HTTP 200 OK: Networking Architecture in Browser Gaming

Mark Mikulec
Co-founder & Technical Director, Antic Entertainment

In his keynote, Mark will give a high level overview of the Browser game industry; from its humble beginnings to the billion player-strong platform it has become today. Illustrating with both industry trends and highlighting his own experiences as Technical Director, Mark will breakdown two very different approaches in architecture design in browser gaming. Antic Entertainment's first game, Junk Wars, is a synchronous multi-player game and had very different priorities, challenges, strengths and weaknesses compared to Antic's new titles, which are asynchronous single player games. All major topics will be touched upon including: computer architecture, programming platforms, scaling techniques, latency, data reliability and cheat prevention.

Mark Mikulec is both an entrepreneur and a programmer. As an entrepreneur he has won two separate business plan competitions for both companies he founded. His first company, founded in university, licensed his game engine and online project management system to several schools across North America, including Niagara College and the University of California at Berkeley. During the four years he was at Digital Extremes, Mark contributed as a senior programmer to several high profile titles, including Dark Sector and Bioshock. His second company, Antic Entertainment, which he co-founded in 2008, creates casual browser games for the hardcore player. Mark is also an industry advisor to the academic community in London, has co-developed Fanshawe College's Advanced Game Programming postgraduate program, and personally established its network game programming course.