infoTECH Feature

February 09, 2016

Amazon Web Services Gives Game Developers New Slate of Integrated Services

Game development has never had such potential for reward before; today, it's possible for a developer to hit on a concept that could be the next big revolution, and generate huge amounts of revenue. Angry Birds was sufficient for not only a cartoon series but its own amusement park. Minecraft meant $2.5 billion to Microsoft. So game developers are eager to get behind new tools that might help them make the next big game. That's where Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) comes in, with a slate of new tools designed to improve performance and help game makers succeed.

The first new tool is Amazon Lumberyard, a complete gaming development engine the company's offering at no charge. No subscription, no seat license, not even revenue sharing. It works for console and PC alike, and eventually will expand to offer virtual reality and mobile operations, especially valuable points as many game developers are proceeding in those directions. It's in beta right now, and game developers can see how the whole thing works before committing.

Second, Amazon GameLift rolled out, and this is where the beauty of Amazon Lumberyard starts to show up. Amazon GameLift is a deployment engine for multiplayer games, allowing a system to add or remove servers based on current demand. This part costs $1.50 per thousand active daily users, as well as the accompanying fees for any other AWS services used, including database access and the actual servers. This tool comes with its own selling point; it helps developers pay for only what's used, which means less waste and a better customer experience as gamers don't have to run a game on overburdened servers.

Finally, Amazon brought out a new integration with Twitch, giving users a better way to stream the output and take advantage of the increasing number of Twitch broadcasters on the service. With Twitch offering over 1.7 million broadcasters a month and an average of over 100 million viewers, there's clear value in having a game broadcast on Twitch.

Essentially, Amazon is offering a development engine, a scaling system, and a promotional mechanism all for a fairly minimal cost that really only starts kicking in when people are playing the game. It's hard not to take on a triple threat package like that, because there's just so much to like. Granted, that development engine may not go as far as some developers would like, and a game on Twitch isn't a guarantee of future sales, but these are fairly minor complaints in an impressive overall package. Some of the developed work Amazon was showing off as part of Lumberyard's introduction looks pretty impressive, however.

Game developers will get access to a big new slate of tools with Amazon, and while these may not guarantee success, there will be more than enough opportunities to drive success that at least some developers should find it in the end.




Edited by Kyle Piscioniere
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