Background
SCE (Sony Computer Entertainment) which owns 14 software development studios spread out over Europe, Asia and North America, has grown organically and by acquisition since SCE’s inception in 1993. On September 14th 2005 SCE WWS (Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios) was formed as a single entity overseeing all wholly owned development studios within SCE.
While a lot of the individual studios have their own websites, others do not. Without an SCE WWS umbrella site there was a potential for missing countless opportunities, especially when recruiting talent and identifying business partners.
The SCE WWS site concept was put forward to address these issues, providing a channel that will engage potential talent and partners, providing information and contacts for the SCE WWS team and their locations. The site would also serve as a brochure site to let consumers know a little bit more about the teams that create the games they love.
Website
http://www.worldwidestudios.co.uk
Solution
Sony began discussions with Tonic and Solid State Group with the requirements to design and build their new multilingual site that would be able to withstand extreme volumes of traffic and handle custom security requirements.
Leveraging the Cookie Jar content management system Solid State Group built the site with English and Japanese languages spread over clustered load balanced servers for high performance and redundancy.
Sony Computer Entertainment had stringent security requirements. Cookie Jar set up master and slave servers that only allow content editing to be done through the master server, which is then later uploaded to the slave server. This provided a secure editing platform that minimises the risk of hacking.
Since this website was primarily to promote the Sony’s game development studios it was a requirement for the site to be compatible with the PS3 browser. This browser has some limitations when handling JavaScript, which affected the light box gallery design. Solid State Group configured Cookie Jar to identify the viewing browser and when the PS3 browser is identified Cookie Jar responds with alternative JavaScript and CSS to render the gallery correctly.
Using Cookie Jar’s new add new locale function, all of the English articles and sections were used to replicate the site in Japanese, removing the need for content editors to spend a lot of time reformatting the site for the new language.
Tonic’s designers were free to be as creative as they liked as Cookie Jar has no design restrictions. The finished site contains a number of high resolution images of various games that rotate in a Flash environment, all of which are content managed. An interactive map allows you to easily see locations of all the Studios worldwide, providing relevant links and contact details.
Results
The solution enables teams of business users at SCE WWS to edit the content on the new site in real time, while minimising the involvement of IT. Full workflow control including content approval ensures that live content is error free and reduces manual approval processes. Content versioning at both the site and article level allows authorised users to rollback changes ensuring mistakes do not prove costly.
The SCE WWS site is now attracting potential employees and business partners globally, while providing gamers background information on each of the development studios responsible for the production of some of the most popular games on the PlayStation platform.
"Thanks again for your help and to David and the rest of the team in the final weeks before it launched. We were really pleased by the way that SSG addressed everything that was thrown at you and also how you dealt with problems at short notice, you all worked hard and didn’t let us down, so thanks again!"
Oliver Wright, Sony Computer Entertainment
About Solid State Group
Solid State Group is a web platform software vendor and technical agency. The company specialises in solutions for managing web content and digital assets as well as social networking. Our products enable the rapid development of web sites and applications on proven and stable architecture. We also develop bespoke web applications from scratch and offer a full service solution including strategy, design, usability, SEO, and integration into third party systems.
The company has developed over 100 web projects since 2002 and complexity ranges from simple brochure websites to complex social networks, intranets, payment processing portals and eBay style ecommerce sites.
Our client list consists of blue-chip, public sector, SME and not for profit organisations. Blue chip clients include Shell, Disney, 20th Century Fox, Sony, Yahoo! and Ericsson. Other clients include NHS, Amnesty International, Brit Awards, Odeon and i-level.
