Through Master of the Game, we sit down with Gameloft experts to explore the craft, decisions, and lessons behind building games enjoyed by millions of players around the world.
This time, we spoke with Nguyen Tri Nhan, Backend Producer at Gameloft Saigon, about building reliable live game services, balancing technical complexity with player needs, and the principles that keep games running smoothly behind the scenes.
Q1 — What's something players would be surprised to learn about your job?
Players often assume a producer just schedules tasks or designs gameplay, but in backend development, the job is closer to operating a digital power plant. It is focused on invisible infrastructure and services (to end-users). Success means running seamless data migrations, maintaining low latency, and managing server infrastructure so smoothly. So that the players remain completely unaware of the massive technical complexity required to keep their sessions stable.
Q2 — What's a decision in your field that seems small but can have a huge impact on the player experience?
Adjusting database query efficiency (for billion rows of data) or indexing might seem like a minor, low-level technical optimization, but it directly dictates the player experience. A minor bottleneck in user data retrieval can cause cascading login queues during peak traffic or cause a fraction of a second of latency during an in-game transaction (above 200ms per request). In a live environment, that tiny delay can break game loop immersion turning a minor code oversight into a major retention issue.
Q3 — In your job, what's something that matters more than people expect?
Be able to understand technical complexity during all game production lifecycles, how each technical decision on infrastructure, architecture can meet the requirements of specific gameplay design. Then, inform other stakeholders accordingly.
Q4 — What's one lesson you've learned that completely changed the way you work?
Because we’re dealing with complicated technical issues that are not always easier to understand. The lesson that I learned was to make a simple diagram when we want to present or explain anything. It would vastly reduce the amount of time we need to clarify or explain anything.
Finally, what are five things great backend producers focus on
Stability comes first:
It is defined by how a system handles failure, not how it runs on a happy path. A backend producer must always prepare architecture and infrastructure for the inevitable.The checklist to ensure quality and stability include:
- Unit tests
- Load tests
- Performance tests
- Security tests
- Logging system
- Metrics monitoring & reporting
- Auto alarms
Process gates must be the standard:
As backend producer, we must establish non-negotiable process gates: technical specification and functionality review, mandatory peer code reviews, staged canary deployments, automated test coverage.
The single source of truth for the data:
Any game would contain a lot of data ranging from the assets, DLC, online configurations. It’s very important to have versioning control, changelogs, and a single source of truth for such data. Because discrepancy of such data would create a chain of unexpected issues.
Prepare for the unexpected:
An alarm can come at any given moment since we are developing new games and maintaining existing ones. For team members who are on call for emergencies, we should accept it as part of the job. And the quality of our work increases when we have less issues or such emergency calls.
Always play the game that you’re developing:
While it is very common for anyone who develops games to play it. Sometimes, backend developers focus so much on the infrastructures, architectures, pipelines and their service APIs.
Sometimes, they forget to look at the game from the end-users' point of view. So it’s mandatory to encourage the team members to play our own games and others’ games (to be inspired).
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