Welcome to the Amazon GameDev Blog!

Hi, my name is Eric Schenk, General Manager for Amazon Lumberyard, and I’d like to welcome you to the Amazon GameDev Blog.

We have been hard at work developing new technology to solve problems for game developer customers. Today, we introduce Amazon Lumberyard, a free AAA game engine deeply integrated with AWS and Twitch – with full source. To kick off the launch of  Amazon Lumberyard and Amazon GameLift, our friend Jeff Barr gives an in-depth overview of some of the components and interconnected features of the Lumberyard beta and GameLift on the AWS Official Blog.

I’ve been doing software development for over 35 years now, and I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in some pretty cool things. Early on, I worked on the theoretical underpinnings of distributed computing, and contributed to the development of the Linux kernel. I eventually got drawn into game development, because I saw that games had some of the hardest and most interesting problems in computer science. I then went to work at Radical Entertainment in Vancouver, BC and spent 15 years with Electronic Arts, where I worked with some amazing people to build technology that went into great franchises and games like FIFA, Battlefield, Madden, Need for Speed, and Dragon Age.

Great technology can indeed make things easier, but the complexity of games has grown faster than the ability of technology to simplify the work. At Amazon, we believe it should be possible to make great tools and technology that can simplify development for everyone. And beyond just making game development easier, our hope is to prepare developers for the future of games. We are witnessing the rise of gaming as the most pervasive form of entertainment in the world, the availability of mass communication binding people together in global communities via services like Twitch, and the massive increase in the availability of both personal computing devices and public cloud infrastructure. At Amazon, we believe these trends point to an exciting future where billions of customers view, play, and share experiences that were previously impossible to create.

Amazon Lumberyard is our first step on this road.  Starting with proven game and cloud technologies, we have created something new for customers, a game technology that is interwoven with AWS cloud infrastructure and Twitch.

We are just getting started. We have more to come, and I for one am incredibly excited to see where this road takes us, as we strive to create the tools and technology that make it possible for customers (game developers, players, broadcasters, viewers, and more) to bring previously impossible experiences to life.

That’s all I have today. I’ll be back, and so will many others from our team who will have exciting things to share with you in the coming weeks, months, and years. I hope you will join us on a journey to create the future of game development.