Is AWS for Gaming the Future of Game Development?

Hi readers! What happens when the number of users who usually play the game grows from 10,000 to 1,000,000?

This moment will decide the future of the gaming company. Even the best game can lose players due to server crashes, long matchmaking times, or high latency. AWS for gaming will help game developers overcome these obstacles.

AWS provides access to computing, storage, networking, databases, analytics, security, and game-specific services that game developers do not have to develop themselves. Amazon GameLift Servers allows developers to deploy, operate, and scale dedicated multiplayer game servers, whereas Amazon GameLift Streams is designed for streaming games directly into player browsers.

Is AWS for gaming the future of game development?

It might be a part of this future, at least for multiplayer, live-service, cloud-connected, and globally distributed games. However, AWS alone will not ensure the success and cost-effectiveness of any game.

What Makes AWS for Gaming Significant?

Since its inception, the online game industry has really come a long way. It has gone through a drastic transformation over the years. Gone are those days when developers used to create the game once and were done with it for once and for all.

Modern games are a completely different sauce. They come with regular updates, multiplayer features, seasonal content, downloadable assets, live events, analytics, social features, and whatnot. Each of these aspects boosts the need for scalable infrastructure and an ecosystem. 

A small gaming studio may initially design and develop a game aon asmall scale. After the release, if the game goes big, the backend requirements may increase significantly, giving rise to the requirement for scalability. 

It poses an infrastructure challenge for developers to ensure sufficient capacity without overinvesting in a large amount of idle infrastructure capacity.

Cloud computing solves the issue through the possibility of scaling up or down the resources according to the needs.

Going further, AWS provides a variety of cloud services for various stages of the gaming lifecycle.

Gaming Requires Much More Than Computing Resources

Considering the cloud gaming infrastructure, I see the main difference from many normal websites.

The gaming application has to be concerned with such things as latency, concurrency, server performance, player location, session management, matchmaking, asset delivery, and traffic spikes.

While a website can withstand a couple of seconds of latency, a competitive multiplayer game can hardly afford that.

Thus, the infrastructure architecture is also a part of user experience.

The long server response time does not remind a player of your cloud architecture design. It makes him/her feel that the game itself is slow.

What Makes AWS Instrumental for Modern Game Ecosystem?

AWS provides a suite of a wide range of services, and features which is exactly what modern gaming systems need. 

Game developers may utilize security features to safeguard accounts and applications; analytics services to analyse players’ behaviour; a content delivery ecosystem for quicker downloads; databases for player details; object storage for large assets; and cloud solutions for game servers. Following AWS security best practices would be essential in this regard. 

But the vital thing is that game studios are not required to use every AWS service. The best option is to make the best option of specific infrastructure as required. 

Amazon GameLift and Multiplayer Gaming

Multiplayer games represent one example of an application for which AWS would be quite useful. Amazon GameLift Servers assist with deployment and management of dedicated game servers, as well as with game session placement and matchmaking through such tools as FlexMatch.

This becomes particularly important when there is a high degree of volatility with regard to player demand. The game may have 5,000 players on a typical day but attract 500,000 after a new update.

Scaling Infrastructure and Resources According to Demand

Amazon GameLift Servers allow for automatic scaling of capacity in response to demand. Developers could maintain an extra buffer of capacity in order to decrease the time that players will need to wait. In this regard, CDN, cloud storage, and auto-scaling are there to enable companies to deal with sudden changes in resource requirements. 

For certain types of workloads, fleets could be scaled down to zero when there are no game sessions left and be scaled back up when players start using the game again. This could be used in order to save money on computing.

Thus, studios could scale their infrastructure according to the number of players that they have.

AWS Could Transform Game Development Studios?

While AWS could change everything related to game hosting, it can also change everything about game asset storage, management, and access.

Large games require large files like textures, 3D models, sound, cinematics, and builds. The issue with version control only adds to the list of things to deal with.

The Issue of Storage Becomes a Developer Issue

AWS describes many ways of storage for teams that use Perforce P4, such as Amazon EBS, Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, Amazon EFS, and Amazon S3. Cloud storage enables businesses to handle increasing digital data and assets. 

The best way to do it is dictated by various circumstances such as team size, amount of assets, performance, budget, and complexity of operation.

There is not one AWS architecture that fits all game development studios.

A small indie studio has completely different requirements from a large studio that deals with several hundred developers and terabytes of assets.

AWS Can Be Influential for Smaller Gaming Studios Too

The cloud infrastructure can help small studios fight for positions without setting up large infrastructure from scratch.

Thanks to managed AWS services, developers can concentrate on development, engineering, content creation, and users' experience. They will still have to think about security, architecture, costs, monitoring, and performance, but managed AWS services will help with infrastructure.

This may be especially helpful when a small studio launches its first online game.

What About Cloud Gaming?

Cloud gaming is a concept that pushes the idea further, as it allows running the game remotely and streaming it to the user.

Amazon GameLift Streams supports cloud gaming and allows playing the game in up to 1080p and 60 frames per second. Users will be able to play the game in a browser without installation.

This may help in game discovery. The user will be able to click an ad and immediately start a demo without downloading a large game.

For publishers, cloud gaming can be helpful in reviving old games without special hardware.

AWS Gives You the Global Reach

Gamers can come from different parts of the world simultaneously due to the global nature of gaming.

It becomes a problem when gamers from distant locations may experience higher latency, which will make a big difference in a competitive game.

With AWS, developers have the option to deploy their gaming hosting services in several AWS Regions and locations. In addition, Amazon GameLift Servers can utilize multi-location placement queues to place gamers into sessions based on such criteria as latency and availability of sessions.

The important thing is that global infrastructure can be used for gaming development. Businesses can also make the best use of cloud monitoring to identify cloud-related issues and resolve them accordingly. 

Do Not Consider AWS as Your Default Best Option

AWS provides solid infrastructure, but that does not mean that every game should use all its services.

Cloud services can bring additional complexity and expenses. Inefficient applications can use up unneeded compute, storage, database, and bandwidth resources. The automatic scaling should have limitations to avoid extra costs.

Be aware of cloud misconfiguration, as it could create operational and security risks when accessing policies, network controls, and resources. 

Do Care Cost Planning

In cases when a game requires constant dedicated infrastructure and predictable traffic, an efficient non-distributed infrastructure may sometimes be cheaper than a cloud-based one.

Nevertheless, a game with an unpredictable traffic level will definitely benefit from AWS elastic infrastructure.

But the problem is not only whether AWS is cheaper than physical machines.

Can AWS provide the necessary flexibility and business benefits that compensate for its infrastructure and operating expenses?

In the case of a rapidly growing multiplayer game, the answer is likely yes. Otherwise – it is no.

When to Choose AWS for Gaming?

AWS would be most relevant when the infrastructure's flexibility helps achieve business goals set by the game.

A multiplayer game that experiences fluctuating player traffic could make use of the automatic scaling feature. A worldwide game would take advantage of the distributed infrastructure. A live service game would enjoy the cloud's backend services and continuous deployment.

Finally, studios with big development teams could benefit from the scalability of storage and development infrastructure in the cloud.

First, developers need to know about their workloads.

Conclusion

So, is AWS for gaming the future of game development?

AWS will probably never be the sole future of game development, but cloud infrastructure will certainly become an integral part of the game developer’s future.

For multiplayer and live-service games, AWS can offer scalable game hosting, matchmaking, global infrastructure, storage, and scalable capacity. Technologies such as Amazon GameLift Servers will help deal with the changing demand, while GameLift Streams might become one more way of distributing games to players.

But there is another, more obvious lesson from the review.

AWS will not make up for bad game development.

It offers developers the opportunity to build better games on top of AWS infrastructure.

And it will be the companies that know their players, design their games efficiently, control their costs, and effectively utilize cloud technologies that will succeed.