Game Development Redefined: Leveraging AWS for Scalability and Cost Efficiency

The gaming industry has seen a huge shift in the past years, which was motivated by to rise in cloud technologies. Companies have started using cloud-based solutions to handle the challenges of scalability, performance, and huge cost. AWS provides an attractive suite of gaming services like Amazon GameLift, AWS Lumberyard, and AWS EC2 instances for gaming, which are the main pillars of this ecosystem. We will discuss more on this blog how AWS Gaming Services have helped customers scale rapidly while reducing operational costs.

The Challenges Faced by Game Developers

Game developers usually face challenges while developing their games:

• Unpredictable Traffic spikes: When at times users get increased resulting in increased traffic, mainly during any new launches and special events.
• Latency: High lag time and latency can spoil the player experience and companies need globally distributed servers to provide low-latency experiences to players globally.
• Infrastructure Cost: Dedicated servers for gaming are very expensive when you can’t predict the load with fluctuating traffic.
• Player Experience: A seamless experience is crucial to retain the existing players. AWS Gaming Services addresses these challenges with scalable, reliable, and cost-effective solutions that allow developers to focus on building great games rather than managing infrastructure.

AWS GameLift: Powering Scalable and Reliable Multiplayer Games

Amazon Gamelift is a dedicated service used to deploy, operate, and scale multiplayer game servers. It empowers you to build and scale the world’s most demanding games. With predictive game server scaling, enterprise-grade security, and matchmaking for the largest crowds. It can easily handle high-traffic spikes.

Key Benefits of Amazon GameLift:

• Automatic Scaling: GameLift helps servers to automatically scale up or down based on the player connections and demand. This ensures we always have enough server capacity to handle our player traffic without any wastage of over-provisioning and keeping the costs reduced.
• Cost Efficiency: AWS GameLift offers support for Spot Instances, which helps companies to use spare EC2 capacity which is like very less cost than compared to On-Demand instances. This feature can alone bring down costs by 70%.
• Global Reach: AWS Global infrastructure network provides low-latency gaming experiences by distributing game servers close to the players. Companies can deploy the game servers across AWS Regions worldwide.
• Zero Downtime: AWS provides some useful features like fleet management, automatic healing, and patching. Gamelift makes sure that players experience minimal interruptions.

Customer Success Story: Behavior Interactive

Behavior Interactive, developers of the popular game Dead by Daylight, used Amazon GameLift to address the challenge of unpredictable player traffic. During major game updates and special events, GameLift automatically scaled the game servers to handle the increased load. This helped Behavior Interactive save on infrastructure costs while ensuring a seamless experience for its global player base. (https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/behaviour-interactive-case-study/?did=cr_card&trk=cr_card)

AWS Lumberyard: Building High-Performance Games

AWS Lumberyard is a free, cross-platform 3D game engine with deep AWS integration, which allows game developers to easily build and manage scalable games with access to cloud resources. AAA game engine that integrates deeply with AWS services. It allows developers to build complex, multiplayer games with high performance.

Key Features of AWS Lumberyard

• Cloud Integration: Lumberyard is tightly integrated with AWS services like GameLift, S3, and DynamoDB, enabling developers to easily build cloud-connected features like leaderboards, live events, or dynamic content.
• Scalability: Using AWS’s global cloud infrastructure, developers can scale their games to accommodate millions of players without worrying about physical hardware limitations.
• Cost Reduction: Lumberyard is free to use, and developers only pay for the AWS services they consume. There are no upfront fees or royalties.

Customer Success Story: Amazon Games

Amazon Games, the developer behind the game New World, leveraged AWS Lumberyard to build a massive multiplayer online (MMO) game. The game’s infrastructure was designed to handle millions of players across different regions with minimal latency. The seamless integration of Lumberyard with AWS services allowed Amazon Games to build a scalable game architecture while keeping costs low. (https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametech/the-unique-architecture-behind-amazon-games-seamless-mmo-new-world/)

AWS EC2 Instances for Gaming

For developers who want more control over their game servers, Amazon EC2 offers a wide range of instance types, including GPU-powered instances for graphically intensive games.

Benefits of Using AWS EC2 for Gaming

• Customizability: EC2 instances provide full control over the server environment, allowing developers to customize the hardware and software setup according to the game’s requirements.
• GPU-Powered Instances: EC2 offers GPU instances (such as the G4dn family) that are perfect for rendering high-quality graphics and running real-time physics calculations. These instances provide the power needed for VR and other graphically intensive games.
• Cost Savings with Spot Instances: Like GameLift, EC2 Spot Instances allow developers to run game servers at a significant discount, reducing operational costs during non-peak hours.

Customer Success Story: Ubisoft

Ubisoft, a leading video game publisher, leveraged Amazon EC2 for their game Rainbow Six Siege to handle the game’s intense graphical processing needs. By using a combination of GPU instances and Spot Instances, Ubisoft was able to reduce the cost of running their multiplayer servers while providing a smooth, high-quality experience to millions of players globally.

Cost Savings with AWS Gaming Services

One of the biggest advantages of using AWS Gaming Services is the significant cost savings developers can achieve, without compromising on performance. Here are a few ways AWS helps reduce costs:

• Pay-as-You-Go: Developers only pay for the resources they use. Whether it’s storage, compute power or network traffic, AWS’s pay-as-you-go model ensures you’re not paying for idle resources.
• Spot Instances: AWS’s Spot Instances can save up to 90% on compute costs, making it an excellent choice for non-mission-critical workloads like game development and testing.
• Elasticity: AWS’s elasticity allows game infrastructure to scale in real-time, handling spikes in traffic and reducing the need for over-provisioning.

Why AWS Gaming Services Are Better

When compared to traditional on-premises infrastructure or even other cloud providers, AWS offers several key advantages:

• Global Reach and Low Latency: With over 30 AWS Regions worldwide, game developers can deploy servers closer to players, reducing latency and improving the gaming experience.
• Advanced Tools for Game Development: AWS provides specialized tools like Lumberyard and GameLift that integrate seamlessly with other AWS services, reducing complexity for developers.
• Cost Efficiency: AWS’s Spot Instances, pay-as-you-go model, and automatic scaling features help reduce the overall cost of game infrastructure.
• Reliability and Uptime: AWS’s robust infrastructure ensures high availability and minimal downtime, critical for online multiplayer games.

Conclusion

AWS Gaming services help us to scale the games globally, reduce operational costs, and improve player experiences. From key features of Gamelift’s automatic scaling to Lumberyard’s cloud-connected features and with the use of EC2’s GPU-powered instances, AWS provides a comprehensive set of tools for game developers. With some proven success stories of Behavior Interactive and Ubisoft we have seen above, it’s clear that AWS is the go-to choice for scalable, cost-effective gaming infrastructure.

If you’re a game developer who wants to scale your infrastructure, AWS Gaming Services provides the tools and flexibility to ensure success in this highly competitive industry.