The Google App Engine Advantage
Agon uses the Google App Engine for data storage. We believe this is a huge advantage over other server setups.
Why? Let’s list some of the advantages:
- Scales perfectly with demand – even when your game hits the top 25!
- 100,000s of servers around the globe means great reliability and high performance – no matter where your players are!
- Secure storage technology developed by the rocket scientists at Google!
Let us all simply do what we are best at:
- Let Google take care of the scalable server platform (they know how)
- Let us provide you with an easy to use system for handling users, lost passwords etc.
- Spent your precious time creating great games for all of us
If you want to know more about the Google App Engine advantage – feel free to contact us at developer@agon-online.com.
GAE is OK. If you are providing a free service, how do you plan to pay for GAE quota overages? GAE quotas are NOT scalable if you plan on paying nothing for the GAE service.
How are you handling authentication? Do your users require Google Accounts? Do your developers require them? If so, how are you planning on keeping credentials secure?
How are you planning on encrypting traffic since SSL quotas for GAE are low. How are you otherwise going to prevent cheating?
GAE is indeed OK. It has thus far proved a perfect match for AGON Online and saves us from worrying about hardware infrastructure, inter-server and inter-process communication. Clearly there are tools to solve these problems “manually” but our focus is to create the best social gaming platform for handheld devices.
It is correct that GAE is not free when you start generating a lot of traffic, which we hope AGON Online will do very soon. Paying for the GAE quotas are part of our business plan.
Authentication is done using industry standards. AGON Online users are not required to have a Google Account. Developers using the AGON Online SDK are required to have a Google Account for registering and managing their applications’ AGON Online settings. I am sure Google takes great care of keeping the credentials of Google Accounts safe.
We are aware that the SSL request quotas are lower than normal unencrypted requests, but this will not be a problem for AGON Online, since SSL is not used a lot. I, for obvious reasons, cannot tell you exactly how we are going to prevent cheating on the blog, but I will say that SSL is not part of the mechanism.
If you would like more concrete details about your specific questions you are welcome to send an email to developer@agon-online.com.