East Side Games: An ISS case study
“We are serving millions of players with our mobile apps and therefore needed a reliable partner who could help us resolve any critical issues as quickly as possible,” explains East Side Games’ technical director, Omar Abdelwahed. “Because of this, we went straight to Unity.”
In the fiercely competitive field of mobile games, developers need every possible advantage. Even the most exciting graphics and gameplay can be quashed by slow loading time, high memory usage, or suboptimal graphics performance. That’s why Vancouver-based indie studio East Side Games turned to Unity to help troubleshoot and finesse game performance ahead of a big launch.
East Side Games worked with Integrated Success Services (ISS), a Unity team that helps developers avoid obstacles or resolve issues before they impact productivity and players. Each client is assigned a Developer Relations Manager (DRM), a specialist who works closely with the team to help them isolate any bugs and responds to questions or problems. Unity Developer Relations Engineers (DREs) also perform in-depth Project Reviews that dig into every aspect of a project’s build to ensure that each phase, from planning to post-launch, is executed smoothly.
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The goal
Optimize memory usage, reduce loading time, and improve overall performance
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Platforms
iOS, Android
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Team members
100, with 50 engineers, designers, and artists using Unity
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Location
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Catching critical issues before players do
East Side Games started out in 2011 making social and browser games with Flash and ActionScript. Today, the studio creates narrative-based idle games that spin off cult TV comedy IPs, as well as their own developer tools. As the company expanded and wanted to bring their games to a broader mobile audience, they moved development to Unity. “Unity’s most compelling feature is that it allows us to create games for multiple platforms with a single codebase,” says Jay Allan Jethwa, associate technical director.
Since 2017, East Side Games has created three games in Unity: Trailer Park Boys – Greasy Money, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – The Gang Goes Mobile, and Bud Farm Idle Tycoon.
Enhancing performance through ISS
A strong user community and extensive documentation make it easy for East Side Games to develop in Unity. But when the studio’s technical team encountered an issue they couldn’t resolve, they reached out to Unity ISS for help.
The results:
- Resolved the initial underlying technical problem to help East Side Games meet their planned release timeline
- Identified additional opportunities to optimize game performance
- Trained East Side Games in Unity best practices
- Facilitated ongoing direct access to a Unity engineer, the DRM, for support tailored to their needs and workflow
Troubleshooting issues and streamlining performance
大規模リリースまでの数週間に、East Side Games のテクニカルチームは、誰にも説明できない問題を発見しました。この問題は、一定の状況下でゲームのメモリリークが発生する原因となりました。明白な原因や説明的なエラーメッセージなしにビルドが定期的に失敗し、問題は 1 つのゲームに特定されました。
Unity のサポートエンジニアは問題を再現し、識別しました。彼らは East Side Games 用に特別なバージョンの Unity を作成して、制作スケジュールを順調に進め、他の開発者に同様の問題が生じた場合にはパッチリリースを展開しました。
Jethwa は言います。「ISS の助けがなければ、適切なタイミングで問題を見つけることはできませんでした。」修正を開発した後、ISS はプロジェクトレビューを共有しました。これは、いくつかの小さな問題を特定してより優れた全体的なプレイヤー体験に改善する、East Side Games のテクノロジーと進行中のプロジェクトの詳細な説明です。Unity のエンジニアは、バンクーバーにあるスタジオを訪問して、チームのコードとワークフローを掘り下げて調べ、オンサイトの「Ask Me Anything」セッションを主催して 2 方向の情報共有を促進しました。
「Unity はこれらのレビューの結果に関して、当社の期待を超えました」と Jethwa は説明します。「Unity のエンジニアに当社のオフィスに来てもらい、数多くの踏み込んだ話し合いを持つことができただけでなく、Unity のエンジンが内部でどのように動作しているかより深く理解できました。」
プロジェクトレビューでは次のような問題が強調されました。
- 動的アセットバンドルのロードおよびアンロード戦略の実装による初期ロード時間の高速化
- メモリプロファイラーを使用したメモリ使用状況の調査と削減
- オーディオクリップの設定の修正によるランタイムメモリの節約と CPU パフォーマンスの向上
- インポート設定の最適化と未使用の要素およびプラグインの特定による冗長なアセットの除去
- Unity プロファイラーのデプロイによる迅速なイテレーションの促進と CPU 使用率およびガベージコレクションの頻度のスパイクの捕捉
- グラフィックスドライバーにおけるリソース消費の多い操作の最小化
Abdelwahed 氏はこう言います。「私たちはこのサービスを利用して、ほとんどの問題をプレイヤーに到達する前に捕捉しています。」
Providing a direct connection to Unity
East Side Games continues to touch base regularly with their Unity DRM, who has developed an in-depth understanding of the studio’s technical operations and needs. They maintain a biweekly meeting and a dedicated Slack channel to expedite issues with quick check-ins.
“ISS literally lets our engineers sleep better. We know that Unity has our back if anything critical should come up,” says Jethwa. “This starts with the ability to ask questions whenever we get stuck on our progress while working with a specific Unity feature and receiving a reply within a few hours. It continues with Unity’s Sustained Engineering team, which has provided us with custom builds of Unity in case we encountered critical issues. Last but not least, it gives us a direct connection to Unity, their engineers, and product managers, and the ability to share feedback and feature requests with them.”
Maintaining a close, collaborative relationship helps Unity ensure that East Side Games can stay focused on what they do best: pushing the boundaries of narrative idle games by creating performant, high-quality mobile experiences for their players and fans.
“ISS literally lets our engineers sleep better. We know that Unity has our back if anything critical should come up.”
“We always feel that Unity is doing their best to understand the nature of the issue first, and then go out of their way to support us, while always listening to our feedback and concerns.”
“All the assistance we received from Unity’s engineers and support staff has been of high quality across the bar. The short turnaround times between East Side Games and Unity helps to resolve any issues quickly.”
“The Unity Editor is easy to use and easy to extend with our custom tools, and the thriving community means that there are ample resources such as documentation and tutorials available online.”
“Without help from ISS, we never would have been able to find the issue in a timely manner.”
“Unity exceeded our expectations. Not only were we able to have many in-depth discussions with their engineers, who were visiting us in our own office, but we also gained a deeper understanding of how the Unity engine works under the hood.”