A somewhat unfamiliar term, GBAAS (an abbreviation for Gaming Backend as a Service), can be seen as a BAAS (Backend as a Service) for gaming.

While talking to people in the industry who use cloud services, I assumed it was a commonly used term since it's used in everyday conversation, but when I searched for it, it seems it's not a term used very often? So, I'm not sure if it's the appropriate term, but I'm writing this post as a way to organize my thoughts.

Gaming BAAS Service

Based on terms found on Google, GBAAS is not a widely used term overseas, but Game BAAS seems to be the more common term. In other words, it can be seen as a BAAS service for games, or a backend service that can be utilized in games.

I get the feeling that GBAAS isn't just an abbreviation used by casual users or something that sounds like Chinglish. When I searched for it, I found that it's a term hardly used in Western developer ecosystems.

So, what is BAAS for games?

Simply put, it can be viewed as a backend service that provides major server functions for game operations.

When operating services like mobile game services, we eventually need various functions such as sign-up / login / ranking / coupons / guild / in-game currency / server code execution / receipt verification, etc., based on the server rather than the client side. Of course, we can implement these functions by directly building a web server (the author also built and operated a direct operation server using PHP server and MySQL, MariaDB, etc. on a cloud server in 2012~2013), but it requires a certain level of understanding of networking and servers, and there are various access difficulties such as security issues or hardware issues, so it is not easy.

My Experience with GBAAS

Since my teens, I have been involved in web servers and web design and website construction, and in my early twenties I had experience operating game servers in a simple local network environment. Based on this, I have briefly created and operated server and API systems, but since 2014, I have been using Firebase, a representative serverless service, to operate games, as network and server-related issues are fields that require a lot of knowledge and experience.

Firebase is a web-based BAAS service that can be seen as becoming accessible to general developers like us after being acquired by Google around 2014~2015. Around 2014, to move away from self-managed servers and achieve a more lightweight yet stable and persistent server setup, I tried various services including Azure Cloud Functions and AWS services, as well as Facebook's Parse, which I understand no longer exists. Just then, Google acquired Firebase and made it easy to use an outstanding JSON-based NoSQL database called Realtime DB in Unity, so from then until now, I have been building and operating most game management functions based on Firebase.

The reason I first used Firebase, the 순순 촛불앱

I started using Firebase properly when I was developing the "순순촛불" app. At that time, I wanted to create a candle app that wouldn't go out suddenly, and I wanted to collect and share patterns and messages from other users, so I was thinking about how to implement this feature quickly and stably... As a result, I connected Google Analytics, which I was learning at the time, to Firebase and implemented a function to collect messages, completing the project in just a few hours.

(Of course, the act of collecting information such as personal messages was judged to require the duty to inform, so that feature was stopped immediately on the day of release.)

I remember this as the moment I realized the importance of Firebase. Due to the unfortunate situation in Korea at the time, the candlelight protests caused an enormous number of users to access the service simultaneously, resulting in a "price bomb" on my pay-as-you-go plan. I ended up spending over 100,000 won in a single day. I had to quickly tune the features to make them free and keep only the bare minimum, but the sudden influx of users led me to discover how to utilize Firebase effectively.

Of course, since then I have opened my eyes to the appeal of Firebase, worked hard to spread the word by giving presentations on the LevelZero community I was operating at the time and the game developer ecosystem, and implemented and served various API functionalities with the help of Totu(@totuworld), who was developing with me at the time. I understand that this has unknowingly influenced developers and companies in Korea who use Firebase and build BAAS functionalities based on Firebase.

Especially at the time, I prepared to release the Firebase-based game BAAS service as open source so that other developers could try out the fun features I created with Totu (coupons, leaderboards, receipt verification, etc.). However, I remember that due to personal issues with Totu and myself at the time, we were unable to launch properly.

Review of "Magma Kick" presented at the 2016 Level Zero Seminar
https://blog.naver.com/progagmer/220761759343

Tutory's presentation at Level Zero Seminar July 2016..

However, seeing that the Firebase-based game BAAS service we had envisioned was launched later, with most features similar to what we presented, and seeing that the person in question was also active in leveling up, I am secretly satisfying myself that we may have unknowingly influenced the early days of that company's service.

Anyway, the introduction was quite long, but to summarize, Game BAAS, or GBAAS, is a service that provides essential functions for running game services in the form of serverless APIs. From the perspective of having personally built, operated, and am still effectively using the concept from scratch, I think it is a very useful concept.

When I first attached to Tutory to create the concept and build and launch the service myself, I felt the need for it, but the operational costs were burdensome. Especially in an era where the concept of regularly paying for server-related operational expenses for game development and operations was relatively rare... it was a time when pay-as-you-go or monthly usage costs were somewhat burdensome. However, as time has passed, most development companies and service providers, regardless of company size, are now easily paying for services, assets, and ad tools on a monthly or pay-as-you-go basis, even for individual developers. Therefore, I believe that Game BAAS, which allows you to pay a fixed amount and get much more convenient, powerful, and secure server functionality, has gone beyond being a consideration to becoming one of the essential elements.

In particular, recently due to COVID-19, the world has experienced a disruption in exchange, and as a chemical reaction to this, "metaverse" content utilization and social networking in a virtual world that transcends the physical environment have garnered significant interest. Although it seems to have paused temporarily due to utility issues, infrastructure investment continues, and useful development teams and content are emerging one by one, making this a period when network-based content and games playable on multiple platforms (mobile, PC, tablet, web browsers, etc.) are appearing more than ever.

Therefore, this is a time when various services have emerged that allow creators to focus on content creation more than ever before, and based on personal insight, I believe that web-based SaaS (Software as a Service) tools providing services for creators will truly flood the market.

Consequently, game BAAS services that had emerged in the past but failed to expand significantly have been blooming anew since last year, improving their completeness and throwing down the gauntlet one by one. Personally, upon reviewing them, services that were previously lacking in essential elements for usage, such as completeness, tutorial documentation, and user communities, now appear quite usable.

So, in this post, I would like to wrap up by introducing a few game BAAS (hereinafter GBAAS) services that are worth looking into.



1.Google Firebase
https://firebase.google.com/

  • Google's Firebase introduced above, while calling it a BAAS for games might be a bit of a stretch, I introduced it because I used it so effectively for games.
  • I think it is a service you should definitely try at least once to implement serverless functionality.
  • I think it is a very powerful tool because it likely has the most users worldwide, along with plenty of related documentation and tips, and especially because you can integrate it with Google Analytics to track and analyze user data.
  • The downside is that most features require direct implementation tailored to the platform, and while it was very convenient and easy at the time of its release, the emergence of various services has made some parts feel relatively difficult, so to use it properly, you probably need to know how to handle Node.js to use the features properly.
  • However, the fact that most features can be used for free is also considered a very big advantage.

2. Microsoft Playfab
https://playfab.com/

  • Microsoft, one of the strongest IT companies, offers a BAAS service for games.
  • It appears to be provided based on Azure, a cloud service that, along with AWS, dominates the world; however, in reality, it is a company secured through acquisition, so the integration with Azure can seem somewhat forced when using it. (I don't know technically, this is just from a user perspective)
  • Visiting the homepage shows that Minecraft and numerous other games are operated on a PlayFab basis, so for some reason, I think it truly possesses the full lineup of a genuine game BAAS service.
  • Since small development teams or projects in the development phase can be fully covered by the free tier, it is known in Korea as a service that is not well-known or has few users, but I think you should definitely consider it.
  • Preparing study tutorial documents and videos regarding this. (To renew my status as an MS MVP!!)

3. Amazon Gamelift
https://aws.amazon.com/ko/gamelift/

  • It appears to be a game BAAS service based on AWS, the king of global cloud services.
  • Actually, I didn't know how to use AWS well, so I knew game services existed but hadn't used them or considered them, so I was unaware until recently when I saw a related seminar? news? and searched for it.
  • So I don't know much about it. However, since it seems to be associated with AWS, which has the most users among cloud services, I think it might be widely used overseas.
  • If I get the chance, I will try it out and introduce it.

4. Naver Gamepot
https://www.ncloud.com/product/game/gamepot

  • Naver's ncloud, a native cloud service, offers a BAAS service for game operations.
  • Since it was developed and serviced to match the domestic game development market, which saw a boom in mobile games, a major advantage is that it provides a wide variety of highly useful features.
  • Furthermore, since most services are provided based on domestic regions (cloud services are network-based, so response speed can vary greatly depending on the region where physical servers are located, making the region important), it appears faster and easier to set up compared to other services.
  • For example, with GamePot, the author attended a presentation seminar and tried it out. Since they collaborate with companies that actually service games on ncloud and create/support key functions, it appears to offer useful technical support and many practical features.
  • At the time, the author considered using it but gave up because there was no free tier for indie and small development teams and individual users. However, upon checking now, it is said that free usage is possible up to 50 DAU.

5. Backend
https://www.thebackend.io/

  • A GBAAS service that is really widely used by indie and small development teams in Korea.
  • The name itself is 'Backend'. It is a backend service name.
  • In Korea, it is known to be rapidly gaining users while providing a lot of free support and technical support for individual and indie developers, and promoting it in various communities.
  • Since operating a community for game developers, there were many developers using the service around me from the early days. In the early days, since the service was close to a startup, there were many outages and problems, so many developers complained about the inconvenience or left.
  • Now that there are many users, internal documents and development processes have been greatly improved, and I think the service itself has improved day by day. (The homepage and development documents seem to have changed completely.)
  • Also, recently it is said that they received a large-scale investment, so I wonder if there will be more changes and support.
  • Personally, I haven't used it, so I don't know if it's useful or if the stability is good.

First, I wrote about GBAAS services that I already know or can think of, but nowadays there are so many game BAAS services appearing and being served both domestically and internationally that I will introduce them again if there are any services I am interested in or want to try.

It seems like this post ended up being a bit messy with some personal ramblings + an introduction to GBAAS services. If I get the chance in the future, I think it would be good to write a separate post introducing the major services.