Amazon Lumberyard opens new Austin studio

Amazon Lumberyard is opening a new studio for its AAA game engine, Lumberyard, at a new location in Austin, Texas.

Amazon Lumberyard has been growing massively since it came into existance a couple of years ago, and a canned statement from Amazon claims they have "assembled a team of industry veterans who are inspired to build a AAA game engine" and their plans in Austin are to continue this, drawing on the pool of talent located in "one of the long-standing centers of gravity for great game development talent."

It seems Amazon are thinking of multiplayer, and with this in mind have targetted Austin as a perfect place to assemble a team to flesh out multiplayer functionality. Austin has form in the area, with one of the original MMO’s, Ultima Online and a slew of other massive multiplayer experiences.

"Building games that connect hundreds of thousands, or millions of players together used to only be possible for the largest game studios." said Amazon "But today, we hear all the time that developers of all sizes aspire to build games that bring fans together to play, compete, create, and socialize. This isn’t surprising, given that 85% of top PC and console games feature multiplayer in some form, and the top 10 grossing mobile games charts are frequently dominated by games that require the cloud to provide their deep multiplayer, competitive, and social experiences."

Austin also has the benefit of connections to the new Twitch team that Amazon set up there in July, and the two offices will be collaborating to help developers use Amazon’s streaming service in better ways, whether it’s with in-game integration or just using it to grow their community. Amazon have assured the Lumberyard and Twitch teams will be able to work closely together, and that, most importantly, the team’s desks are within nerf range of each other.