GDC 2023: Trends re-defining the future of game development

By Rob Schoeppe, General Manager, Global Game Tech Solutions & Business Development at AWS

With the 2023 Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) just one week away, the AWS for Games team has been talking with our customers, partners, and internal team about the trends they think will have the largest impact on the industry over the years to come. Based on what we heard, a few themes that are top-of-mind include: cloud-based game development (aka Game Studio in the Cloud), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to help support player community health, content moderation, and AI-driven game development. With the recent innovations in these areas, players should see improved gameplay experiences, and increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion across the industry. Let’s explore a few of these areas further!

1. Simplifying multiplatform game development with the cloud

Today, many developers waste time and money building the same game for multiple platforms, which can lead to staggered releases and delays. Many customers are moving towards cloud-native game development, which helps developers to take a “build once and deploy to everywhere” approach. Building cloud native reduces complexity, time to market, simplifies cross-platform support, and helps streamline updates to live service games across multiple platforms.

Once developers build their games for a cloud native experience, there is an increasing demand for cloud game streaming solutions where the developer queries the end point (console/PC, Mobile, AR/Virtual Reality (VR)) and then streams content to the target device on-demand. This enables players to enjoy high-quality content without the latest hardware or device. Some developers leverage these same streaming solutions to help speed up quality assurance (QA) workflows by eliminating the need to send expensive hardware to QA teams all over the world.

2. Expanding the talent pool

Out of necessity, the pandemic sped up the idea of the “Game Studio in the Cloud,” enabling game studios to hire remote and diverse talent from anywhere in the world. Many customers, including Blinkmoon Games, are re-imagining the development process by using a fully functional game development studio in the cloud to allow employees to collaborate while working remotely. This is a small step, but is leading to a day when remote teams receive a URL and a security authentication token to access a fully featured and persistent game development environment from anywhere in the world. This would allow them to be immediately productive and contributing to team goals.

Still, work remains for all developers to capitalize on the advantages of cloud native game development and Studio in the Cloud, as every dev environment is unique. Making a fully featured “Game Studio in the Cloud” on a larger scale requires collaboration with the entire ecosystem of development tools, including source and asset control, game engines, and all the most commonly used desktop tools. Right now, the industry is in the very early phase of this journey. To help game developers achieve their dreams of a fully remote and cloud native development environment, the entire tools ecosystem has to come together to build cloud native solutions and adopt new licensing models. Only then can game developers effortlessly expand and onboard remote teams anywhere in the world.

3. Improving online communities with AI/ML

While games provide incredible social opportunities with thriving communities, it’s also opened the virtual doors to negative, and even toxic, interactions that can affect player experiences. I believe one of the most powerful and impactful near-term applications of AI and ML is community health management. To support this, AWS teamed up with Spectrum Labs to include their Spectrum Guardian for Games moderation platform in the Community Health on AWS solution. Ensuring a healthy player community and providing tools that help with content moderation is paramount. AWS continues to work closely with customers to explore how we can help provide the right tools to create a positive player experience everyone can enjoy!

While the industry has made progress with many community health solutions focused on text and image moderation, I believe the next step is to help address toxicity through voice communication. Improving community health through voice chat is massively challenging when considering millions of players around the world play a game, each speaking a different language, where context is key! GDC provides an ideal forum to engage with the community and partners to discuss how we can continue to innovate and address these challenges. I am taking part in many sessions and forums to continue to push this conversation forward!

4. Bringing servers closer to players

Another key topic going into GDC is the importance of ultra-low latency for gaming experiences. Seamless online low latency experiences that support millions of players spread across the globe, each with varying quality of internet, are difficult to achieve. A poor connection can make for a low-quality experience that devalues a player’s perception of a game. AWS infrastructure deployments like AWS Local Zones and AWS Outposts help game developers to bring gameplay as close as possible to the consumer to reduce latency.

In January, Epic Games and AWS announced that AWS Local Zones will support a new NA-Central Fortnite game server region in Dallas, Texas, making low-latency gameplay more accessible to players in the central United States and Mexico. Riot Games rapidly deploys game servers and reduces latency by 10 to 20 milliseconds using AWS Outposts. AWS continues to explore additional regions to improve the gameplay experience for new, growing player populations around the world.

I am truly looking forward to meeting new and old friends across the game industry at GDC this year to talk about how we can jointly continue to innovate and push our industry forward!

Don’t forget to visit AWS in the Re-Charge Lounge, N2417, or join us on March 20 at our celebration of women in games reception and hear leaders from Netflix, Incredible Dream Studios, and Amazon Games. You can find more details and registration here.

See you in San Francisco at the Moscone Center March 20-24!