Every gamer has done it. We’ve booted up a game, played it, and shut it down in disgust thinking “Man, I could do better than that.” Well, now you’ve got to put your money where your mouth is, because Amazon is putting out a free game engine.
For those unfamiliar, a game’s “engine” is more or less what it sounds like, the framework on which a game is built and operates. Amazon’s is called Lumberyard, and it’s built off of CryEngine, which the company licensed last year and has driven everything from art games like Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture to big, loud FPS games like Homefront: The Revolution. In other words, it’s a professional tool you can download and get working on your open world sports game opus.
There is a catch; if you design multiplayer games, you’ll wind up using Amazon Web Services and will be paying Amazon for those. Amazon appears to want people to build multiplayer, Twitch-friendly games, but you’re not required to make anything that resembles that, of course. If you want to use it to build a 2D platformer, Lumberyard is all yours, with no strings. So, now, if you say a game sucks, you have the tools to build a better one. Now excuse me, but I’ve got to start working on my open world sports/rhythm game.
(Via Kotaku)