coherence is the Networking Solution for the Entire Lifecycle of Your Multiplayer Game

A core tenet at coherence is that our tools should help developers throughout the entire lifecycle of their multiplayer games, not just during development. We’ve built our tools and platform to be a force-multiplier during design, development, launch, and everything after. Developers are finding success adopting coherence whether they are starting fresh or bringing new audiences to their single player game.

Design and Development

Our mission is to connect people through multiplayer experiences. To do that, we give game designers the tools to make multiplayer a design concern rather than a technical hurdle. Our Unity SDK focuses on ease-of-use: add a component to your game objects, choose what to sync in the inspector, and our tools take care of the rest. Our claim of “five minutes to multiplayer” isn’t hyperbole - here’s a demonstration.

Designers are free to focus and iterate on what makes their game a unique experience, increasing the chance of success and reach in this highly competitive market. Contrast this to other networking tools which require fundamental changes to the primitives of a game, usually requiring custom inspector tooling. Suddenly engineering must get involved to enable multiplayer design, which slows down iteration and immediately presents roadblocks to finding differentiators.

coherence frees engineers from the drudgery of multiplayer tooling and allows them to focus on programming the interesting and unique features. We’ve heard over and over again from veterans to first-time indies that coherence is incredibly approachable.

coherence is the best workflow I've ever seen or used for multiplayer game technology. [coherence is] the fastest and most productive workflow I've ever encountered, and I've been building these things for like 10 plus years.

• Markus Dugdale, Principal Game Architect & Lead Developer, Bossa Games

Launch and Zeitgeist

In a market dictated by Steam’s New and Trending, App Store Features, and Metacritic reviews, having a flawless multiplayer launch is a key component of a game’s early exposure and success. Players want to find lobbies across the globe, play without lag, and avoid queues and downtime. We’ve built the coherence Cloud to enable developers to deliver on the multiplayer promise, no matter the scale of their launch.

Every coherence project comes with a generous free tier to allow developers to develop and launch their game without ever having to provision servers, configure NAT punchthrough, or monitor uptime. Games launched on the coherence Cloud pay as they scale up to any size player base. Contrast this to other networking solutions that require finding third party hosting providers, provisioning servers manually, monitoring availability and buying into long-term contracts. Typically, a dedicated full time team of engineers is needed to provide what the coherence Cloud includes out-of-the-box.

Again, our mission is to connect people through multiplayer experiences, and that includes any type of studio, even those that don’t want or need our Cloud. We offer and document a completely free client-hosted peer-to-peer solution for any developer to take advantage of coherence. See Client Hosting and Running a Game for Free, Without Servers

Long Tail

An important part of the lifecycle of every game happens after the initial launch and wide public exposure: the long tail. As a game’s player base naturally plateaus, coherence Cloud’s costs scale down in sync with the size of the player base. Many games unexpectedly find new life and new success months or years after their initial launch — and the coherence Cloud is always there, ready to scale up as needed.

While [Among Us] was initially released in 2018 to little mainstream attention, it received a massive rise in popularity in 2020 due to many Twitch streamers and YouTubers playing it during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Wikipedia

Keeping a game’s multiplayer gameplay always-available is not only important culturally, but also a smart investment. coherence makes this preservation affordable and in many cases completely free.

Additionally, converting a coherence Cloud-based game to a self-hosted game requires minimal code changes. Gameplay code can remain exactly the same. This is quite different from other networking solutions where history has shown that even large studios choose to sunset a game completely rather than invest in keeping it running.

Jump in at any time

We are working with partners across the spectrum of a game’s lifecycle, from new projects launching soon to established and long-tail games bringing new life to their games through multiplayer. Our minimally invasive and additive SDK allows developers to take an existing Unity game and begin adding multiplayer in just minutes.

Our mission is to connect people through multiplayer experiences, and that mission defines our tools and our approach to integrating with the myriad of unique projects that already exist and those on the horizon, like yours. If you’d like to learn more, dig in at https://docs.coherence.io/ and always feel free to contact us at devrel@coherence.io