Recently, Amazon announced the preview of Amazon GameSparks, a managed service that provides game developers with features for building, running, and scaling the backend of their games. The public cloud provider also provides an SDK for the Unity game engine with the preview release.
In 2017 AWS acquired the UK- and Ireland-based cloud gaming platform GameSparks — a "backend as a service" for game developers to build various features like leaderboards into games and then manage them, all in the cloud. Later, at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) last year, AWS pre-announced Amazon GameSparks as a new service to enable developers to spend less time thinking about backend services, and instead focus on delivering the best player experiences.
The service is designed specifically for gaming and is powered by AWS core services. Since the pre-announcement, the Amazon GameSparks team has collaborated closely with the game developer community to iterate and improve the service's features.
The preview will launch with the most-requested community features and support mobile (iOS and Android) and PC gaming platforms. These features include:
- Cloud Code: Developers can add custom logic, integrate with other AWS services, and extend pre-built game features
- Test Harness: The verification of Cloud Code logic from within the console in seconds to quickly iterate on game design
- Auth/Identity: Integration with guest auth to provide an anonymous identity (guest) access to game backend features
- Managed player storage: An integrated data store to store and retrieve persistent player data
- Messaging: Send messages and events between game clients and Amazon GameSparks over WebSocket connections
- Integration with AWS Lambda: Invoke AWS Lambda serverless functions from Cloud Code to access any AWS service as well as integrate with any existing cloud-based system
- Integration with DynamoDB: Invoke Amazon DynamoDB from Cloud Code to store and manage game and player data
Source: https://aws.amazon.com/gamesparks/
Tabitha Graves, developer relations manager for GameDevs at AWS Game Tech, stated in an AWS Game Tech blog post:
With Amazon GameSparks preview features, a developer can create a turn-based mobile game that runs cross-platform on iOS and Android through Unity, provide guest authentication, send messages when a player's turn is ready, and integrate with a developers existing leaderboard system using serverless calls. Additional features, regions, platform support, and game engine integrations will be available soon.
Amazon GameSparks is available in the US East (N. Virginia) region and is pre-integrated with the Unity game engine. More details on Amazon GameSparks are available on the documentation pages and FAQs. Furthermore, pricing details of the service can be found on the pricing page – note that during the preview, AWS will not charge for the use of Amazon GameSparks.