Raymond Arifianto, AccelByte and Mark Mandel, Google - We have been deploying containerized micro-services for our Game Backend Services for a while. Now we are tackling the challenge to scale up fleets of game dedicated servers in multiple regions, multiple data centers and multiple providers - some in bare metal, some in Cloud. So we leverage docker containerization to deploy Game Servers to achieve Portability, Fast Deployment and Predictability, enabling us to scale up to thousands of servers, on demand, without a sweat.

1. Containerize Your Game Server
for the Best Multiplayer
Experience for the Players

2. Raymond Arifianto
VP of Tech, AccelByte.
@RayArifianto
Mark Mandel
Developer Advocate, Google Cloud for Games.
@Neurotic

3. Containers
can help you solve
Game Server workloads

4. What is a
Game Server
for?
Fast paced, realtime, multiplayer, games
where latency and performances are
critical parts of the Game.

5. What is a Game Server?

6. Reasons to use
Game Servers
Better Player Connectivity
Fairness
Control over System Resources
Prerequisites for Cross-Play

7. Challenges in managing
Game Servers
Requires Global Footprint
Latency requirements mean that Game
Servers must be deployed wherever your
players are.
Slow start times
Game Servers can need to load GBs of data
a start, and can take anywhere up to a
minute before they are ready.
In Memory, Persistent Data
Once players connect to a Game Server,
there is persistent, in memory data.
This means Game Servers cannot be shut
down while a Game Session is in progress.

8. Managing Thousands of
Game Servers Does not bring you joy

9. Deploy Game Server to Bare Metal
● Multi-Region to be
close to the Players
Need more
Capacity
NOW!

10. Deploy Game Server to
Cloud VM too
Need Rolling
Deploy New
Version!
● Separate management
and deployment toolset
● Different Game Server
behavior on target
machine/VM

11. Lower cost with autoscaling
Lower
the cost!
● Rolling Deploy
● Autoscaling
● Game Server Life-cycle
management
● Monitoring
● Etc

12. Managing
Game Servers
with Containers
can bring Joy

13. Benefits of Docker
Containers
Lightweight, Portable, Self-Sufficient
Predictable, Immutable
Flexibility
Standard tooling and Huge Ecosystem
Standard Distributed System Patterns
- E.g. Sidecars

14. 1. Build Development Server -serverconfig=Development -server
2. Package Project > Linux
3. Create Docker Image
a. Dockerfile
b. Entrypoint.sh for parameter
4. Push to Docker Registry
Sample
Containerizing Unreal Engine 4 Game Server

15. Sample
Containerizing Unreal Engine 4 Game Server
DOCKERFILE
FROM ubuntu:18.04
RUN apt-get update &&
apt-get install -y ca-certificates &&
rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
COPY ./assets ./bin ./scripts ./ds-server/
WORKDIR ds-server
COPY ./docker-entrypoint.sh .
RUN chmod +x docker-entrypoint.sh &&
chown -R 1000:1000 *
USER 1000
ENTRYPOINT ["/bin/sh", "./docker-entrypoint.sh"]

16. How to Orchestrate Game Servers?
Agones is designed as a
batteries-included, open-source,
dedicated game server hosting and
scaling project built on top of
Kubernetes, with the flexibility you
need to tailor it to the needs of your
multiplayer game.

17. Demo

18. ● Migrating existing Controller logic might be challenging
○ e.g. Game Server manages multiple processes within
pod that scales independently
● Highly tuned to specific hardware chip
● Game Server only runs on Windows
What’s harder with a
game server in a container?

19. Conclusion

20. Learn More & Resources
Raymond Arifianto
accelbyte.io
accelbyte.io/armada/
Mark Mandel
agones.dev
cloud.google.com/game-servers
@RayArifianto @Neurotic