Improbable Joins Forces with Google to Empower Developers to Build
New Online Gaming Experiences With Strategic Partnership & Open
Game Developer Alpha
SpatialOS, a platform from UK startup Improbable is available now for game
developers to create massive, densely detailed and persistent game worlds
running on Google Cloud Platform.
Embargoed until 13 December 2016, 6am PST/ 9am EST/ 2pm GMT
13 December 2016, 6am PST/2pm GMT: Improbable, the London-based
startup which enables developers to build virtual worlds offering permanent,
persistent and engaging gaming experiences, today announced a joint game
developer program, the SpatialOS Games Innovation Program, with Google
Cloud Platform.
With this new program, Google and Improbable will partner to subsidise
access for qualified developers to Improbable’s SpatialOS platform, a
distributed operating system, powered by Google Cloud Platform, which
enables the development of persistent online game worlds.
Alongside this announcement, Improbable has launched its Game Developer
Open Alpha for SpatialOS. Any game developer can get access to the
SpatialOS platform and development tools, to test and experiment with it
ahead of the full launch of the Games Innovation Program and the beta of
SpatialOS in Q1 2017.
SpatialOS gives any developer the ability to define and build simulated worlds
which can accommodate thousands of simultaneous players in a single world
at the same time, exceeding the usual limits of what a conventional game
server can do. These simulations are persistent and support the kind of
complex computation needed to bring new game ideas to life, while enabling
a development methodology that supports extremely rapid iteration.
Assisting innovation
“We set out to build SpatialOS because we saw what developers wanted to
do, but were held back from achieving,” said Herman Narula, CEO and cofounder of Improbable.“Since we founded Improbable, we have talked to
many developers who have amazing ideas for new kinds of games they can’t
currently realise. Like them, we want to create and inhabit realistic worlds
where players’ actions have real consequences - but technical limitations
have stifled innovation in gaming.”
Whether deployed on a single PC, a dedicated server or even the open cloud,
games are currently hampered by low player numbers per instance, small
environments and limited interaction with the world.
Creating and running massive simulations that solve those problems on a
public cloud requires a kind of distributed supercomputing - with potentially
thousands of cores working together. This is what SpatialOS makes possible,
by distributing work automatically and intelligently across hundreds or
thousands of servers.
The other great challenge to game design is creative. Building games at this
scale requires a whole new approach to game design.
“Imagine a virtual city populated by players, who can make lasting changes to
its social structure or its economy through their actions,” said Narula. “Or a
battle between thousands of players, played out in real time over days or
weeks. These are possibilities that demand a totally different approach.”
“We’re particularly excited that both the partnership program and our open
alpha will make it easier for small core teams, regardless of studio size, to
create new game ideas involving worlds built on this scale. So much
innovation in games comes from small core teams, so one of our priorities is
enabling teams to build a product they could immediately deploy, scale and
grow, with players involved from the early stages. These teams can use
SpatialOS, backed by the power and stability of GCP, to iterate an ideas
rapidly and test them early.”
SpatialOS lets developers rapidly deploy and test these new game ideas and
begin live testing with users from a much earlier stage, enabling them to
gather feedback much faster than before. The Games Innovation Program
also helps ensure that developers don’t have to worry about some of
the costs of game development. These new kinds of games are also likely to
benefit significantly from advances in machine learning, artificial intelligence
and virtual reality interfaces - all technologies where Google is a leader.
Under the program, eligible game developers will be provided with Improbable
Credits, which can be used to pay SpatialOS usage fees, which include the
costs of hosting games on GCP.The program will cover the cloud costs of
developing, testing and deploying games using SpatialOS right up to when
the game is launched.
“The future of gaming lies in the cloud,” said Google Global Head of
Technology Partnerships Nan Boden. “This partnership is an opportunity for
us to help developers to take full advantage of the new possibilities enabled
by SpatialOS combined with the unique abilities of Google Cloud Platform.
This is the first step in Google’s partnership with Improbable, and just the
beginning of our work together to support game development and beyond.”
Developers can sign up for the Experimental Game Developer Alpha of
SpatialOS at spatialos.com, and start developing immediately, or getmore
information from this blog post by Herman Narula.
Press contacts
For more information on the SpatialOS Games Innovation Program, the
SpatialOS open alpha for game developers, or Improbale, please contact
[email protected]
Technical benefits of SpatialOS, running on Google Cloud Platform, for
game developers
By building on SpatialOS, developers can use standard tools and game
engines to build new gaming experiences supported by the reliability,
processing
power
and
flexibility
of
Google
Cloud
Platform.
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SpatialOS lets a developer exceed the limits of a single server or game
engine. It allows for a swarm of hundreds of game engines, running in
the cloud, to cooperate together to simulate a world much larger,
richer, and with more players than any single one could.
Because SpatialOS manages the state of the world, every object in the
world can persist indefinitely, removing the traditional constraints of
game engines. Game worlds can now have a meaningful history, and
players can leave a lasting impression. An item dropped on the ground
can persist for years.
Rather than having to build server infrastructure, a developer can
deploy their project to the SpatialOS Platform with a handful of CLI
commands , minutes after starting it, and begin sharing with others.
This allows for an online game world to be built and iterated rapidly in
the presence of players.
A game developer can spend their time on what they want to do:
creating and growing their game world and its story, rather than
building and maintaining server infrastructure. Developers can create
massive, ambitious games with far smaller teams.
SpatialOS takes advantage of key features of Google Cloud Platform to offer
developers
an
exceptional
development
environment.

The low latency frontend peering of Google Cloud Platform helps
provide stable experience for games thanks to Google’s private
backbone network.
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Google Cloud Datastore’s fully managed NoSQL database is inherently
highly available and scales to handle millions of reads/writes allowing
Improbable to improve SpatialOS while Google Cloud Platform handles
the crucial database configuration.
Google Cloud Storage’s globally available solution is fully redundant by
default which can translate to costs savings and is great for storing the
large game snapshots from SpatialOS.
Google Compute Engine’s instance uptime and live migration helps
minimise the number of game server rebalancing failovers, contributing
to the smooth experience of running large scale simulations.
Compute Engine’s instance provisioning speed allows Improbable to
dynamically grow the number of machines available to developers on
the platform, without the need to pre-reserve instances.
Compute Engine’s internal networking provides throughput and low
latency, enabling rapid exchanges of state across multiple machines
contributing to a game simulation.
The high IOPS (input/outputs per second) of Google Compute Engine’s
SSD storage suits the requirements of gaming built on SpatialOS.
Games already developed on SpatialOS, running on Google Cloud
Platform
SpatialOS is already being used by game developers to create new gaming
experiences. Two early examples are Worlds Adrift from Bossa Studios and
Lazarus from Spilt Milk Studio, both currently in advanced stages of
development.
Worlds Adrift is a 3D physics-driven sandbox MMO set in a shattered world
of floating islands. Thousands of players share a single world, in an
environment currently covering more than 1000km², and continuing to grow.
These players can form alliances, build sky-ships and become scavengers,
explorers, heroes or sky-pirates in an open, interactive world where actions
have real consequences. Ships can be stolen, wrecks can be scavenged and
each island’s forests and animal life can flourish or diminish over time.
Worlds Adrift is scheduled to launch in closed early access in Q1 2017. More
information can be found at http://www.worldsadrift.com.
Lazarus, a retro-styled top-down space shooter, features a 160,000 km2 map
where thousands of players can fight alien invaders, and each other.
Developed by Spilt Milk Studio with a four-person team, after only three
months of development Lazarus is now in continuous open development;
anyone can sign up for a free Steam code at http://www.playlazarus.com.
Simple accessible gameplay gives way to a complex dynamic wargame in
which AI factions fight for territory with up to three thousand simultaneous
human players in a single world.
About Improbable
Headquartered in London, Improbable is a technology company dedicated to
building technology to enable powerful virtual worlds and simulations
designed to help solve previously intractable problems. In gaming and
entertainment, this enables the creation of richer, more immersive and
persistent virtual worlds. The Company’s proprietary platform SpatialOS is
now available as an alpha release for games development teams of all sizes.
Founded in 2012, Improbable received $20m in Series A funding from
Andreessen Horowitz in March 2015.
Gaming and entertainment studios currently building their products on
SpatialOS include Bossa Studios (Worlds Adrift), Spilt Milk Studios (Lazarus),
HelloVR (MetaWorld), Entrada Interactive (Rebel Horizons) and Soulbound
Studios (Chronicles of Elyria).