Amazon GameLift Primer

This course provides an in-depth look at Amazon GameLift; beginning with its features of infrastructure and session management, game session placement and matchmaking. It then explores the challenges with hosting, managing and scaling a multiplayer game, and how GameLift can address those challenges. Finally, it discusses solution design decisions that will impact matchmaking and the costs associated with hosting game servers.

Intended Audience

This course is intended for:

• Backend Game Developers, Operation Engineers, and Architects who are deciding whether to use GameLift in a game solution.

• Backend Game Developers who want to accelerate GameLift adoption.

Course Objectives

This course is designed to teach you how to:

• Describe Amazon GameLift and its key features and functions:

o Infrastructure management, fleet hosting, and scaling

o Session management

o Game session placement

o Matchmaking and backfill

• Discuss the key challenges in hosting and scaling a multiplayer game online.

• Describe how GameLift solves game hosting problems to provide scalability, security, reliability, and fair gameplay.

• Explain how matchmaking works to assign players to teams and create game session matches.

• Describe the key GameLift options and solution design decisions that influence total cost.

• Provide information for additional learning and resources

Prerequisites

We recommend that attendees of this course have:

• Backend Game Developers who are deciding whether to use GameLift in a game solution.

• Backend Game Developers who want to accelerate GameLift adoption.

• Foundational understanding of cloud computing and Amazon Web Services, equivalent to Cloud Practitioner Essentials.

Delivery Method

• This course is delivered through digital training.

Duration

• 120 minutes

Course Outline

This course covers the following concepts:

Module 1: Amazon GameLift Primer (Overview)

• Amazon GameLift does more than run programs

• Agenda

• Learning objectives for this course

Module 2: Game Hosting Requirements

• Basic requirements to grow your game

• Matchmaking

• Teams

• Latency

• Preserve engagement

• Data for decisions

Module 3: Key Benefits of Amazon GameLift

• Game sessions on demand

• Global deployments

• Correct capacity

• Monetization matches costs

Module 4: Understanding GameLift

• Service vs Framework design

• GameLift Systems

o Matchmaking

o Game Session Placement

o Session Management

o Infrastructure Management

Module 5: Game Service Logic

• Game setup code

o Game backend code

o Levels of abstraction in the GameLift API

o Game server code

• Game service logic flow

• Realtime Servers

• Secure communications

• Using AWS resources from GameLift

Module 6: Infrastructure Management System

• Game setup code

o Game backend code

o Levels of abstraction in the GameLift API

o Game server code

Module 7: Session Management System

• Game session management

• Player session management

Module 8: Game Session Placement System

• Reliability

o Using queues for reliability

o Using reliable queues with Spot fleets

• Latency

o Queue operation without player latency data

o Queue operation with player latency data

• Scaling to global deployments

Module 9: Matchmaking System

• Matchmaking with FlexMatch

• Example a 4-player game

• Player attributes and rules

• Teams

• Rule types

o Ex: Equal team sizes

o Ex: Fair team skills

• Matchmaking controls

o Role of latency in matchmaking

o Rule expansions

o Backfilling

o Event notification

Module 10: GameLift Development Overview

• Player components

• Server software integration

o Service software integration

• Client software integration

o Integrate the backend game service

• Matchmaking

• Game Session Placement

• Session Management

• Realtime Server Client API

Module 11: Game Data

• Recognize key consumers of game data.

• Identify data component presented in the GameLift console.

• List key AWS services monitoring and analytics services that GameLift supports.

Module 12: Game Financials

• Recognize dependent and independent factors in total cost.

• Describe the GameLift design choices that influence cost.

• Identify services for planning (budget), monitoring, and cost control.

Module 13: Amazon GameLift Demonstration

• Setup and deploy a simple game service

• Setup a role for Amazon GameLift Access

• Prepare a game server for hosting on Amazon GameLift

• Prepare a client for use with Amazon GameLift

• Test the integration

• Configure and deploy a fleet

Module 14: Conclusion

Module 15: Knowledge Assessment