the right technology decisions, and that was a competitive advantage from the start,” he says. "And while we like to be on the cutting edge of innovation, we have to make sure we don't jump on something until it's proven, and before we know there's going to be continued support for it. "

It's also important to consider how easily new technology can be maintained, whether game publishers have the skills in-house or bring in someone new. And if they need to find a new specialist, will they try to hire from a very small and rarefied pool of professionals? And while cost will always be a consideration, it shouldn't be the deciding factor.

"Good technology is rarely cheap, but don't just go for the cheapest," says Kosmack. buy it twice. We don't make these decisions lightly."

To learn more about building a technology stack for success, why businesses of all sizes need to consider technology from the start, and more, don't miss this VB Spotlight event!

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Launch new games faster and ship updates quickly Increase player engagement, retention and password...