Codemasters, developer and publisher of world-class video games, is constantly looking to make the most of advances in technology to enhance the gaming experience. The website is an increasingly important channel and their latest web development has been to offer massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG).

Prior to launching their first MMORPGs, Codemasters called in SciVisum to carry out load testing to establish whether brand new accounts handling, payment and registering facilities would meet demand comfortably. Developed in-house, the facilities would be used to create new accounts and to allow players to subscribe to forthcoming online gaming releases, specifically "Dungeons & Dragons Online" and "RF Online".

A large marketing drive was planned for the launch of the software in stores. The software would have unique serial-IDs for accessing the online game. Given that these games always have a ‘land grab’ at the beginning, a large initial rush of users was expected on the first day. It was important that the successful marketing campaign could be matched by the website performance to maximise on the investment.

Testing showed that all User Journeys, which included creating a new account, easily met demand with the exception of one important task. During initial testing, SciVisum identified a slow down on specific steps carried out when subscribing to a new game - a user journey which involved a credit card transaction being sent to a third party payment provider.

The Lead Web Programmer’ at Codemasters says

SciVisum’s load testing identified an important performance issue when subscribing to a new game. At high loads, page delivery times for the payment steps were too slow - exceeding our acceptable user speed goals. So the system would be able to support a rapid number of users creating new accounts but wouldn’t then be able to support new game subscriptions at the same rate.

Further testing pinpointed the cause of the bottleneck as a problem with the configuration of the payment system which was limiting the rate at which credit card transactions could be handled. We quickly resolved this so that testing could continue.

Ultimately SciVisum’s end to end approach enabled us to resolve issues preventing us from losing customers before completing their subscription. This could have reduced the effectiveness of our marketing launch campaign and impacted on customer loyalty not to mention online revenues.

SciVisum provided us with the hard evidence to address the bottlenecks and to make the adjustments prior to launch. This gave us the confidence before the launch and ensured the smooth rollout of the first of our MMORPGs.

The launch was very successful, with numbers exceeding expectations for new subscriptions. The website easily met demand and performance was excellent, enabling Codemasters to build upon their outstanding reputation.

Codemasters website
SV-Load - User Journey web load testing service

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