Perforce Scores Over 100 Games Developers

Games Developers Flock To Perforce To Improve Development Processes
Perforce Addresses All The Major Development Issues Facing Games Developers Today

ECTS, Earl's Court, London, 29 August 2002 - Games development is a very serious business. UBS Warburg has estimated that the total interactive entertainment market is currently worth $27 billion and this will grow to $32 billion in 2004. It has also been said that the cost of bringing a top tier game to market is about $10 million compared to $1.5 million just a few years ago.

With the scale and complexity of projects fast reaching the kind of proportions normally associated with Hollywood film productions, more effective front-to-back management and control of the development process is a pre-requisite for success. Critical to this is the right choice of software configuration management (SCM) tools and Perforce is rapidly establishing itself as a de facto industry standard.

The Perforce Fast SCM system is now being used by over 100 games industry companies with others being added on a regular basis. These include many of the world's largest developers such as Electronics Arts, Infogrammes, Maxis, Ubisoft and Eidos through its Crystal Dynamics studio, as well as many of the hottest newer developers such as Lionhead Studios (Black & White), Monolith Productions (No One Lives Forever), Westwood Studios (Command & Conquer), Valve Software (Half-Life) and Gas Powered Games (Dungeon Siege).

"The reason for our success in the games industry," says Dave Robertson, Perforce's director of European operations, "is that we address all the major issues facing games developers today - mean-time-to-release, code reuse for series games and multi-platform support, shorter gestation times for games development which is crucial with the increasing links with the movie industry."

"Series games, or predictable and repeatable franchises as EA calls them, demand total control of code if costs are to be minimised through re-use. Such asset management is also crucial to supporting the multiple platforms that typify the games industry - consoles, computers and now mobiles and online," continues Robertson. "With the increasing cross-over between the games and movie industries, synchronised release is also becoming essential if revenues are to be maximised. But the production period for games is much longer than that for movies, so systems are needed that will shorten the games development process as well as allow better digital asset sharing."

Perforce is a powerful software configuration management (SCM) system that can be easily applied to the games design process to provide greater accuracy, control and productivity with significantly reduced administration overheads. It also easily overcomes the problem of managing multiple variants of games to meet specific schedules and feature requirements. Additionally, the improved control that Perforce affords ensures that the substantial investment in code development is properly preserved.

Perforce has been created by developers for developers to provide maximum control over the development process with the minimum of interference. Perforce's speed and client/server architecture significantly aid productivity. Perforce's advanced software configuration management model is orchestrated by its central database application that sits on one central server, and client workspaces can be anywhere on the network - across the office or around the globe. It is fast enough that designers don't bypass it and so fast that they even use it for tasks that they would otherwise do manually.

Perforce's change-oriented model, complete with atomic transactions, ensures that the overall history of the source code moves forward in a trackable, understandable process. Its Inter-File Branching makes multiple releases and multi-levelled development lines tractable and workspace management gives developers total control of their own work while keeping managers and other developers aware of each others' activities. Total reproducibility allows users to revisit and reproduce any past version of the software and use any version as the baseline for patches or new development. Total traceability enables designers to precisely track how things got the way they are, not just their current state. By collecting high-level information about the nature of each change, Perforce can answer such questions as who made what changes, what changes are part of a release, and how releases differ.

About the Perforce SCM System

Perforce is the Fast Software Configuration Management (SCM) system, architected for high performance and runs on over 50 platforms. Perforce provides comprehensive configuration management, including version control, workspace management, atomic change transactions and a unique and powerful branching model. Perforce has been designed to be easy and intuitive to use with a minimal administration overhead.

About Perforce Software

Perforce Software, Inc., designs, develops, markets and supports Perforce, the Fast SCM System. Headquartered in Alameda, California, Perforce Software sells worldwide and has international operations in Europe, Scandinavia and Africa. Perforce customers include developers of systems, application, Web, and database software, and firms in the financial, education, and research markets. For additional information, contact Perforce via e-mail at info@perforce.com, or on the World Wide Web at http://www.perforce.com or call +44 01252 861400.

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