Unity, which provides a real-time 3D content creation and operation platform, has released the ‘2022 Unity Multiplayer Report’, which makes it easy to understand the demand and preference for multiplayer games.
According to the report, more than half of the world’s population (52%) currently plays games, and most gamers (77%) play multiplayer games. In addition, it was found that social factors have the greatest influence when deciding to purchase and participate in games.
Unity recently launched Game Server Hosting and Matchmaker, giving studios of all sizes access to foundational authoring tools that accelerate multiplayer game development and enable enhanced connected gaming experiences. The newly released tools further strengthen the portfolio of multiplayer solutions available from Unity Gaming Services (UGS).
According to the 2022 Unity Multiplayer Report, the social factor is the most important consideration when buying or playing multiplayer games. When choosing a game, it was found that ‘games friends are already playing’ (34%) and ‘being able to chat with friends in the game’ (31%) were the most considered after ‘genre.’ ‘Finding a game to participate quickly/quick matchmaking (35%)’ and ‘matchmaking to find an opponent that matches your skill level’ were found to be important factors for enjoying the game (33%).
In particular, this report also covers player preferences. First of all, it was found that 91% of real-time multiplayer gamers enjoy cross-play games. Both core and casual gamers are expected to use in-game payments, with more than half (61%) of all multiplayer gamers having purchased any downloadable content (DLC) in the 30 days prior to the survey. There was.
In addition, it was found that there was no significant difference between the game genres selected by core gamers and casual gamers. While the percentage of core gamers is relatively high in traditional multiplayer games, casual gamers are not limited to specific game types such as card games or puzzles.
“Multiplayer games are hugely popular, and there are more and more types of games than ever before,” said Jeff Collins, SVP of Engineering for Unity’s Operation Solutions division. From the massive battle royale genre, gamers join and play games with others, creating a seamless social experience across all multiplayer games. With UGS multiplayer solutions, developers and studios get the best of both worlds: reliable, scalable, and customizable. to connect players regardless of the type of multiplayer game.”
Unity developers can create and ship multiplayer games faster and more efficiently with new self-service capabilities in their game server hosting services Multiplay and Matchmaker. Multiplay is a scalable dedicated game server hosting service that allows developers to host multiplayer games to millions of players in minutes. Developers can leverage Matchmaker to coordinate matching with rules-based matchmaking, creating better multiplayer experiences with faster matching and lower latency.
Also, Netcode for GameObjects was recently released. The solution is a foundational framework and advanced networking library designed to simplify the development of small cooperative games. Unity has unveiled three new multiplayer sample games, including a massive battle royale game created with Photon Fusion, to help developers learn new features and multiplayer networks across various game types. You can learn more about the new self-service features and sample games on the Unity blog.
Meanwhile, the 2022 Unity Multiplayer Report is the third quarter of 2021 and 2022, collected by Unity by conducting an online survey of multiplayer gamers in four of the top six game revenue countries (US, UK, Korea, and Japan). 3rd quarter data was used. Approximately 1,500 gamers responded to the survey, with 50% of core gamers (a mix of traditional multiplayer shooters such as battle royale, FPS, and third-person shooters, plus MOBA, MMO, racing, sports, and fighting games) each week. gamers who play multiplayer games for 4 hours or more) and 50% of casual gamers (gamers who play multiplayer games for 30 minutes or more while playing games for 2 hours or more each week).
The Korean version of the ‘2022 Unity Multiplayer Report’ can be downloaded from Unity’s official website.