QORPO brings generative AI features to AneeMate with AWS

Grabbing the attention of gamers is challenging in a crowded market, but QORPO’s unique video gaming experiences stand out. Leveraging many managed services from Amazon Web Services (AWS), the game developer, publisher, and solutions provider accelerated creative game development for popular titles like “Citizen Conflict.” Most recently, QORPO integrated Amazon GameLift into its infrastructure to enable scalable cross-platform server hosting and matchmaking across titles. It also turned to Amazon Bedrock to bring generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to the recently launched “AneeMate.”

“We’ve been with AWS from the start and have always had a great experience. It was very important that all the services we needed be in one place, and AWS was the right partner for long-term development,” said Rastislav Bakala, CEO and Founder of QORPO. “Amazon GameLift is very user-friendly and easy to scale for our needs. The AWS team has been so helpful in showing us how to use new technology, like generative AI, so that we can focus more of our resources on developing games and testing out innovations instead of building every piece ourselves.”

Bringing generative AI into gaming

For creature extraction shooter “AneeMate,” QORPO is leveraging generative AI to personalize the gamer experience. Using Amazon Bedrock, developers built an AI agent that analyzes near real-time game data streaming from Amazon Kinesis. It then randomly generates creatures with different physical and behavioral attributes based on the players’ previous activity.

“Creature-catching games are very popular, but it’s often too easy to figure out their meta after a few minutes. The creatures all have similar attributes, and you know the best forms of attack after a few minutes of gameplay,” noted Bakala. “Our vision for ‘AneeMate’ is to create a completely new gaming experience. Two creatures may look the same and be on the same level, but they’ll ultimately behave differently because their actions are influenced by each player’s style. This makes the gaming experience more engaging and last for a longer time.”

In building “AneeMate,” QORPO 3D artists envisioned the creatures and environments, and storyboard artists mapped out the game. Large language models (LLM) in Amazon Bedrock helped accelerate game development and support unique customization capabilities. Amazon GameLift ensured the game could support high demand from day one. Amazon S3 and Amazon DynamoDB continue to play a role in short- and long-term data collection. Amazon SageMaker supports the creation of machine learning models to predict and adapt creature abilities.

Balancing build compared to buy

Launched in 2019, QORPO features more than 700,000 registered users globally and logs more than 100,000 daily users across its collection of first-party games. The platform is developed with blockchain technology, bridging Web2 and Web3 gaming experiences. Players can use in-game blockchain components, such as minting digital collectibles and transacting cryptocurrency, in many different environments. However, Web3 game aspects can remain entirely invisible if the player chooses.

QORPO has collaborated with more than 50 esports teams and leading gaming guilds. One of the platform’s most popular games is the highly-rated, free-to-play shooter “Citizen Conflict”. Developed using Epic Games Unreal Engine, the game is available for PC as Early Access on the Epic Store, with Steam access and console support coming soon. Amazon GameLift is key to ensuring that the game can support player demand.

“At first, we had our own matchmaking orchestrations because we wanted to create everything ourselves, but we kept running into scaling issues as our daily active users increased. We decided we didn’t want to dedicate a whole team to server orchestration when we could get what we needed from strategic partners like AWS,” explained Bakala. “Now, with our gaming infrastructure fully migrated to Amazon GameLift, we’re ready for any user increase. We can have over a million daily active players with no issue.”

With Amazon GameLift on the backend, “Citizen Conflict” can easily scale and facilitate many matchmaking types. Players get a high-quality, low-latency experience, whether they’re ranked or playing casually, and across different multiplayer modes. To facilitate these experiences, QORPO runs servers in six AWS Regions and optimizes ping during the matchmaking process.

Before implementing Amazon GameLift, Bakala’s team was stretched thin, with 360 hours per month devoted to server management, which translated to a huge amount of work and missed opportunities. Amazon GameLift enabled the team to reduce server downtime by 99%, ensuring a more consistent and enjoyable experience for gamers. Leveraging the pay-as-you-go model of Amazon GameLift and optimizing resource utilization, the studio also lowered its hosting and operational expenses by 40%. “Discovering Amazon GameLift was like finding a lifeline,” Bakala added. “The ease of integration and its immediate impact on our operations exceeded our expectations.”

Using additional AWS technologies, QORPO also developed an extensive ecosystem to support feature additions to its many titles. These services included Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), AWS CodePipeline, Amazon CloudFront, and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).

Industry predictions

After five years focused on the business to consumer (B2C) market and onboarding traditional gamers, QORPO plans to expand its ecosystem to support business to business (B2B) games. To ensure the best scalability and address player friction, its team is co-developing a gaming-dedicated Layer 3 blockchain called TOY Chain, which supports indie through AA games. “AneeMate” and “Citizen Conflict” will be the first titles to launch on the chain.

“Cloud-based technology, including generative AI, is super-efficient and allows us to create games much faster while lowering costs. It will be interesting to see how the technology evolves the future of games, which will happen quickly and lead to further market saturation. That’s why it’s so important to create games with unique mechanics and story; that’s how you stand out,” Bakala concluded.

Learn more about Amazon Bedrock, Amazon GameLift, and other AWS tools for game developers. Get in touch with an AWS for Games representative.