New game engine helps developers create the
highest-quality games, build cloud-connected gameplay features, and
build communities of fans on Twitch; beta available for free
download today
New AWS service, Amazon GameLift, lets game
developers quickly scale their session-based multiplayer games to
support millions of players with AWS’s highly available cloud
infrastructure
Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:
AMZN), today announced Amazon Lumberyard, a free, cross-platform,
3D game engine for developers to create the highest-quality games,
connect their games to the vast compute and storage of the AWS
Cloud, and engage fans on Twitch. Amazon Lumberyard helps
developers build beautiful worlds, make realistic characters, and
create stunning real-time effects. With Amazon Lumberyard’s visual
scripting tool, even non-technical game developers can add
cloud-connected features to a game in minutes (such as a community
news feed, daily gifts, or server-side combat resolution) through a
drag-and-drop graphical user interface.
AWS is also announcing Amazon GameLift, a new service for
deploying, operating, and scaling session-based multiplayer games.
With Amazon GameLift, Amazon Lumberyard developers can quickly
scale high-performance game servers up and down to meet player
demand, without any additional engineering effort or upfront
costs.
Amazon Lumberyard is free, and available today in beta for
developers building PC and console games, with mobile and virtual
reality (VR) platforms coming soon. Amazon GameLift has a small
per-player fee, plus for both Amazon GameLift and Amazon
Lumberyard, developers pay standard AWS fees for AWS services used.
To learn more about Amazon Lumberyard, visit
http://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard. To learn more about Amazon
GameLift, visit http://aws.amazon.com/gamelift.
Building technology capable of making the highest-quality games
is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. Game developers either
have to spend several years creating the more than 20 significant
technology components that are needed to build the highest-quality
games (such as real-time graphics rendering, world and character
editors, animation systems, physics simulation, low-latency
networking, particle systems, scripting systems, terrain
generation, and more), or they have to invest in commercial game
engines that are expensive and do not include native integrations
with Twitch or cloud back-end technologies (like AWS). And, as
live, multiplayer games have risen in popularity, game developers
have also had to invest thousands of hours to build and manage the
back-end infrastructure needed to connect their games to the cloud
and support high volumes of fluctuating player traffic. Amazon
Lumberyard is the only game engine that gives developers a
combination of free, feature-rich development technology, native
integration with the AWS Cloud to make it easier for developers to
create live and multiplayer online games, and native integration of
Twitch features that help developers connect their games to the
world’s leading social video platform and community for gamers. By
starting game projects with Amazon Lumberyard, developers are able
to spend more of their time creating differentiated gameplay and
building communities of fans, and less time on the undifferentiated
heavy lifting of building game engine components and managing
server infrastructure. And, with Amazon GameLift, developers can be
sure that on day one, their live, multiplayer games can scale to
support millions of players, while maintaining the high performance
gamers expect.
“Many of the world's most popular games are powered by AWS's
technology infrastructure platform," said Mike Frazzini, Vice
President of Amazon Games. “When we’ve talked to game developers,
they've asked for a game engine with the power and capability of
leading commercial engines, but that's significantly less
expensive, and deeply integrated with AWS for the back-end and
Twitch for the gamer community. We're excited to deliver that for
our game developers today with the launch of Amazon Lumberyard and
Amazon GameLift."
With Amazon Lumberyard, game developers can:
- Create the highest-quality
games—Amazon Lumberyard helps developers build rich, engaging,
world-class games—from a full-featured editor, to native code
performance and stunning visuals, and hundreds of other features
like performant networking, cloth physics, character and animation
editors, particle editor, UI editor, audio tools, weather effects,
vehicle systems, flocking AI, perception handling, camera
frameworks, path finding, and more. Developers also have full
access to Amazon Lumberyard source code, making it easy to
customize the technology to create differentiated gameplay.
- Build live, online features in
minutes—Live, online games enjoy higher engagement and
retention than offline games. Amazon Lumberyard’s visual scripting
tool, with its drag-and-drop graphical user interface, makes it
easy to build connected game features that access AWS services,
such as DynamoDB, Lambda, and S3. In minutes, game designers can
create features such as granting a daily gift or sending in-game
notifications without having to write a single line of code. Amazon
Lumberyard also comes integrated with AWS’s C++ SDK to provide
developers access to dozens of AWS services through native C++
code, the most common language used to make games.
- Reach and engage fans on
Twitch—Amazon Lumberyard is integrated with Twitch so that
developers can build gameplay features that engage the more than
1.7 million monthly broadcasters, and more than 100 million monthly
viewers on Twitch. With Amazon Lumberyard's Twitch ChatPlay,
developers can use a drag-and-drop visual scripting interface to
create gameplay features that let Twitch viewers use chat to
directly impact the game they are watching in real-time. For
example, with Twitch ChatPlay within Amazon Lumberyard, a developer
could build a game that lets viewers on Twitch control a character
or vote on game outcomes using chat commands like "up," "down,"
"live," or "die." And, the Twitch JoinIn feature within Amazon
Lumberyard helps developers build games that allow Twitch
broadcasters to instantly invite their live audiences to join them
side-by-side in the game, with a single click, while others
continue to watch.
Amazon GameLift, a new managed service for deploying, operating,
and scaling session-based multiplayer games, reduces the time
required to create multiplayer back-ends from thousands of hours to
just minutes. With a few quick steps in the AWS Management
Console, developers can deploy game servers across the AWS Cloud,
start connecting players to games, and scale capacity up and down
to meet player demand. Developers can also identify operational
issues using Amazon GameLift’s real-time reporting of game server
capacity and player demand. With Amazon GameLift and Amazon
Lumberyard, developers can create multiplayer back-ends with less
effort, technical risk, and time delays that often cause developers
to cut multiplayer features from their games.
“Amazon has been a great partner and we are deeply excited about
both Amazon Lumberyard and Amazon GameLift,” said Josh Atkins, Vice
President of Creative Development, 2K Games. “The integration of a
fantastic game engine with amazing cloud services presents a
wonderful opportunity for both independent developers and
established publishers.”
“Developing and maintaining a back-end infrastructure for
multiplayer games requires a lot of time, resources, and expertise
that are beyond the reach of many developers,” said Chris Jones,
Chief Technology Officer, Obsidian Entertainment. “Amazon GameLift
removes much of that burden from the developer, allowing them to
focus their energy on bringing their great game ideas to life.”
Pricing and Availability
Amazon Lumberyard is available for download in beta for PC
and console game developers. The Amazon Lumberyard engine is free
to use, including source. There are no seat fees, subscription
fees, or requirements to share revenue. Standard AWS fees apply
should developers choose to use other AWS services.
Amazon GameLift is available at launch in the AWS US East (N.
Virginia) and US West (Oregon) Regions, with additional Regions
coming soon. Amazon GameLift costs $1.50 per 1,000 Daily Active
Users plus the standard AWS fees for AWS services they consume.
About Amazon Web Services
For almost 10 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s
most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers
over 50 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases,
analytics, mobile, Internet of Things (IoT) and enterprise
applications from 32 Availability Zones (AZs) across 12 geographic
regions in the U.S., Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Ireland,
Japan, Korea, and Singapore. AWS services are trusted by more
than a million active customers around the world -- including the
fastest growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading
government agencies -- to power their infrastructure, make them
more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS,
visit http://aws.amazon.com.
About Amazon
Amazon.com opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995. The
company is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather
than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to
operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews,
1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment
by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets,
Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and
services pioneered by Amazon.
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