'Grid' Expands Game Universe
W.Va. Firm, IBM Plan for Millions of Players Online at Once
Washington Post, May 9, 2002
Ellen McCarthy, Washington Post Staff Writer
Playing video games with a friend or two can be fun, but David Levine thinks it could be a lot more exciting with a couple of million people. Levine's Butterfly.net Inc. today will launch a product that would allow millions of players who buy third-party software to participate in Internet video games at the same time - an advance Levine believes will change the online gaming world.
"What we've done is radically different," Levine said. "It's going to be the difference between a niche geeky market and the mass market."
The product is being released with International Business Machines Corp., which provided the basic infrastructure and networks
for the technology.
Butterfly's software is based on a computing system called "grids," which was developed for sharing data on the Internet. It will be sold to to major video-game publishers such as Vivendi
Universal and Electronic Arts.
Scott Penberthy, vice president of business development for IBM's global services unit, said the use of grids in the gaming industry is a validation of the technology's potential commercial uses.
"We see tremendous potential for this across the industry," Penberthy said. "If you're a game developer, you want something that is going to be smooth and cost effective. They've created a system that does that - it's just the first ray of light."
Current technology is limited by the number of players whom each server can accommodate, usually under 1,000, Levine said. Butterfly's software eliminates those restrictions by joining servers into clusters, allowing millions of players to interact simultaneously.
For example, if a new television show debuts and the 25 million people who are watching decide to play a game based on the show, everyone will be included in the same game, rather than split into factions.
Butterfly Grid can be used in both PC-based games and Internet console games.
Butterfly, still a 12-person operation, was founded almost two years ago in Shepherdstown, W.Va. The firm has worked on several game-related projects to raise money, but Levine said developing the Butterfly Grid has remained the company's primary focus.
"The cost of what we're going to provide to publishers is so low that the games will become much more profitable - this
brings it to a new level," he said. "I really think we're going to change things with this."
