The Sim Grid
Building a rewarding racing environment for The Sim Grid
The Sim Grid – Case Study
The Sim Grid is an online gaming community. It organises multiplayer GT races for players of the driving simulator Assetto Corsa Competizione (ACC).
ACC is recognised by professional racing drivers as the most realistic representation of the real thing: delivering the best physics, track rendering and AI of any racing simulator available today.
The Sim Grid improves the online experience for ACC racers by making it possible for racers of all abilities to compete against similarly-skilled competitors in serious sprint and endurance leagues and relaxed one-off races.
Where they wanted support
The Sim Grid wanted more drivers. It had 40 before HappyWired’s involvement.
There were 5,000 active drivers on ACC; after the introduction of HappyWired, 10-15% of them are now using The Sim Grid.
HappyWired was brought in to improve the core offering of The Sim Grid, to make its offer scalable through automation, and therefore to attract more drivers.
David Perel, founder of The Sim Grid and a professional racing driver himself, sought help in two key areas.
- “We needed to create a ranking engine.”
- “We also wanted an analytics dashboard that would provide useful data to drivers and create a marketable feature.”
Developing a solution
Before The Sim Grid, ACC drivers who wanted to compete online had to use online chat rooms. With most other online games, players can log-in and jump straight into competition.
- HappyWired set up virtual servers in the cloud, allowing The Sim Grid to run an ever expanding number of daily races as well as regular special events.
- Opting for the cloud over dedicated servers allows The Sim Grid to deliver a compelling online racing experience at lower cost.
- To improve the user experience, HappyWired developed an automated ranking engine to match drivers with others of a similar skill level.
As for the rankings and race analysis, Perel says, “We also wanted to reward players on ‘driver consistency’ – or how they performed across a whole race – instead of just their finishing position”.
- HappyWired developed a sophisticated ranking engine to analyse a range of metrics provided by the game after each race.
- Its automated algorithm was built in partnership with professional racing drivers to reward a complex mix of factors that matter most in the real world.
- The ranging engine runs on Microsoft Azure SQL, a cloud database offering high levels of scalability and availability for a rapidly growing global racing community.
- Driver data was also visualised with Microsoft Power BI, to create an interactive analytics dashboard for every racer.
- It also let The Sim Grid monetise this part of its platform, as racers pay for this analysis.
Technologies Used
HappyWired used Azure SQL to collect and analyse complex data from online races.
HappyWired was able to display insightful data by building a dashboard in Microsoft Power BI.
HappyWired was able to use Azure Virtual Machines to provide on-demand, scalable computing resources.
HappyWired was able to use Azure functions to continually-updated infrastructure and resources needed to run applications.
“HappyWired understood the developments that were needed to transform The Sim Grid into a premium online gaming experience. Its solutions are automated, user-friendly, and create a new, viable business model moving forward.”
David Perel, Sim Grid“Before I approached HappyWired, I tried to build a matchmaking system myself,” says David. “The automated model it built was a thousand times more complex, letting us rank the player base accurately despite a huge disparity in skill.
“Amateur and professional racers can be rewarded on individual performance, even as they race together, making the game more enjoyable for everyone. It allows racers to progress through the rankings based on the factors that really matter in the real world.”
The new process and its success
The new features from HappyWired have many user benefits:
- It’s now far easier to race against similarly skilled drivers online
- It’s easier for new users to start driving immediately and learn what good looks like
- It ensures that everyone will be put in competitive races.
- The analytics dashboard offers an easy-to-understand view of performance
David explains:
“By making races more competitive for users, and giving them the tools to improve their performance, The Sim Grid has established itself as the premier league within ACC’s competitive online scene.
“Where other developers told me that this kind of online matchmaking would be too complex and expensive to do, HappyWired has made it happen quickly and at a realistic cost.
“HappyWired has been able to automate this process, and has even helped us find ways to monetise the platform.”
The Sim Grid plans to introduce a Pro Membership, which allows full access to the platform’s events and to the full analytical dashboard.
And because all the key processes are fully automated, the Sim Grid can scale up quickly without scaling up costs.
Would you work with HappyWired again?
“Yes,” says David. “We’re already continuing to work with HappyWired, as we’ve seen our player base grow from 40 people to 4,000 and we’re yet to finish beta testing.
“The data-driven solution they’ve brought to competitive ranking, and the detailed but easy-to-use analytics platform has helped to build a racing experience like no other.”
