Were you able to attend Amazon’s Pre-Conference Developer Day at GDC 2014? Video recordings of all the sessions are now available online, so it’s not too late to learn how Amazon can help you build, engage, monetize and distribute your game.

Cross-Platform Services by Amazon Support You All the Way

Amazon hosted a day of pre-conference sessions at GDC 2014.  Amazon experts demonstrated how AWS and Amazon’s mobile services can simplify every stage of game development including: building the backend, expanding to additional platforms, and scaling to handle more players.  The day also featured customer case studies that revealed best practices around: game architecture, game design, cloud technologies, and monetization strategies.

The sessions videos and supporting slides are shared on our GDC 2014 page.  The sessions posted include:

• AWS Architecture — Nate Wiger, Principal Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services: Mobile, AAA, and MMO game companies alike are leveraging AWS to build cost-effective, scalable online games.  Learn how game studios are using AWS services such as Elastic Beanstalk, DynamoDB, Amazon S3, CloudFront, and ElastiCache to build online games that can scale from 1,000 to 1,000,000 users, while paying only for what they use.  Finally, Nate shares some thoughts about the future of cloud gaming based on worldwide trends.
• Game Analytics — Nate Wiger, Principal Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services:  Free to play is now the standard for mobile and social games.  But succeeding in free-to-play is not easy:  You need in-depth data analytics to gain insight into your players so you can monetize your game.  Learn how to leverage new features of AWS services such as Elastic MapReduce, Amazon S3, Kinesis, and Redshift to build an end-to-end analytics pipeline.  Plus, Nate shows you how to easily integrate analytics with other AWS services in your game.
• Engaging Your Audience with Mobile Push Notifications — Jon Turow, Senior Product Manager, Amazon Web Services & Mike Pesce, Senior Manager, Amazon: Mobile push notifications are a fast and universal way to engage and retain players.  Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) provides one simple API for fast, reliable, scalable, inexpensive push notifications to Apple, Google, and FireOS devices.  In this session Jon and Mike cover how to use Amazon SNS to publish cross-platform notifications and then, architectures and techniques for utilizing game data to send the right message, to the right player, at the right time.
• Amazon AppStream – New Gaming Experiences Using the Cloud for Game Streaming — Collin Davis, GM of Amazon AppStream, Amazon: In this session you’ll see how AppStream, Amazon’s low latency application:  streaming service, can help you create new compelling gaming experiences across many platforms.  Collin details how one team used the flexible platform to remove device constraints and enable new gameplay experiences.  You’ll see a tablet demo that exhibits a massive scale and streams from AWS to the tablet to create one single “hybrid” game that goes beyond what you could do on a tablet alone.
• What's Working in In-App Monetization — Mike Hines, Developer Evangelist, Amazon: In this session we share data and tips that Amazon has gathered from the top 50 revenue-generating apps that use IAP. Then we look at some innovative mobile ad ideas and explore the re-discovered future of in-app monetization…e-commerce. 
• A/B Testing with Air Patriots — Paul Cutsinger, Developer Evangelist, Amazon & Russell Carroll, Senior Producer, Amazon: A/B Testing is about using data to challenge assumptions and test new ideas, often leading to increased engagement and monetization.  In addition to showing you the latest cross-platform testing services at your disposal, we discuss the "happy accident" that the Air Patriots team made. It was unexpected and led to an increase in both retention and monetization.
• Large Scale HTML5 Games on Desktop, Mobile & Tablets with KANO/APPS — Jesse Freeman, Developer Evangelist, Amazon & KANO/APPS: Join us as we explore the current and potential future landscape of HTML5 games with our guest speakers from KANO/APPS, makers of Mob Wars: La Cosa Nostra, Zombie Slayer and more. We discuss how they transformed the iconic Flash game Free Rider into a thriving online HTML5 destination. We also demonstrate how Amazon enables publishing these kinds of HTML5 games to the Kindle Fire.

Learn More

For more information about developing cross-platform games with Amazon, working with the services discussed in the videos, and expanding to additional devices such as Kindle Fire and Fire TV, visit our developer website and the AWS gaming page.

To register for a free developer account, click here.

-peter (@peterdotgames)