I know lots of past & present people at AGS & AWS (which runs Lumberyard), so I can safely say that it's not as cut and dry as it seems. The biggest issue is that [shockingly] both of these entities are so segmented from each other, that it's baffling. https://kotaku.com/bloomberg-report-reveals-major-dysfunction-at-amazon-ga-1846160018

You would think that the parent corp would want quite a bit of synergy and collab between the games making div (AGS) and the engine making div (AWS). But sadly that's not the case. Not even close. It's frustrating for every one - including us the dev partners.

NDA aside, and without going into too much details, given my long-standing relationship with them, I can safely say that if they had bridged the two divs, they would have made a significant impact in the games biz in terms of games and core engines.

And it's not as if they're short on talent. People are literally giving blood to get into these two divs because the opportunities within are the sort of thing you aspire to. Then they leave; and you hear the stories of why anyone would even want to leave let alone stay.

Take AWS biz for example. Yes, they're making a ton of money offering [game] services that make offerings from Google & Microsoft look like starter projects. But the reality is that you get more 'love' and encouragement from their competitors than you do from AMZ. It's weird.

I have been doing this for over 30 years and I know literally everybody in the chain and who is worth knowing. They're all superbly talented people who are literally hamstrung by precedent policies that nobody dares buck. It's like Hunger Games. Seriously, that's not hyperbole.

I have said this before and I will say it again, there will never - ever - be a game worthy of note coming out of AMZ unless they let their people do what they were hired to do: *make* games. It's literally why they've seemingly pivoted to third-party licensing now.

I mean, in recent memory, we all knew - and said - that Crucible was DOA. Then it was. New World is stillborn and I would personally be shocked as shit if they actually release it. There is a reason why talent hopping from one gig to another seldom succeed until left alone.

Going out, hiring the best of the best, then throwing money at them while yanking on chains is a proposition that's doomed to fail because environment is everything. Us creative types take a while to adjust to differing policies. Like babies trying new food; only to spit it out.

Eventually, the end result is that people just hunker down and follow precedent without wanting to buck the status quo. I mean, who wants to get fired after landing what, for all intent and purposes, is a gig of a lifetime. Then failure comes and LIFO retains the status quo.

As a game industry vet and engineer, my biggest gripe is that it doesn't have to be this way in our biz. Yes, there's always a level of dysfunction somewhere along the chain of command; but the key is to find & cut it. Sadly, most don't want to get beaten with that chain.

Going back to AWS, let's talk about the Lumberyard game engine. This was a derivative built from CryEngine. AMZ paid a fortune for it back in 2015. It was a big deal and despite the derision (against CE) that followed, most didn't quite know what to expect from that.

As an engine dev, I make it my business to know a little bit about a lot - then focus on what tech interests me. So having an experience with CE, I wasn't quite sure what to expect from AMZ. After all engine licenses aren't a big deal because it everyone's got one.

Without going into the weeds, even with the latest LY version (wait for what comes next this year - it's nuts), unless you went looking, you wouldn't even know that it was built on top of an aging legacy engine from 2015. It's completely unrecognizable.

Most devs tend to build custom engines from base core engines. e.g. unless you're making a simple game, using UE, Unity, Godot et al requires a level of custom code that does what you want. The end result is a custom game engine that's tailored to your specific requirements.

e.g. I could never build a game with the stock builds of UE or Unity because my games are targeted and massive, resulting in me rolling my own engines. Elite Dangerous could never have been made with any off-the-shelf engine. It's why even Star Citizen remains a wet dream.

When you look at how far Lumberyard has come 6 yrs later, as an engineer, the first question that comes to mind is probably : why didn't they just put $50m (the reported CE license) into building their own? My personal opinion is that they didn't quite know where they were going.

And it shows. The execs would have you believe that LY is about democratizating game dev. I believe that - to a certain extent. Thing is, during the course of stripping away all traces of CE and making LY stand on its own, they've added a litany of [paid] compelling AWS services.

Basically, come for the [free] game engine, stay for the [paid] underlying connected power of cloud & game services you don't have to build. It's a brilliant idea. Written on parchment paper with disappearing ink - from a quill with a blunt tip.

A game dev with enough brain cells to actually design a game, is never - ever - going to take more than a glance at Lumberyard. Not when you have UE, Unity, Godot et al. Why? Because of it's legacy ties to CryEngine (which has a bad rapbin terms of dev difficulty).

That's a shame because LY, as of the current build (again, wait for what comes next) is night & day when compared to CE (which has made its own significant updates since 2015). While I do have some complaints about LY (e.g. scene size, docs, rendering etc), it's a good engine now

Nowadays UE and Unity engines are ubiquitous. To the extent that nobody actually cares anymore about engines because the focus is now on the actual games. But in the past, due to the price of entry, incredible tech etc, a UE game was for the best of the best making AAA games.

Then both of the leading engines virtually removed the price of entry, thus, in a way, democratizing game dev. The same thing that LY has been trying to do. The difference is that because everyone knows LY is based on CE, aside from the docs being Godawful, it's a huge risk.

Trust me when I say this, any game built with CE that's not made by Crytek, is relegated to inordinate amounts of [gamer] derision and skepticism. And LY inherited that. That sort of thing presents an invisible barrier of entry for any dev wanting to use it - regardless of merit.

It's why very few games are made with CE. It's why no matter how much money AMZ throws at LY, it's always going to be an uphill battle to get any dev - who isn't a hobbyist tinker - to touch it. Why? Because by doing so, you basically frontload your game with bad PR.

And yet, the AWS div keeps improving on the engine in leaps and bounds. And what they can't build, they buy and integrate. e.g. the animation kernel was sub-par, so they licensed and integrated the amazing EmotionFX engine, then hired the dev. He recently left for UE. Go figure.

With all this going on, you would think that there would be the sort of synergy between AGS and AWS such that the collab would yield killer games that would showcase the amazing engine as a viable contender which they've spent multi-millions and 6 yrs building.

Nope. Instead, while they're building God's engine, those other guys are either making (including the canned ones) games nobody wants to play or which they've already played or are playing - on a different engine.

And that's a shame. All that money. All that [exceptional] talent

Pressing the rewind button back to where I started, all I can say is that these stories from people inside and outside don't give the full picture. Then again, they never do. And they unfairly vilify those who neither have the will nor the power to buck the status quo.

The fact is that AWS isn't going anywhere, but unless and until AMZ bridges these two divs and the suits get out of the way, LY is going to be just another engine that few will use. And they will continue to churn talent which causes its own slew of challenges.

/END

ps. Sources correct me that the AMZ license for CE was way over $50M, and in the $70M range. I am pretty sure that since 2015 it's probably cost AMZ over $500M to bring LY to where it is today as part of their evolving AWS gaming solution.