The video features Bearded, a DevOps engineer at Cloud Imperium Games, discussing his role in monitoring and improving Star Citizen’s server performance, bug tracking, and backend services, emphasizing a data-driven approach and the balance between automation and manual intervention. It also highlights the specialized QA team’s structure and methodologies, providing insight into the challenges of maintaining stability and optimizing the game’s complex live environment.
The video delves into an insightful Reddit and Spectrum Q&A session with Bearded CIG, a DevOps engineer at Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) working on Star Citizen. Bearded shares his journey from starting as a QA tester to becoming part of the DevOps team, responsible for building PTU server environments, monitoring server health through various metrics, and managing data models used to prioritize issues like disconnections and crashes. He highlights the importance of tracking these metrics to improve the game’s netcode, stability, and overall player experience, though some specifics cannot be shared publicly due to security reasons.
Bearded explains how the DevOps team contributes to monitoring interaction delays and server performance by capturing detailed performance data, which is then used by developers to optimize the game. He also clarifies his role in building and configuring backend services, particularly focusing on authentication services for the large public (PUB) environments, while handling more tasks on the smaller PTU environments. This data-driven approach helps the team identify and triage bugs, crashes, and performance bottlenecks effectively.
The discussion also touches on the QA team’s structure and methodology. Bearded shares that QA specialists are assigned to specific areas of the game and work closely with developers to communicate issues efficiently. This specialist system is necessary due to the MMO’s vast scope, making it impossible for any one tester to master the entire game. He recounts his early career experiences, including working as a temp QA tester at Sony, emphasizing that breaking the game and good communication skills are key attributes for QA roles.
When asked about automation in server management, Bearded provides a thoughtful perspective on the risks involved. Automating certain tasks like stowing crashing shards could lead to repetitive crash loops and increased database load, which might worsen the problem rather than solve it. He stresses the importance of balancing automation with manual intervention to avoid masking issues and ensure crashes remain observable and prioritized correctly. This reflects a pragmatic approach to maintaining server health and stability in a complex live environment.
Overall, the video offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at the challenges and processes involved in maintaining Star Citizen’s backend infrastructure. It highlights the critical roles of DevOps and QA teams in monitoring, diagnosing, and addressing technical issues. The host encourages viewers to share their experiences with the current game version and promotes community engagement through giveaways and channel support, fostering a collaborative atmosphere around the ongoing development of Star Citizen.