GAMING

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When creating rich and dynamic worlds, innovative game mechanics and unforgettable player experiences, some of the most important elements of the development cycle are collaboration and efficiency. Developers, sound engineers, level designers and publishers working on the latest games have offices, studios and partners spanning the globe from Montreal to China. To create a successful and efficient workflow, every location needs the latest version of the game to help steer it towards greatness. This collaboration takes different use cases including sharing the latest version of your game within the office, sending and receiving content to and from remote studios across the globe, and delivering the final product to gamers.

As game mechanics get more advanced, graphics become more detailed and worlds become more dynamic and larger than ever before, the size of a conventional AAA game has exploded to over 50 GB for a complete game. These sizes make collaboration and sharing a greater challenge and as long as game technology keeps evolving, these sizes will continue to grow, making them harder to manage and transfer. The reason it’s so hard to transfer these files is that the technology used to transfer content across the internet, FTP, is older than Tetris.

From the initial concept to final testing and distribution, sending large files in media rich or uncompressed formats can take a very long time to transfer using FTP-based transfer methods. When using these methods, it may take a full day to complete a transfer. This is unacceptable as development teams frequently send game versions back and forth.

As distances increase to span the globe, file transfer speed becomes especially slow as they fall victim to packet loss and latency. To meet project milestones and to ensure the final product is complete in time for launch, fast and reliable transfer speeds at each phase is essential.

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How FileCatalyst Fits Into Gaming

FileCatalyst Direct at a glance

Enhance production cycles by quickly sending large format media files with FileCatalyst Direct.

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FileCatalyst Workflow at a glance

Set your development cycle to “easy mode” by sending massive media assets and game versions via email addresses.

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FileCatalyst Central at a glance

From the design studio to the sound studio, to the publisher –  monitor all your transfers via a browser with FileCatalyst Central.

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The FileCatalyst Benefits

Ensure your game files remain private until they are ready for release with industry-standard encryption using AES and SSL.

FileCatalyst eases international collaboration with fast transfers over large geographically dispersed areas.

Manage and send file revisions quickly with our Delta Transfer feature to send source file changes to the destination, making for even shorter wait times.

FileCatalyst’s MD5 checksums ensure that every file transferred is accurate and intact. No matter what.

With FileCatalyst’s 10 Gbps speeds, transfers that took hours will complete in minutes – streamlining the whole process.

FileCatalyst’s Compression feature can allow you to shrink a file’s size prior to sending, further accelerating transfer speeds.

IO Interactive & FileCatalyst

IO Interactive has removed the need for human interaction during transfer tasks, allowing development to continue immediately.

Mads Laksø, IT Architect & Team Lead for IO Interactive explains how

Use Cases

Interdepartmental Collaboration

When files are being sent around your own office, to third-party developers, sound engineers, publishers and a host of many other places around the globe, your ability to send files quickly is critical. Whether you’re sending a file to your sound engineer in the next office or receiving a new game asset from a designer across the ocean, FileCatalyst Direct is the “legendary item” that should be in any game studio’s inventory to the job done at blazing speeds.

We eliminate the FTP protocol from the equation by using our very own custom built UDP-based protocol. No matter what format or size your content is, or the distance it has to travel, our fast file transfer technology is guaranteed to maximize your bandwidth and send it at up to 10Gbps.

Synchronization

In many cases, content is updated and backed up on a regular schedule. Be it nightly, weekly or monthly, all of the team members need to be in the loop and have access to all of the latest content to get the job done. When you need to frequently initiate these recurring transfers manually, there is often room for errors. Beyond human error, there is also extended wait times that can slow development to a halt. FileCatalyst Direct’s client application, FileCatalyst HotFolder, allows you to create complex scheduling and automation for frequent transfer tasks.

Simply set up HotFolders at each endpoint and set up their sync interval – be it 30 seconds or once a day – and you have a hands-off solution that will guarantee each endpoint is synchronized with every other HotFolder – ensuring everyone has the most recent content. Your games have fast travel, so should your workflow!

Game Analytics

The more you know about your players’ behaviour while playing your game, the better you can adjust it to deliver the best game possible. But, latency can put hours between the game client sending an event to it being accessible in the database. Game companies use FileCatalyst Direct to securely and reliably send this user data to their storage – bit it on-premise, off-premise, cloud or hybrid.

Distribution

As games become larger and larger, simply getting your games into the hands of gamers can be a challenge. With FileCatalyst, you can deliver your games to users at multi-gigabit speeds (up to 10 Gbps). And if you are sending closed beta games to a closed group of recipients, you can leverage our ability to send files of any size via an email, simply click the link and begin downloading.