14 DAY TRIAL // bitHeads is a leading Canadian games technology company that has been building custom backend solutions for close to two decades, and it has just launched its newest product, brainCloud, a streamlined solution for cloud-based game management.
I was fortunate enough to meet with them during Game Connection Europe 2014, the business-to-business game industry trade show that took place in Paris last month, and I was able to learn more about their work.
Softpedia: Hello, first of all, would you please introduce yourself and your company?
Preston Jennings: Hello, I'm Preston Jennings, and I'm a software development manager at bitHeads. We've been working on a product called brainCloud, which is essentially a backend in a box.
The idea is that you as a game developer or app developer can worry about the front end, about making a good game, and brainCloud will take the backend problems off of your plate. This can be anything from putting data on the cloud, statistics, in-app purchasing, multiplayer, leaderboards, etc.
Softpedia: What would you say is the biggest benefit that a developer that isn't using your services yet can gain from starting to do so?
Preston Jennings: Well, first of all, there are a lot of different benefits you can gain from cloud computing, it depends a little bit on the game you're trying to produce. For one, I guess the simplest example is that you might have multiple clients.
Perhaps I have a game on my iPad, and I also have it on my iPhone. By logging into the same server, you can share data between your platforms. Perhaps PC or Mac is one of your platforms, by using the same backend you can take your gaming experience and move it through different platforms.
Another big thing when you're building these games, free-to-play is a huge thing now. Almost all free-to-play games use some sort of virtual currency system. brainCloud provides services to do secure, server-based authentications of those in-app purchases, which in itself is probably a big feature.
Along with that we have promotion services that allow you to promote different products and put them on sale, it's very easy to coordinate with the iOS or Android stores, even Windows Phone and Steam, to put products on sale, etc.
Softpedia: So basically, if someone makes a game and they don't know exactly how to implement microtransactions, secure money transfers and everything else, they can just pick up your solution, integrate it into their software and they're good to go.
Preston Jennings: Exactly. We try to make it easy for a game developer to get the benefit of running some cloud services. It's very difficult to build server-side solutions, to make them scalable and secure, so a lot of people, when they get into building these server-side solutions, don't necessarily take into account that their game will be a hit, right? Going from a hundred users to a million users is a huge step, and we've scaled our systems so that they'll meet those demands.
Softpedia: Do you also provide solutions for people who don't expect to have too many users, smaller developers with small-scope games?
Preston Jennings: Absolutely, our pricing model scales with the amount of usage, so, it's based on API calls per month, basically. We've also put in place a formula that estimates the average number of API calls per DAU so that you can get a feeling for cost based on DAU.
Softpedia: So, this means that you don't have to pay any large fees if you have a smaller user base and don't use the service as much
Preston Jennings: Exactly. As a developer, we're giving it to you basically for free, up until a hundred daily users, so that should meet most of your testing needs, and then I think the first pricing tier is a thousand daily average users, and it's $25.
Softpedia: So, it's pretty affordable.
Preston Jennings: It's quite affordable, we've looked at our competitors and I believe we are the cheapest amongst the cloud backend service providers, so yeah, it is very affordable, if you compare that to the amount of money you would have to invest to create a solution of your own.
Softpedia: And why do you think, aside from that, that a client would be better served by your solution than by one of your competitors?
Preston Jennings: Well, bitHeads itself is a technology company, so we've been involved in backend services for many, many years now. It's one of the things we pride ourselves on, building scalable, robust server-side solutions.
Although today, people are calling it cloud technology, it's actually not that much different than the server-side technology that was around fifteen years ago. So, we feel that we've been in the game for quite some time, and we have the expertise to deliver robust, scalable solutions.
I mean, we use the brainCloud platform ourselves, for our own internally developed games, so it's one of those things where if you're building on your own platform, you're going to try and fix all of the issues that come up, and make it developer friendly. I definitely feel like it's gone well so far.
