Space Team: Marrying mobile and VR

Challenge

Growing with the team

While Space Team is best experienced with all six players in VR, Cooperative Innovations knew that most people aren’t likely to have six VR headsets sitting around the house. So to make sure that people could still play together at a party, they let other players jump into the action on their smartphones. Crossplay like this is extremely important to make sure that the game was accessible to everyone.

They originally set up with another server provider, but unfortunately, the service was discontinued. Now, they needed to switch provider, making sure to continue giving their players the same cross-platform experience. But they also needed a provider that could easily scale with them as they grew.

Solution

Let anyone connect to the same session

Cooperative Innovations, the studio, wasn’t overly familiar with the process of switching providers. Despite that, we worked with them to get them over to our platform in just two weeks. And our platform doesn’t mind where the players come from, so players from mobile and VR could come together and join the same session. Meanwhile, Space Team had room to grow and expand its audience, as we automatically scaled to their needs.

Originally based on a mobile game, Space Team is a cooperative game set in VR where six players come together to shout at each other communicate complex instructions and fly a spaceship. Players work at their panel, solving puzzles, shooting aliens and generally trying to make sure they don’t get too distracted by the insanity unravelling around them.

Play across platforms

Using our platform, it doesn’t matter where the player comes from. We don’t get in the way of any cross-play dreams, whether the players are mobile, Playstation VR or from Steam. This is especially important in a VR game, where not everyone will have a headset, but will still want to join a match with their friends. Particularly for party games.

Host public and private sessions

Due to the nature of the game, most players join as a premade group, wanting to play with their friends. With Gameye, Cooperative Innovations could make sure to provide both private and public sessions for people to join.

Save on costs

As Space Team grows, it’ll need more and more servers to handle the load. This was a key factor in Cooperative Innovations’ choice to use us. Our platform automatically scales to meet their demand, without drastically increasing their costs. And they have a predictable pricing model, which means they never get surprised.

Reach the locations you want

Most of Space Team’s audience currently speaks English. But they needed servers across the world: America, the United Kingdom and Australia. However, as they adapt the game and add new languages, they wanted to make sure they could easily add new locations whenever they wanted. And with Gameye’s platform, it’s easy to expand to new territories when they’re ready. All Cooperative Innovations needs to do is add the new territories into the system and they’re ready to go. This lets them roll out when they’re ready, rather than needing to pay for servers they’re not going to use yet.