AWS GameSparks Guide – What is GameSparks? – Moralis Web3

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the most comprehensive cloud platforms offering many well-used and prominent services. These services range from infrastructure technologies such as computing, database, and storage solutions to platform-based tools for analytics, data lakes, etc. Moreover, with the incredible growth of the gaming industry, the emergence of Web3, and the increased attentiveness towards the metaverse, cloud services are now looking to revolutionize traditional game development. For Amazon, this is where AWS GameSparks enters the picture!

GameSparks is an AWS offering accommodating a complete multi-service backend solution that facilitates a more seamless game developer experience. As such, when using AWS GameSparks, developers can avoid numerous backend development tasks and focus on building more comprehensive game experiences. 

If you want to learn more about GameSparks, follow along as we explore the intricacies of this AWS service. In doing so, you will learn more about its most prominent features, benefits, use cases, and the Moralis AWS GameSparks integration! The Moralis AWS GameSparks integration enables a more accessible game development experience within the Web3 space. Once you master GameSpark, you can combine this service with Moralis’ Web3 APIs to create sophisticated Web3-compatible games.

A prominent example is Moralis’ Streams API, allowing you to create Web3 streams to query on-chain data directly into the backend of your projects via webhooks. If you want to familiarize yourself with webhooks, check out our article explaining the ins and outs of Ethereum webhooks!

Nevertheless, no matter what blockchain development endeavor you embark on, sign up with Moralis to leverage the full potential of blockchain technology! You can create your account in seconds, and it is entirely free!

What is AWS GameSparks?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most broadly adopted and extensive cloud platform, offering a plethora of web services from global data centers. The AWS ecosystem includes services ranging from platform-based technologies like analytics, data lakes, internet of things (IoT), etc., to infrastructure services such as storage, database, and computing solutions. Additionally, within this comprehensive arsenal of cloud services, you will find AWS GameSparks. However, what exactly is AWS GameSparks? 

As the name indicates, AWS GameSparks is a fully managed AWS service for game developers. Further, GameSparks supplies a multi-service backend solution for developers to facilitate a more seamless game development workflow. With AWS GameSparks, you can direct your full attention toward building compelling game experiences and leave scaling and managing cloud infrastructures to AWS. Also, instead of having to piece everything together yourself, GameSparks deals with all integration components, enabling you to use them as building blocks in your cloud code. 

Moreover, with the service’s prominent features, you can leverage the full power of AWS in your game development endeavors. As a result, you can begin developing games quickly, reduce costs, increase efficiency, have predictable scaling, use native AWS integrations, etc. Additionally, GameSparks features a “pay-as-you-go” pricing model. Accordingly, you are only required to pay for the resources you use. This closely ties back to this service’s predictable scaling and cost-reduction benefits. With this pricing model, your projects can become more cost-effective through increased flexibility, helping combat fluctuations in user demand. 

With a better understanding of AWS GameSparks, the following section covers some of the service’s main features. By reading on, you will learn more about the intricacies of this service and what it entails! 

Features

GameSparks includes many development features, allowing you to easily implement game logic into a backend fully managed by the service. This section provides an overview of the most prominent features, which will further highlight GameSparks’ capabilities! 

• DynamoDB Integration – GameSparks integrates seamlessly with DynamoDB. As such, you can combine these two services to maintain global data. This includes item catalogs, teams, player matching, and level maps. 

• Lambda Integration – With the Lambda integration, you can use functions to expand the backend to leverage third-party services or other AWS resources in your games. 

• Message & Cloud Code – With GameSparks, you use cloud code to implement your game logic and leverage additional AWS services. Events, responses, and requests you define serve as the hub of your game’s backend. 

Once you define messages, you can use the service to generate and download code to simplify writing strongly typed client-side code. What’s more, the service provides excellent APIs facilitating messaging between the backend and the client. 

• Unity Integration – The Unity integration makes it possible to install the GameSparks client SDK for ready-to-use connection, authentication, and communication with the backend. 

• Test Harness – To test and iterate your cloud code, you do not have to download and add code to your IDE every time. Instead, GameSparks supplies a test harness feature, allowing you to test messages directly in a browser. 

Now that you have familiarized yourself with GameSparks’ most prominent features, the following section will dive deeper into some of the main benefits of GameSparks! 

GameSparks Benefits – Accessible Game Development

With a more profound understanding of GameSparks and its main features, this section will cover reasons for using the service. In doing so, we will explore the most prominent advantages of GamesSparks! 

• Get Started Quickly – Since the service provides ready-to-use backend features for game development, you can create game projects more efficiently. The standard features of GameSparks require minimal configurations. As such, you can build games with little to no prior experience in infrastructure management.  

• Cost Reduction – As GameSparks provides a fully managed backend service, you have more time to focus on other parts of your game development process. What’s more, with the ”pay-as-you-go” billing structure, you only need to pay for the resources you use. 

• Predictable Scaling – When using GameSparks, you do not need to worry about predicting how much capacity you need as your game receives higher adoption. With AWS, your games have room to scale automatically and reliably.

• Security – Thanks to the many native integrations of this service – like AWS Lambda and Amazon DynamoDB – you can use battle-tested tools to securely develop custom features. 

• Easy Testing – With the test harness feature, you can easily test changes and new code through your browser. Consequently, you can avoid downloading and adding your code to your IDE whenever you need to test alterations. 

That covers five prominent advantages of AWS GameSparks. As such, you now know what AWS GameSparks entails and why you might want to use this service. However, a question remains: “what is it used for?”. To answer this, we will, in the next section, dive deeper into some prominent AWS GameSparks use cases! 

What is GameSparks Used For?

In the previous section, you learned about some key benefits of working with GameSparks. Two of the most prominent advantages are the service’s ability to scale and its flexibility. The scalability capabilities of this service make it an ideal solution for game developers looking to launch their projects without having to worry about infrastructure costs. 

What’s more, the flexible nature of GameSparks allows developers to create a wide variety of games, ranging from advanced multiplayer projects to casual single-player games. Hence, it is possible to use GameSparks in multiple ways, and down below, we will cover some prominent GameSparks use cases! 

• New Games – GameSparks is an excellent option if you are looking to build and launch a new game. Since the platform features predictable scaling, you will not need to worry about infrastructure costs as your game grows. Moreover, it can be more cost-effective as you only need to pay for the resources your project consumes. 

• Adding Features – If you already have a game and want to add new features, you can do so with GameSparks. Consequently, you can use the services to add features quickly, including everything between player authentication, messaging, leaderboards, etc. 

• Analyzing Game Data – GameSparks features tools for game data analysis. As such, you can use AWS GameSparks to analyze your game data to optimize design, improve game mechanics, and track the behavioral patterns of users. 

• Server Management – AWS GameSparks is an excellent alternative for managing game servers. The service’s features make it easy to launch and manage alternative server solutions for your games. This includes monitoring, logging, autoscaling, etc. 

• Multiplayer Games – If you want to create multiplayer games, you can benefit highly from GameSparks. The service supplies features like real-time multiplayer functionality, matchmaking, and leaderboards. 

Moralis’ GameSparks Integration – How to Easily Build Web3 Games

If you have followed along this far, you now know what AWS GameSparks is, the service’s central features, its main benefits, and some of its most prominent use cases. So, to top things off, this section briefly outlines the process of using AWS GameSparks in a Web3 context. If you read on, we will point you in the right direction for developing a fully modular ”Web3 gaming setup”. Specifically, we will explore the intricacies of Moralis’ AWS GameSparks integration! 

With Moralis and GameSparks, you can, for example, quickly complete the following three tasks: 

1. Set up a game’s backend in GameSparks.
2. Connect your game’s backend to AWS Lambda to invoke its functions.
3. Connect a Unity game to the GameSparks backend. 

Completing these tasks results in a modular ”Web3 gaming setup” through AWS, Unity, and Moralis. However, we will not dive deeper into how you actually use the AWS GameSparks integration since this falls outside the scope of this article. However, if you want to learn more about Web3 game development, check out Moralis’ official AWS GameSparks documentation to learn all there is to know about the integration! Additionally, if you’d like to explore AWS Lambda, read our article exploring AWS Lambda and what it is used for! Plus, if you already possess some JavaScript proficiency and would like to learn how to integrate a NodeJS SDK with AWS Lambda, check out our AWS Lambda NodeJS example guide!

Nevertheless, that covers this AWS GameSparks guide! If you have further interest in the Web3 game development space, you can find additional content here at Moralis. For instance, read our article and learn more about creating a Minecraft Web3 game. You can also check out our guide on how to build a Web3 multiplayer game using Unity. The project you’ll learn to build during this tutorial features a complete multiplayer experience where players can trade on-chain assets! 

The tutorials above provide insights into the Web3 game development space, and if you learn to master AWS GameSparks, you will be able to create unique game experiences in no time!

AWS GameSparks – Summary

AWS is one of the most prominent and well-used cloud platforms worldwide, serving millions of customers. The AWS ecosystem features over 200 services, and among them, you will find AWS GameSparks! The GameSparks service supplies a complete game backend solution, allowing developers to build games more efficiently. This service allows developers to focus more on building their games rather than setting up backend infrastructures. 

Furthermore, this AWS service has many great features, including native DynamoDB and Lambda integrations, its test harness, Unity support, etc. These features provide several benefits: cost reduction, predictable scaling, increased security, easy testing, and much more. Moreover, developers can use GameSparks in several different scenarios. This includes creating new games, adding features to existing projects, analyzing game data, and so on.

In combination with exploring the intricacies of GameSparks, we covered the Moralis AWS GameSparks integration in this article. This integration makes Web3 game development significantly more accessible by combining the GameSparks service with the best Web3 infrastructure provider: Moralis! 

Nevertheless, if you found this article helpful, tune in to the Moralis Web3 blog to explore more blockchain-related content. For example, learn more about Web3 for business or how to build a Discord bot for on-chain events in no time! 

Additionally, suppose you want to become more proficient in Web3 development. If this is the case, enroll in Moralis Academy immediately! Moralis Academy offers a selection of the industry’s best blockchain courses for beginners and more experienced developers. For example, check out the following course covering the basics of Web3 development: ”Blockchain & Bitcoin Fundamentals”. 

Nonetheless, if you are looking to develop Web3 games or any other projects, sign up with Moralis straight away! Creating a Moralis account is free and only takes a couple of seconds, so you have nothing to lose!