Hello,

I am writing a course project on designing admin system for video game and trying to research what is common in this field, how existing solutions are implemented, what functionality is usually there and so on.

Would be thankful for any recommendations on where I can find literature/articles/tutorials on basically everything in this topic:

From how it was done on legacy arcade machines (like, technician comes to service it - what they see? A light with couple of switches? Console, text terminal, gui? What functionality did these earlier systems have?)

To modern MMO - how support agents manage user profiles, inventories, payments and so on.

How server admins add scripts, handle chat/profanity, enforce rules, add/remove ban, kick players, manage tech side?

Thanks in advance!

Hello.

it will be difficult to find in a single article all that you want.

But, try:

https://learnopengl.com/

https://itstillworks.com/12146966/how-do-arcade-games-work

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game

On 4/15/2019 at 7:37 AM, ookamy said:

To modern MMO - how support agents manage user profiles, inventories, payments and so on.

I would assume these days, most of it is basically a website, although I have never seen or searched around for such information on MMO's specifically. A lot of data, especially to do with user accounts / profiles is probably stored in a regular SQL database, and a lot of modern server software has moved away from using Win32 API, MFC, WinForms, etc. often using custom communication protocols (assuming remote management was possible at all, other than Remote Desktop the server and use the GUI tool there) to web based management.

I have seen even less terminal based management tools. While they may be very slightly easier to develop, console programs give up a lot of ease of use and presentational flexibility. Plus your average new hire for the support team will have no idea about consoles etc., but is likely familiar with how to use GUI programs / webpages.

16 hours ago, SyncViews said:

I would assume these days, most of it is basically a website...

I have seen even less terminal based management tools. While they may be very slightly easier to develop, console programs give up a lot of ease of use and presentational flexibility. Plus your average new hire for the support team will have no idea about consoles etc., but is likely familiar with how to use GUI programs / webpages.

Thanks for reply! Yes that what I am thinking - Web Interface mostly.. Also consoles.. Struggling to find more detailed info on this topic, so if you have an example, I would greatly appreciate any source.

Well, like I said, not got any complete game examples. There might be an article out there, but generally MMORPG, Battle Arena, or more conventional FPS/RTS/etc. that host centralised servers I expect will have these things purely internally and not show much to the outside world. If you look at say Valve's offerings, the dedicated servers available to players are far less featured than the overall system that powers say CS:GO and Dota2 (e.g. all the ranking stuff, player reporting, support tickets, etc.,).

As far as general control interfaces go, well basically any piece of modern network gear has a web portal. You probably used one on say your router. A lot of IP Phones (common in offices so they can just have a single ethernet network) also have such an interface, as well as firewalls, email gateways, switches, etc. And the majority of web related server software you install these days will as well, such as forums, bug trackers, .etc.

For managing support tickets, both technical ones / bug tracking, and just general customer support there are various off the shelf services that can be used. For Warframe uses zendesk (https://digitalextremes.zendesk.com/hc/en-us), which you thus could get and take a look through from an admins perspective. I am sure some games also use fully "rebranded" ones, or at least their own customer facing user interface, while others simply use a forum for such things.

A lot of these user based platforms also have the ability to integrate with external software/databases for the purpose of user profiles and logins, commonly called SSO single sign-on (so I can use my single user account/password, to log into say the game, the forums, and the support desk), so you could see how some of them are doing that (e.g. quick search found https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203663826-SSO-single-sign-on-options-in-Zendesk see "enterprise single sign-on section").

For GUI consoles, on commons ones on  Window's I can think of is the Server Manager, Group Policy, and SQL Server management tools, but I only used them from a basic developers perspective, I am not an admin.