The Gang readies to scale its games catalog with LootLocker and AWS
Together, these deployments will facilitate a smoother gaming experience for players of The Gang’s highly anticipated Steam title Major League Curveball (MLC), currently in testing… The studio also plans to leverage these investments in the future to similarly boost the player experience for o…
In the last two decades, platforms like Steam and Roblox have made it easier to break into video game publishing. However, with so many titles to choose from, it can be difficult for publishers to break through the competitive noise. To boost visibility and engagement for its growing library of titles, international game development studio The Gang overhauled its backend with LootLocker, powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), and bolstered its server hosting with Amazon GameLift.
Together, these deployments will facilitate a smoother gaming experience for players of The Gang’s highly anticipated Steam title Major League Curveball (MLC), currently in testing. The studio also plans to leverage these investments in the future to similarly boost the player experience for other games in its catalog (such as Unseen on Steam and Strongman Simulator on Roblox) and cross market its titles.
“Amazon GameLift is reimagining how we support cross-platform, low-latency player matchmaking, so we don’t have to worry about the gamer experience for MLC players. At the same time, LootLocker is providing us with a white-label solution for a unified player account system that will let us easily promote new games within existing titles that already have an established following,” explained Olle Brännström, Producer and Co-Founder, The Gang. “As we expand our use of LootLocker, one of our Strongman Simulator players, for instance, could eventually navigate to a title like MLC or Unseen, and grab a skin or a weapon to then use in Strongman Simulator. It’s a game changer, especially as traditional promotions don’t work like they used to when trying to get games in front of players.”
Working out of offices in Portugal, Sweden, London, and Malaysia, The Gang kicked off its LootLocker and Amazon GameLift deployments in parallel, ahead of work on the upcoming free-for-all (FFA) multiplayer brawler MLC. So far, the technologies have helped The Gang quickly publish the game to Steam for PC play testing. However, they’ll also support the studio as it looks to expand MLC support to mobile devices and consoles, and verify the proper infrastructure is in place to handle future player spikes.
Test driving LootLocker
Currently in testing, MLC transports players to a futuristic arena where they compete in a dodgeball-inspired sport. A homing ball in the center identifies a target at random, and the player must swing the ball back to another player. If they manage to tag them, they lose a life; after three strikes, the player is out. The game first hit Steam in the form of community play testing, but an early access version is around the corner, with a full release to follow on Steam and the Epic Games Store.
After exploring several backend solutions for MLC, Brännström opted for LootLocker, with implementation speed and ease of use as determining factors. Developed by Amazon Independent Software Developer (ISV) Partner LootLocker, the backend service supports authentication, player storage, and economy management. It helps developers connect disparate systems across titles. It enables studios like The Gang to follow player activity, personalize recommendations, promote incentives like loyalty programs to encourage players to check out new titles, and more.
“We like to work in an iterative manner, so getting up and running with testing fast is central to us. LootLocker looked sleek and seemed like it would be easy for our designers to work with,” Brännström explained. “We also liked that it’s built on AWS, and we’d have a direct line into LootLocker support. They’ve delivered on all our feature requests and more.”
Both LootLocker and AWS have proven instrumental in helping The Gang solve for engineering and infrastructure challenges with MLC. “Being able to actually have someone to talk to and bounce ideas off of, to ensure that what we want to do is feasible, is so helpful in decreasing my heart rate as we get closer to release,” Brännström noted. “Both teams provided invaluable insights as to what our fleet setups should look like, how many servers we should allocate, how many instances we should have at any given time, and how we should configure our scaling to support thousands of CCUs. We wanted to ensure everything works as flawlessly as it can, and it has with their support.”
Confirming low-latency, cross-regional player matchmaking for MLC with Amazon GameLift
The Gang designed MLC for quick play, so being able to spin up a new instance to enable each player to join fast, regardless of the device they’re playing on or where they are located, is paramount. Using the FlexMatch customizable matchmaking feature for multiplayer games in Amazon GameLift, the team can auto scale across a broad range of regions and match up players across nearly anywhere in the world and on any platform in no time.
“We recently ran an external play test with one player in Spain, two in Sweden, one in the US,
and one in Asia, and it went off without a hitch,” Brännström explained. “Amazon GameLift quickly found the server it was supposed to, and FlexMatch in Amazon GameLift was central to these results. In the future, we want to use Amazon GameLift even more, because it makes it a breeze to get players together in a simple way.”
As The Gang moves beyond the testing phase with MLC and looks to capture the attention of the esports circuit with MLC, it plans to extend its use of Amazon GameLift and introduce ranked modes, as well as new rule sets. “Right now, our focus is to deliver a low latency experience, which is paramount, given the speed of the ball, and Amazon GameLift delivers big on this front. However, the technology also gives us a really solid foundation to build a ranked mode on. We have yet to maximize its full scalability, but the agility we’re already seeing points toward a promising future,” said Brännström.
The next chapter
Looking to build on its collaborations with LootLocker and AWS, The Gang has its sights set on expanding its catalog with titles that are similar and feature the same layout and infrastructure as MLC. “Our goal is to build and monetize standalone games like we do on Roblox with a modular approach that allows us to get up and running fast; LootLocker and AWS will be key enablers in carrying out this mission,” Brännström concluded.
LootLocker CEO Alexander Bergendahl also envisions continued growth, with support from AWS. He added, “AWS develops great technology, and we’re excited to work alongside them to benefit customers like The Gang. Ultimately, our aim is to help more publishers build a direct relationship with their players, while also trying to uncover new gaps we can fill for them. All our technology runs on AWS, and we trust that they’ll keep on innovating, ensuring that we deliver a stable, scalable service for clients.”
In addition to leveraging Amazon GameLift and LootLocker, The Gang runs its studio on a host of other AWS services, including Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) buckets for storage of build artifacts, and AWS Elastic Beanstalk for automatic scaling of its backend. They also use Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring applications, and Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) for matchmaking messages.
Using LootLocker and Amazon GameLift, with its many features, The Gang is able to iterate, test, and launch games to continue delighting their growing player base with low-latency experiences.
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Author: Emily McKinzie