At wooga we build backends for games that have millions of daily users.

In the gaming business we have a write heavy environment, with a high frequency of requests, traffic bursts and distribution across many nodes. These are all problems we need to solve and keep in mind in order to write a system that stands the chance of supporting the required load.

How do you meet the challenge of writing a brand new system with performance in mind? Where should the line between necessary efficiency and premature optimization be drawn? How do you measure performances? How do we generate synthetic load that reflects real usage patterns?  How do you know you have enough capacity? How do you combine all the above with safely introducing changes and new features working in a two people team?

We had to answer to all the above questions and we want to share the solutions we found and the problems that we consider still open.