NBA 2K15 News Post

Top Engineers Spent the Entire NBA 2K15 Dev Cycle Working on Network Infrastructure

08:22 AM - September 25, 2014 by Steve_OS

Whenever the NBA 2K series is mentioned, the servers are without question, high on the hit list for complaints. In NBA 2K14, problems were still happening well into December last year.

Rob Jones, senior producer for NBA 2K15, mentioned in an interview with Polygon, that they put two of their top dogs on the network infrastructure.

Quote:


	According to Jones, two of Visual Concepts' top engineers spent the entire NBA 2K15 development cycle working on network infrastructure. The studio rewrote the game's matchmaking logic as well as the way it delivers content to players. The developers also compartmentalized the various modes, so if connectivity for, say, MyTeam goes down, the problem hopefully won't prevent people from playing MyCareer. On the back end, NBA 2K15 will alert Visual Concepts' support staff as soon as a problem crops up. And it will give players error codes, so they'll be able to look up specific issues online.

Hopefully the servers hold up a lot better this year. We will find out on October 7th, when NBA 2K15 releases for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3 and PC.

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# 141 iLLosophy @ 10/10/14 09:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spankdatazz22


	I say all that not to excuse NBA2K's issues; just saying I'd think it's hard for anyone on the outside to understand the complexities of how these various online components interact

In the grand scheme of things, all these companies are doing things that few have ever done before when it comes to the Network Engineering. There's no forums you can post on or sites you can google to find a quick fix solution. All these guys have to be trailblazers and find the solution on their own.

The difference between Take Two and other companies like EA, Activision, Ubisoft, is the latter group has years of experience dealing with online games that had more than just one on one. Not saying every one went off without a hitch, but if BioWare wanted to make a multiplayer game, they could contact a Network Engineering Guru at DICE as a resource as since they are both in the same company.

I think in Take Two's case, it's actually 2K Sports/VC that has the most experience with online multiplayer within the whole company. And they've never really had a flawless online/multiplayer experience for last gen systems - at best case their one on one online multiplayer has been....let's say "fragile." But now we're talking about multiple 5 on 5 courts...

I'm just throwing out hypotheticals here though...

# 142 trj_22487 @ 10/10/14 09:39 AM

For what it's worth (despite that the website still lists servers as down) I've been able to access every mode (XB1) flawlessly this morning (couldn't last night), played some great online games against a few people....granted I don't have a Kinect so I can't speak for the facescan features, but none of my files are corrupt or gone, all modes working for me and not a single hiccup in the online games I've played (I will also say everyone I've played was a FANTASTIC competitor and played great basketball) This game is flat out awesome, I've literally owned every single game in the series since the Dreamcast launch, played online since NBA 2K1...I personally am not disappointed, this game is worlds better than NBA 2K14 for 360.

I understand the snap-reaction most have to jump down the throat of 2K when the product does not function flawlessly from Day One. We all paid $60 for it, we all anticipated this game for months, and with all modes tied to the servers this year, and the server issues of years past, it is a bit natural to be agitated. But as somebody who remembers clear as day paying $60 for Bulls vs. Blazers on the SNES and getting hundreds of hours of fun out of a two-dimensional game where every player basically looks the same and everybody moves like they are in a pit of quicksand...maybe I hold the bar a little bit lower than others, but this is clearly the best basketball game I've ever played. I hope the server issues do not persist because this should be a very easy game for people to enjoy.

# 143 trj_22487 @ 10/10/14 09:46 AM

I also stand behind 2KTV, I think it's awesome, I'm so glad they decided to do this. My best friend doesn't really watch basketball or like sports games in general, but he watched the first 2KTV episode with me and it got him super pumped to play the game and made him wish that more games had a weekly broadcast like this....If 2K can get the servers solid, 2K15 will be one of the greatest sports games of all time IMO.

# 144 kadzier @ 10/10/14 11:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlackOut32


	I am the lead network architect for a medium sized web hosting company. I actually design the data center infrastructure and have a wealth of knowledge in the matter of server management. I'm going to create a thread tomorrow to give my two cents on what seems to be the real issue with 2k's history of fail with their online components in their games, but to give a quick overview, they need to completely overhaul their data centers & do not have the budget to do so. This is causing their architecture team to put band-aids on the problem instead of truly fixing their issues. All a symptom of higher management not understanding that their games have outgrown their current setup. You have to remember that 2K started as a division of cash strapped SEGA at the tail end of their being a hardware company. In order to truly have an infrastructure to handle the amount of traffic a game like NBA2k produces, they'd need to have their own data center (ala Micro$oft, Apple & Google) They'd have to replace all of the outdated servers, network hardware they currently have (while still maintaining servers for current games) It's basically a cost issue & the 1 year turnaround for 2k16 doesn't really allow them to do this. Along with a marketing department that would rather have back of the box features (where we get Pharrell being paid to "curate" the soundtrack) than an actual data center that can handle the load. It's a bad situation for any Sysadmin/Netadmin team, one that won't be fixed as long as millions of people buy the game and the Top Men are turning a profit. I'll go a bit more in depth when I have a chance to write my thread, but really it comes down to, no real competition to force major changes. Myself & millions of others still pay $60 for have *** products.

I am really looking forward to your thread on this. You sound like you know what you're talking about and make tons of logical sense. 2K wasn't always selling millions of copies yearly of the only digital representation of NBA basketball on the planet. They used to just make yet another basketball game on the dreamcast. It makes total sense that, while their revenue and marketing budgets got bigger, other parts of their company (like the network infrastructure) got left behind in a state of immaturity.

It's a shame, for as much exposure as this game gets, for it to still operate in some ways like a much smaller, more inexperienced game

# 145 jmarcguy @ 10/10/14 11:36 AM

Probably the best thing that could happen to make 2k either step up or get out is a solid NBA Live. Either they'll work something out or they'll be done.

# 146 Filthy Habitz @ 10/10/14 11:40 AM

You played online 36 years ago? Internet wasn't even a thing yet. Coleco vision online lol.

# 147 bling2k @ 10/14/14 07:16 PM

I doubt NBA2K15's problems are as simple as server infrastructure. It's pretty easy these days to rent as much server space as you'd need from the likes of Amazon and Microsoft, and those guys have some pretty fat pipes. More than likely the huge influx of players on day one has exposed a few bugs that weren't noticeable with internal testing. It's pretty much impossible to test/simulate what happens in the real world when a game launches. And yeah, this happens to nearly every game out there. I've been playing Diablo 3 since it came out 2 (3?) years ago. Even this morning I had online issues trying to play it. After this much time, even Blizzard still has issues.

It's only been a week and I doubt anyone at 2K has had much sleep. It's not an excuse, but I'm sure things will slowly become more stable and we'll see some game and server patches to fix the issues shortly.

# 148 iLLosophy @ 10/14/14 08:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bling2k


	I doubt NBA2K15's problems are as simple as server infrastructure. It's pretty easy these days to rent as much server space as you'd need from the likes of Amazon and Microsoft, and those guys have some pretty fat pipes. More than likely the huge influx of players on day one has exposed a few bugs that weren't noticeable with internal testing. It's pretty much impossible to test/simulate what happens in the real world when a game launches. And yeah, this happens to nearly every game out there. I've been playing Diablo 3 since it came out 2 (3?) years ago. Even this morning I had online issues trying to play it. After this much time, even Blizzard still has issues. It's only been a week and I doubt anyone at 2K has had much sleep. It's not an excuse, but I'm sure things will slowly become more stable and we'll see some game and server patches to fix the issues shortly.

A few things

1) Judging from your comments, this must be your first exposure to nba 2k online. Whats happening here is for us online heads NBA 2k is our crackheaded cousin that comes to you every year with a plan to clean up their act and need a place to stay, but they eventually just end up stealing $60 out of your wallet just to get back on the rock
2) No company has 100% uptime online, but there are many that come very very close. There is a whole science in IT on whats called Disaster Recovery/High Availability. Redundancies, monitoring, failover protocols, etc. NBA 2k seems to have no concept of this. One year the online servers for leagues went down every Saturday for the majority of the day. Ea, MSFT, Activision, Ubisoft as a whole are not plagued with online problems like this

# 149 starks1903 @ 12/30/14 02:37 AM

this is a joke. worst online i ve ever seen

# 150 Jhawkfootball06 @ 12/30/14 08:50 PM

This is incredible.....

# 151 bls @ 12/30/14 09:34 PM

Definitely the worse

Sent from my SM-N910P using Tapatalk

# 152 hofields @ 12/30/14 09:42 PM

Servers down for all?

# 153 nickthemajin @ 12/31/14 12:18 AM

This is really funny in hindsight. Begs to question what on earth they did for a year.

# 154 Luke Skywalker @ 12/31/14 11:07 AM

It says "Spent entire Dev Cycle" so that gives you a clue that it was short. Maybe they did the best they can in that cycle and it'll be more complete and polished in 2K16.

# 155 MFDOOMBOT @ 12/31/14 12:02 PM

Bottom line with so many moving parts is...

You can spend an entire year upgrading your network infrastructure with the latest routers, switches, load balancers, WAN optimizers, firewalls, WAF's & the best SSD servers money can buy...

But if you don't QA & test this network, along with your game code with a huge amount of users, then you are bound to run into major problems when you release.

Take 2 needs to have a beta cycle for NBA2k in the future to avoid these botched launches.

# 156 bclay19 @ 12/31/14 01:41 PM

I bought NBA 2K15 about 3 days ago, and I still haven't been able to use online features such as 2K Share or 2K Heroes. As soon as I start the game up, I get the message that the servers are not available, but at the home menu, it correctly displays the Featured Game for that day. What I mean is, for example, for today(December 31, 2014) it shows the featured game of OKC vs Phoenix, and they actually do play tonight, and it also correctly has other games for today correctly displayed in the Quick Game menu as well. But, I can't use other online features. Is there some sort of issue w/my gamertag not being able to access the 2k Share options or what?

# 157 IUxHOOSIERS @ 12/31/14 04:40 PM

what a disaster

# 158 23 @ 12/31/14 06:59 PM

This thread is going nowhere

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