What people want in a Game Server Provider [Archive]

View Full Version : What people want in a Game Server Provider

killnine

04-16-2008, 12:44 AM

Background:

So recently I have thought about starting up a game server provider service. I am someone who is very adept at using computers, and I have even taken a stab at the casual dedicated server during the school year. However, I noticed that there really wasn't a lot of information on what sort of things a customer wants from a GSP, and what services they can provide.

So what I propose is that people submit important features of a GSP so that others may understand the needs of a customer better.

The Basics:

Obviously the most important aspect of a game server is that it functions correctly. All the bells and whistles in the world dont mean a thing if the user cannot reach the server reliably or the connection is poor.

Therefore,

Your server must meet hardware specifications to support the game server(s)
Your host must provide sufficient bandwidth to host the game server(s)
Your host must be reliable enough to support the game server(s) at all times (99.9% uptime) But what does this mean for you?

You will need a fast machine. To run multiple game servers it is advised that you have a least a highly clocked, very stable, dual-core system with as much ram as possible (2Gb minimum for multiple servers, as a rule of thumb. 4Gb if possible). A graphics card is not necessary for a server as all the calculations are done on the CPU. Multiple harddrives will also be of benefit as there are a number of situations that require a large amount of hard drive requests, such as loading maps. With multiple servers on one hardware device, it makes sense to get the servers distributed across multiple disks, keeping the OS on a completely separate drive, if possible
Your host must be able to provide a large, large amount of bandwidth. While this figure varies widely depending on the size of the servers you run and the number of individual servers you have on a machine, you must be able to support a consistent mutliple megabit UPLOAD speed. This means that you should NOT run off a residential line, regardless of how it is advertised. Typically, GSPs colocate their hardware at datacenters because datacenters are connected to high-speed backbone connections and offer users low-hop (see: TraceRoute) runs to the server.
Your host should not be your house. Colocators and datacenters offer redundant internet connections, temperature controlled rooms, and redundant power supplies so that your hardware is almost guaranteed not to fail (unless its your own fault). Getting Fancy:

(I will continue to update this portion as I get information)

Voice Chat Servers: This is a very popular option today with game server providers. Typically, clients want a way to communicate to team members and clan members during gameplay, or just want a place they can hang out and chat without having to type ingame. The two biggest players in this market are Ventrilo (http://www.ventrilo.com/) and Teamspeak (http://www.goteamspeak.com/). The former provides a free server application that allows up to 8 users in the server. For larger servers, you must pay Ventrilo a fee. Teamspeak offers their server (unlimited slots) for free, but if you are a GSP, you must pay a fee to TeamSpeak as well. From what I hear from other admins, this is a great feature to include, does not require large sums of bandwidth, and is fairly cheap to implement.

Instant access to servers after paying: GSPs like Gameservers.com offer instant setup. That means, as soon as your client pays the fee, they are e-mailed administrative information so they can immediately take charge of their server. This is a really nice feature and enables clans to rent for small periods of time for matches and such. I dont know the exact implementation right now.

Game Server Control Panel: Control panels make customer's lives much easier because they often dumb-down a lot of the complex features of running a server (See: command line server). Instead, they often have elegant graphical interfaces that allow them to change configurations, maps rotations and other server parameters without getting knee deep into command-line syntax. NOTE: these are typically for EXPERIENCED admins only. There is a fair amount of setup required to run and maintain a control panel and while it may make your customer's lives easier eventually, if you can't setup and maintain the system, it doesn't matter. These systems are typically expensive, ranging from 15.00/mo to $2800.00 for a full enterprise license (one-time fee). Some great examples are TcAdmin (http://www.tcadmin.com/) and GameCP (http://www.gamecp.com).

FTP to upload custom maps
Quick and efficient contact to customer support
Customizable content (Custom maps, Custom Configs, ability to add clan admins)
Load balanced servers
Software to detect server crashes
Clan-friendly configuration and rental durations (1hr - 2hr)
Sponsorships, discounts and referral incentives
A pretty website to purchase your services from (See: Joomla)
Credit card payment, not just paypal or (Dare'st I say it) money orders and checks.

Neil

04-16-2008, 03:55 AM

Nice article :)

rudedog

04-16-2008, 10:22 AM

Great idea killnine.

When I get a chance, I'll try and leave some feedback as well. Off to work I go.......

DesertFox5555

04-16-2008, 01:33 PM

Good question.

As there seems to be 1000 more gsp's out there than when i was an admin for mohaa. What do i want besides what was already mentioned? hmm. Firstly, i'd like to know who the GSP is, are they 2 guys and a computer or more of an advanced network or what a GSP should really be. i'd like a human being to take care of my tickets asap. Specs of the box im renting and how many games are on that box. Voice servers with a gsm codec or higher. Prices can only go so low, referrals are a nice deduction. Clan pay is a must, paypal, money order, cashier's check.

GSP's are so different today, you really dont know what exactly your buying most of them assume that you know but than you end up having all the stupid question in the forums or you feel stupid posting them. Maybe something more than a forum post explaining what you are buying cough cough getting yourself into. lol. Alot of them are kiddies that know they need a server but dont know exactly what they are getting into when it comes to running a clan and paying for everything. Maybe a total package deal, game server, vent server, and website showing the total cost to them per month.

I can only take my experiences from renting from Game/Clan-servers.com, Fragism (now gameservers) and the dredded VSK (now Art of War)

Thanks for reading.

twl_viper

04-16-2008, 04:49 PM

I've worked with several providers and I got to say the 2 most important things are price and service. If I have issues I want a response in a few hours - not a few days. A product is only as good as the service that backs it up. I'm with gameservers now and im happy with the turnaround and the price for decent servers.

Also -

ftp and server restart with admininstrative access assignment controls a must.

and added perks i really like -

Clan pay - gotta love this feature - no money hassles.
speak server and admin control panel access - is nice.

viper1

04-16-2008, 07:32 PM

i agree with TWLViper..although cheaper isnt nececarily better, i would pay for quality rather than quantity, a good ticket response time...and maybe some tuts and rcon guides for the different games you are gonna run :p ...

garetjax

04-16-2008, 10:08 PM

I cofounded and owned Hidefinition gaming so I have some experience at starting and running a gsp.

I think you need to decide 2 things before you go any further:

1. Are you going to be able to be able to work say 6pm est to 1 or 2 am est every night 7 days a week - helping customers in irc as well as doing maintenace and new server setups and billing outside of those times? There will be no time for gaming or pretty much else anything for you.

2. What type of GSP will you be - low priced or high end quality? If you go high end you are going to need a top network which is big $$$ ie internap etc unless you can build one yourself with bgp etc - which then means in addition to #1 you are always tweaking bgp etc to keep your network top notch.

If you are decide you want to do it then you should have at least 2 or 3 others working with you - for sales, support, and doing the tech work.

I wouldn't bother with doing voice servers at first - besides its not easy to get a ventrilo license. Just concentrate on running great servers. Also not all game servers run nicely together so you have to figure out which ones coexist the best on the same box. You should select a core set of games to offer at first so you will really know their server tweaks in and out and slowly add new titles.

For the first year we didn't offer anything but servers, no websites, no voice - nothing but servers that ran flawlessly, a simple control panel, and an active irc support room. If you go the quality root you should also always offer test drives - your product should sell itself.

Garet

killnine

04-16-2008, 11:57 PM

garetjax

04-17-2008, 09:12 AM

Great replies so far, guys. I, personally, appreciate the input.

Garetjax -- your (I assume ex-) company provides a lot of good information about running a high-quality gsp. I have a few questions:

1) What is a good, quantitative way to assure your system will have zero packet loss? Of course you could just hook up with the absolute best (see: most expensive) data center line available. But what is another way?

2) How do traceroute lengths and location play into a customer's experience? At what point is a customer just too removed from a server? 10 hops? 20 hops? 50 hops?

3) Do you think every GSP, big or small, should write their own ToS and provide a lot of legal information on their site to protect themselves (I see this being important when deciding how to refund money and what to do about cancelled contracts).

4) It was mentioned here or in another thread that Load balancing is a good practice for a serious GSP. Windows server 2003 comes with a Network Load Balancing Manager. What other resources would be available to learn about implementing load balancing?

5) I notice that mapchanges can take a while. I assume this is because of hard drive usage. Do you typically only run one server per hard drive or more than that? 3? 5? 10? Do game servers typically have a dedicated operating system drive? What about redundancy? Raid 1, Raid 5?

6) What is the DEFACTO server admin app (Mani? Beetles?Sourcemod?)

Killzone - Yes I sold my share of Hidef - I am no longer with them.

If you are going to go top quailty your only options are BSD or linux. You will also need either Internap for the best bandwidth or as I mentioned create your own mix of multiple tier 1 providers using BGP routing and your own routers (That is pretty much a full time job and requires I high level of skill and experience - Monk from velocity does their network as well as summitt their high quality server spinoff that competes with hidef).

If you are using windows you aren't going to be selling 500/1000 fps servers and you won't need the best quality bandwidth.

I'll try and answer your questions.

1) What is a good, quantitative way to assure your system will have zero packet loss? Of course you could just hook up with the absolute best (see: most expensive) data center line available. But what is another way?

You can't totally control the paths clients use to get to and from your servers. The best thing you can do is use as many tier 1 bandwidth providers as possible. That way potentially your customers can have more than 1 way to get to you. However somehow you have to manage/monitor all those tier 1 connections and deal with changing routes if tier 1 providers experience problems. You really only have 2 choices - use someone like Internap that does all that for you or do it yourself using your own BGP routing and your own routers. Velocity/summitt does this but unless you are a cisco/bgp guru and you have a lot of money to buy your own routers and you can dedicate 1 guy to doing only network stuff 100% of the time its not a way you want to go.

2) How do traceroute lengths and location play into a customer's experience? At what point is a customer just too removed from a server? 10 hops? 20 hops? 50 hops?

If you are going to start a GSP you are going to want to put your servers right smack in the middle of the country to reduce this as much as possible - most popular location is Chicago followed by Texas. Don't worry about hops - worry about pings because thats what your customers will worry about and thats what the rules worry about - ie CAL rules - what is the rule now - something like if the difference between the teams average pings to a server are more than 20ms then they can choose another server or something like that - or play half and half.

3) Do you think every GSP, big or small, should write their own ToS and provide a lot of legal information on their site to protect themselves (I see this being important when deciding how to refund money and what to do about cancelled contracts).

You definitely need a strong/ clear TOS because you will be pointing customers back to it often. We gave refunds but most gsp's didn't at that time. Your billing system should have them check off that they have read the tos when they sign up.

4) It was mentioned here or in another thread that Load balancing is a good practice for a serious GSP. Windows server 2003 comes with a Network Load Balancing Manager. What other resources would be available to learn about implementing load balancing?

Just as an fyi - about 90% of gps's use linux and all the top quality ones use linux/bsd - windows can't run 500/1000 tick servers stable.

In regards to load balancing what you need to be concerned about is what I glossed over before - finding out what games work well together and then how you load up your server. For example - if you find CS 1.6
and CSS don't run well together on the same physical box you are going to need boxes with only CS 1.6 and boxes with only CSS.

A quality server has 2 components - top bandwidth/network and rock solid server fps (if cs/css). It is always better to be rock solid at even a lower fps ie 333 than have a 1000 fps server that fluctuates between 333/500/1000.

You can tweak your linux/bsd kernel to improve performance but most of the time the #1 factor is how many clients you put on 1 physical box and what type of game mix is on their ie is it only a cs box. Then you have to figure out how to balance different quality servers on 1 box - ie can you put 3 500fps cs clients, 2 1000 fps cs clients, and 2 css 333fps clients on one box and have all of them get rock solid fps.

Depending upon how that works out you may be only putting 5 clients on a server, if that server costs you $250 you need to charge $50 a client just to break even. It is a manual process and you have to watch it closely until you know what mixes you can use on your particular hardware and kernels.

5) I notice that mapchanges can take a while. I assume this is because of hard drive usage. Do you typically only run one server per hard drive or more than that? 3? 5? 10? Do game servers typically have a dedicated operating system drive? What about redundancy? Raid 1, Raid 5?

If you are runnin linux you only have 1 copy of a game per server and you run as many servers from that 1 copy as you want. The maps will be stored in memory so there is not much disk usage at all. You should be ok using the OS and game images all on 1 server - do raid 5.

6) What is the DEFACTO server admin app (Mani? Beetles?Sourcemod?)

Those are client apps and you should offer them all.

We haven't even gone into you are going to need to buy/rent a billing system, setting up credit card processing and how to deal with credit card fraud, etc etc. You could start out with paypal but not for long. You will find your self dealing with more and more fraud that wastes a lot of your time.

You also either need to code your own control panel or buy/rent one which could cost you thousands - if you use something say like velocity uses.

Garet

numbnutts

04-18-2008, 07:25 AM

I agree with all of these.
One thing that is important to me is the ability to get ahold of a REAL person if problems arise.
Ticket support somethimes may take hours .
I have been with a few GSP's over the course of 7 years.
The first one was Recongamer.
There was phone support everytime I had a problem.
They are no longer in around but that was important to me .
I also know that this maybe very expensive to be able to have someone avalible 24-7.
I think support, fair price's and reliability are what we need.

I wish you the Best of Luck.

killnine

04-18-2008, 09:51 PM

Maybe a good idea for this thread is to break it into logical segments: Primetime (top of the line server offerings), Fulltime (a good place to start and make a decent buck), and Parttime (something fun to do, but not your dayjob).

Thoughts? Most of the replies, I feel, are targeted towards the top-tier providers. I would imagine most people would not be able to afford this or support this. Thoughts?

Creslyn

04-22-2008, 01:17 AM

Removed

killnine

04-23-2008, 09:44 AM

garetjax

04-24-2008, 09:31 PM

Creslyn,
Thanks for the information. That was a great post. I appreciate your enthusiasm and zeal: it's something I think a lot of people need to get into this industry. I am excited about your venture and hope things work out, you appear to have your ducks in a row and a lot of experience under your belt.

It's great to have enthusiasm but the reality is the majority of GSPs fail. It is especially hard for you to break into the market if you are going into it against the vast sea of budget GSPs. Since your servers won't be any different performance wise than the rest or most likely in price you have to somehow get word out that you are #1 in service - and gaining that rep is not easy. Not to mention in order to make more money when your slots are real cheap you need a lot more customers.

With Hidef we targeted the best of the best of the high end platform - a 12 man prodef was $86 and we sold more prodefs than anything else. That's $7.17 a slot by the way. However we had a great marketing plan - we had the top 2 CS 1.6 teams in the US and in the world at that time help test our servers before we even went live and then they were the only teams we sponsored. All the pros got to try our servers when they scrimmed our sponsored teams (Complexity and Team 3D) and the servers sold themselves.

FYI in the beginning we used rented machines and switched providers several times because their networks were not up to snuff. We realized the only way to really be the best was either to go with Internap or build our own network so we went with Internap. It's a beautiful thing to host online money tournaments for say PNY or other hardware makers and have a team from California play a team from the East coast with both teams pinging under 40. Internap is top notch - there is a reason Nasdaq uses them.

Don't be swayed or suckered into thinking you need the biggest/baddest servers unless you want them just to put on your website for pr reasons and then you overload them to the max. An overloaded 8cpu box is not better than a nicely balanced dual cpu machine. The proof is in the pudding and knowledgeable players will look at stats and see whether or not your server fps can consistantly hold 333/500 /whatever FPS.

Garet

Creslyn

04-25-2008, 11:57 AM

Removed

garetjax

04-25-2008, 02:13 PM

We're not taking on the GSP market to get rich, by any means. Our income will be derived primarily from another suite of services that are underway. We're taking on the GSP market to mix things up. :cool: There is enthusiasm toward the GSP portion of what we're doing, don't get me wrong, but not at all the focus since application serving is not taxing work, which is all a GSP does. We're not going to waste people's time with flashy websites, bloated promises, complicated control panels, and support staff motivated only to kiss your ass and get your dollar. If that's the standards of business today, don't count on us, we're only going to be frank, to the point, and get the job done. Enthusiasm has nothing to do with that.

The stats of the servers are going to be there for information purposes in a FAQ, not a selling point, or for anyone's e-peen. From benchmarking our configuration yesterday, there's going to remain a consistent and higher return on investment with the servers than what we would have gone with the mainstream premise because of the way these systems are handled. Overloading is an obvious given as a general no-no to any GSP, but the underlying infrastructure will remain a constant for how downtime and other extremes are handled, including dynamic load balancing. The GSP is one piece of a larger server farm, where resource is not in question, and furthermore not configured in the cookie-cut build herald by the remainder of the GSP industry. I'm not going to blow smoke up anyone's rear, I'm stating that the industry for the most part has handled itself with poor execution and that it's not just about how good it looks on paper, or replicated by some other big name. It's evident that because something worked for one business doesn't mean it can work for another. This isn't pandering , it's observation.

I'll leave it at that.

From my experience running a top GSP I would disagree strongly with " since application serving is not taxing work, which is all a GSP does. ".

If your not into providing a lot of support then yes its nothing more than selling severs. However once your running 80-90% of our work was dealing with customer issues. It may not require brain surgery but hand-holding your customers and giving them excellent support is your bread and butter.

Most of the time we spent on customer service looked like this:

- Working with users to get traceroutes to help them check out their net connections
- Restoring their server to original state or just replacing some maps they nuked etc or helping them use control panel to edit a config, upload a map etc
- Moving them to another server or city (including all configs, maps, etc)
- Billing issues - paypal fraud, credit card fraud, kid used parents card without permission, upgrading a server to a higher level server etc etc
- Lots and lots of new customer installs as well as any customer deletes
- Dealing with upset users - whether they were shutoff for nonpayment, or they had network issues, etc etc

As for stats I was speaking specifically about customers using rcon stats when doing a test drive on one of your servers during a scrim to see how well your server runs. They will be looking at how consistent server side fps stays based upon the rate they are paying for ie 333/500/1000 and also looking at cpu to see if you may be overloaded. If you the server can't stay at the advertised fps rate for say 10 rcon stats commands spaced a few seconds apart then its not very stable and thats really bad from a players perspective.

Also its a good idea to let them keep the server/ip they tested on so they know you aren't bait and switching them like some GSP's do ie doing test drives on an empty box and then setting them up on a box with way too many customers or really bad hardware.

Garet

killnine

04-25-2008, 06:43 PM

From my experience running a top GSP I would disagree strongly with " since application serving is not taxing work, which is all a GSP does. ".

If your not into providing a lot of support then yes its nothing more than selling severs. However once your running 80-90% of our work was dealing with customer issues. It may not require brain surgery but hand-holding your customers and giving them excellent support is your bread and butter.

Most of the time we spent on customer service looked like this:

- Working with users to get traceroutes to help them check out their net connections
- Restoring their server to original state or just replacing some maps they nuked etc or helping them use control panel to edit a config, upload a map etc
- Moving them to another server or city (including all configs, maps, etc)
- Billing issues - paypal fraud, credit card fraud, kid used parents card without permission, upgrading a server to a higher level server etc etc
- Lots and lots of new customer installs as well as any customer deletes
- Dealing with upset users - whether they were shutoff for nonpayment, or they had network issues, etc etc

As for stats I was speaking specifically about customers using rcon stats when doing a test drive on one of your servers during a scrim to see how well your server runs. They will be looking at how consistent server side fps stays based upon the rate they are paying for ie 333/500/1000 and also looking at cpu to see if you may be overloaded. If you the server can't stay at the advertised fps rate for say 10 rcon stats commands spaced a few seconds apart then its not very stable and thats really bad from a players perspective.

Also its a good idea to let them keep the server/ip they tested on so they know you aren't bait and switching them like some GSP's do ie doing test drives on an empty box and then setting them up on a box with way too many customers or really bad hardware.

Garet

I think this would be a solid argument for running high-end servers. Sure, you can't run as many, but that is an added benefit, if anything. I would much rather have 10 high paying customers than 30-40 low-paying customers simply because you don't have to support as many people.

Similarly, I would imagine providing multiple-server discounts would be great for the GSP becuase the same customer is taking up multiple slots in your server. This means even lower support. Sure, it's like putting your eggs in one basket, but I think it has its benefits.

Personally, I think Hi-Def's plan is fairly solid, but I still think no matter what your margins are going to be small. With a budget GSP, your cost is in maintaining high level of customer service. With quality GSP, you are paying out the ass for INTERNAP connection. Yikes.

Creslyn

04-26-2008, 11:54 PM

Removed

Creslyn

04-27-2008, 12:01 AM

Similarly, I would imagine providing multiple-server discounts would be great for the GSP becuase the same customer is taking up multiple slots in your server. This means even lower support. Sure, it's like putting your eggs in one basket, but I think it has its benefits.
Those are perks and benefits you give your consumer base after you've established one. ;)

Personally, I think Hi-Def's plan is fairly solid, but I still think no matter what your margins are going to be small. With a budget GSP, your cost is in maintaining high level of customer service. With quality GSP, you are paying out the ass for INTERNAP connection. Yikes.
That depends on if the quality GSP actually is attached to Internap with their own rack in Internap's colocated sites, or hot bargained with one of Internap's cronies and longhauling the connection. There's a stark difference. I could say I have Level3 carrier support while in Columbus but that doesn't mean I'm giving the consumer the best connection rate on the Level3 network because my server is sitting 180+ miles from the L3 pop. That's where some of them are hush-hush, and rightfully so. ;)