This week, Mark and Jon bring us a fascinating interview with Kami May of Supersolid, a gaming company in London. With the help of Kami May, Supersolid recently launched their first multiplayer game, Snake Rivals. This session-based game puts players in an arena where they can choose from three modes: endless, gold rush, or battle royale.

To produce the game, Supersolid makes use of many GCP products. Snake Rivals is powered by Kubernetes and Agones, which Kami chose because it offers functionality that works well with gaming. It provides server allocation which allows players to continue play even during an update, has the ability to scale, allows labeling, allows for different gaming modes, and more. To reduce latency, Supersolid operates in nine regions. Supersolid uses BigQuery and continuously gathers data so they can make adjustments to make sure game play is efficient, fun, and functional. Kami explains that navigating the world of multiplayer gaming for the first time was tricky, but the Google support team has been very helpful!

Kami May

Kami May is a Senior Server Developer at London-based mobile games studio, Supersolid. Her lifetime passion for video games drove her to join the games industry soon after graduating from university in 2016. Since then, Kami has worked on multiple titles for mobile, PC, and console. Most recently, she’s been bringing Supersolid’s most ambitious project to date - Snake Rivals - to life, powered by Agones on GCP. In her free time she can be found at the top of the ladder on Path of Exile, chasing the 6k MMR dream on Dota 2, or searching for London’s best fried chicken.

Cool things of the week

• Keep Parquet and ORC from the data graveyard with new BigQuery features blog
• Machine Learning: An Online Comic from Google AI site
• Bring Your Own IP addresses: the secret to Bitly’s shortened cloud migration blog

Interview

• Supersolid site
• Snake Rivals site
• Agones site
• Kuberentes site
• Go site
• Cloud Load Balancing site
• BigQuery site
• Stackdriver site
• Supersolid Careers site
• Snake Rivals on Google Play site
• Snake Rivals on iTunes site

Question of the week

What are best practices for setting up user accounts in Cloud IAM?

• Quickstart Guide
• Service Accounts Docs
• Using IAM Securely

Where can you find us next?

Mark will be working on blogs and videos at home.

Jon will be at AnimeNYC, Kubecon in November and Google Kirkland for an internal hackweek.

Sound Effect Attribution

• “Small Group Laugh 4, 5 & 6” by Tim.Kahn of Freesound.org
• “Human has been Nutralised” by cityrocker of Freesound.org
• “Laser Automatic Heavy” by dpren of Freesound.org
• “Gong Sabi” by Veiler of Freesound.org