They needed a solution with the high performance and high fidelity required to remotely demonstrate the truest gaming experience. They tried many alternatives, but none succeeded in mimicking native gameplay, which was essential both to provide the greatest control and to receive the most accurate feedback.
“Parsec has been an absolute lifesaver – it’s given us a completely new way to test our games outside the confines of our physical labs to provide the high-quality local gameplay experience required for our research,” said Daniel Gunn, director of user research for Xbox Research. “We wouldn’t be able to continue remote playtesting at the same level of quality without him.”
the solution:
After successfully leveraging Parsec for playtest Infinite auraXbox Research deployed Parsec to begin playtests with the following Age of Empires release. The initial round of testing proved that Parsec’s smooth gaming experience generated significant user research.
Xbox Research saw no evidence of a decline in test quality or quantity after using Parsec for remote play testing for a year. Their reports seemed as if these studies were conducted in person as usual. And now that Parsec has allowed them to once again test with gamers around the world, Xbox Research can focus on scaling virtual game testing. Without the limitations imposed by local hardware, they were able to run tests with up to 60 concurrent gamers on Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines (VMs).
Using Parsec has taken us beyond where we thought we could go with playability and usability testing,” said Brian Walker, chief research operations officer at Xbox Research. “We’re leading the gaming industry with our ability to do this level of remote testing at scale, And it’s all made possible by Parsec.”
By the numbers:
- Xbox Research was founded in 2000
- Number of workstations running Parsec concurrently: 120
- Number of game tests (from different games) running at the same time: 20+
- Number of test participants per month: 150+
How Xbox Research achieved virtual game testing with Parsec
Scale to meet demand: Personal operation testing on dedicated hardware has firm limitations in time, space and numbers. Only so many people can fit into one test space at a time, and budgets can limit access to machine hardware. Virtual playtesting allows Xbox Research to reach gamers regardless of geography, so the team can run as many consecutive tests as they need at a lower cost. During their initial effort using Parsec for Teams Enterprise and Microsoft Azure to create VMs for playtesting, Xbox Research was able to maintain methodological control over their tests and meet the demands of game studios.
Unlimited games: For remote playtesting to provide statistically viable feedback, the game needs to feel the same in a gamer’s living room anywhere around the world as it does in the Redmond lab. Xbox’s rigorous research methodology demands a predictable and consistent gaming experience across geographic divides with near-zero lag and latency – which Parsec delivered with flying colours. With Parsec for Teams Enterprise, Xbox Research can connect to multiple markets and gamers of all abilities knowing that the user experience is nearly identical.
Secure connections: Keeping intellectual property safe is the main concern of game developers. Leaks and piracy threaten the success and reputation of multi-billion dollar franchises. With Parsec for Teams Enterprise, Xbox Research has fine-grained control over what both internal team members and guests on the system can access and when. Additionally, Parsec connections are peer-to-peer and end-to-end encrypted, so game studios can play content securely.
“Operation testing is such a complicated beast, given the interactive content and hardware requirements,” Walker said. “Parsec has made remote game testing more efficient, reliable and secure.”
Moving forward: Integrating Parsec more deeply with Microsoft
Xbox Research’s success is a real testament to Parsec’s value for real-time 3D applications. So much so that the Microsoft Studios developer ecosystem continued the wider adoption of Parsec for Teams Enterprise, while collaborating with Microsoft Azure. Using Azure Marketplace, creative teams can deploy pre-configured VMs with Parsec in five minutes or less.
Parsec is going to allow us to scale scenarios that we’ve never been able to do before,” Walker said. With Parsec, we’ll be able to create an Azure virtual machine lab anywhere in the world. That’s our future.”
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