On Sunday January 29th at 7am Central time, I will be on my computer patiently waiting at MuchDifferent’s website trying to get into their world record attempt. First announced last year, the developer has finally said that it is time to participate in a record breaking event. The attempt takes a direct stab at record holding games such as MAG, which allows a max of 256 PlayStation 3 players online, and also Planetside, which can allow 399 players to be in the same zone at once. Now, they haven’t created a PS3 or PC game exactly, the match will take place via web browser only utilizing the newer Unity player with their simple game entitled Man vs Machine.

You might ask, “How is a 1000 players possible?”, and the answer is almost simple.  Well just a few years back, MuchDifferent was looking to solve technical challenges brought up by their friends at CCP and DICE, and came up with a way to scale virtual worlds. Their solution is the new PikoServer, a dynamic traffic router and load balancer that divides the battlefield between game servers and then stitches the results back together for the users. In fact, the world record attempt of 1000 players is only going to be spread across 8 servers all together.

Now here is something that I haven’t mentioned yet about Man vs Machine. The players will be split between gamers and developers. The gamers take on the side of  Man and will have a projectile that explodes with splash damage. Developers will play as machine, firing lasers that require precision aiming. Not only is this a once in a lifetime chance to help set a world record (there is no sequel planned), but also a chance to take devs down a notch or two.  Check out the trailer below and if you’re interested, be sure to be HERE when the timer runs out. Also, the game is free, but if you think this is going to be wildly popular and hard to get into, you can also purchase a ticket for $200 that guarantees you access as long as you are there when the timer runs down. The $200 goes directly to Engineers without Borders and is available on that site here. Hope to see you there!

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