Amazon GameOn Lets Developers Easily Add Real World Prizes to Their Games

With an increasing number of games sporting competitive elements such as leaderboards, tournaments, leagues, and prizes Amazon has built a new platform called GameOn. It will let developers add these aforementioned competitive features to their games with ease and it’s built on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The service also gives developers the ability to drive engagement and increase monetisation of their games through local and regional competitions, Amazon claims. What’s more is, developers can also let streamers and players create their own user-generated competitions and invite participants.

Incidentally, competition creators can offer real world prizes to players if said prize is on Amazon. For its part, the company will ensure it gets to the winner with the developer paying for the prize of course — minus having to deal with the logistics of getting to the player.

“Game developers have consistently told us they are looking for ways to increase player engagement and retention,” said Marja Koopmans, Director, Amazon Competitive Gaming. “We built Amazon GameOn to give developers simple, yet powerful tools to foster community through competitive gameplay.”

Developers can use GameOn APIs for free until May 1, 2018. After that date, there is a free tier for the first six months of usage, then developers will pay $0.003 (Rs. 0.20) per play. Physical prizing fulfilled by Amazon will only be available in the US at launch. Nonetheless, Indian developers and publishers have already signed up to use GameOn such Nazara who has already integrated with GameOn.

“We’re excited to integrate GameOn into Super Bheem Clash” said Manish Agarwal, CEO Nazara Technologies. “GameOn allows us to create more dynamic competition and drive engagement with players—and we’re thrilled see so many players of SuperBheem Clash already getting in on the action.”

GameOn is just one of Amazon's many initiatives in gaming. The company has a studio developing brand new titles, the Amazon Appstore, the Amazon Lumberyard engine, and Twitch which hosts live streams from gaming content creators.

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