Amazon Game Studios

Hello World!

We’re so happy to finally be able to reveal the social game we’ve been hard at work on – Living Classics. But before we jump into that, a little bit about us, since it’s not just our game, but also our team, Amazon Game Studios, that we’re announcing with this post.

Amazon Game Studios is exactly what it sounds like: a new team at Amazon that’s focused on creating innovative, fun and well-crafted games. Our first title, Living Classics, is debuting on Facebook today.

Why is Amazon making social games, you ask? Good question! We know that many Amazon customers enjoy playing games – including free-to-play social games – and thanks to Amazon’s know-how, we believe we can deliver a great, accessible gaming experience that gamers and our customers can play any time.

Living Classics, our first major release, is what we call a “moving object game.” In the game, a family of foxes have wandered into vibrant, animated illustrations from their favorite books including Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and King Arthur. Players help to reunite the foxes by exploring beautifully illustrated scenes and spotting moving objects. You can visit friends, share rewards you’ve earned, rediscover famous stories, and reunite fox families.

Don’t take our word for it though – play right now, for free at: [COLOR=#01518e]http://apps.facebook.com/LivingClassics[/COLOR]

We hope you like it.

Also, please be sure to check out and Like the Living Classics Fan Page on Facebook for future updates.

Thanks
The Amazon Game Studios Team

http://games.amazon.com/

Looks like Amazon wants in on that fat Zynga action.

In that case, personally looking forward to eventual foray into gaming by Radio Shack.

Also: tangentially-related story from The Onion.

Kim Swift (Quantum Conundrum, Portal) and Clint Hocking (Splinter Cell) have joined Amazon Games.

Holy moly. That’s some talent.

It’s looking interesting now. It seems they abandoned the social stuff and pivoted to making real games?

I find it weird that they are debuting on Facebook and not their kindle’s. I understand there are way more facebook users than kindle users but I still would think they’d use their own platform.

Living Classics, our first major release, is what we call a “moving object game.” In the game, a family of foxes have wandered into vibrant, animated illustrations from their favorite books including Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and King Arthur. Players help to reunite the foxes by exploring beautifully illustrated scenes and spotting moving objects. You can visit friends, share rewards you’ve earned, rediscover famous stories, and reunite fox families.

I guess this is a silly question (one we may not ask of many strangely-named-games), but can anyone explain that title to me?

It’s weird because the concept (a ‘family of foxes living in pop culture artwork’) has some vaguely artistic appeal, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what they’re after with a name like ‘Living Classics’. The only thing that comes to mind is ‘Living Social’, which does happen to be a service owned by Amazon I think… But that’s like having a mario cart-esque game being named ‘Groupon Originals’.

…And… oops, I just noticed that the original post was from 2012 so I missed the boat. Still… I don’t get the name. :)

Both being in same part of the country, and Amazon having more than deep enough pockets to accommodate both (and then some), not particularly surprising.

Aside from astronomically unlikely event company is looking to turn recently announced Amazon Fire TV into full-fledged gaming station, games in question will likely be exclusive to company’s Kindle Fire tablets…presumably limiting scope of games considerably.

I think your second point actually does make the new hires surprising. Neither Swift nor Hocking have (to my knowledge!) experience or expressed interest in small, Kindle-level (social?) games.

The games they’re making now don’t look that way, though…

http://games.amazon.com/games/

Sev Zero comes with the Amazon controller and looks to be a decent Sanctum-alike/tower defense game. I’d hope to see more stuff like this coming down the pipe.

I don’t know how ‘full-fledged’ it aims to be, but I just heard a short radio story on the Fire TV box this morning, and my ears perked up when I heard Amazon specifically mention ‘gaming’ as one of its supposed advantages over Roku and AppleTV.

That could be great if they started pushing more Android-based content into a couch+tv setting. (Not necessarily because I was to play Android games on my TV, but I think the push might lead to some higher quality titles on Android OS).

Here are the announced games:

Til Morning’s Light - Adventure game made with WayForward Technologies (DuckTales Remastered) set in a haunted mansion.

Tales From Deep Space - Two-player local co-op set on a space station. Comes with a digital comic. Co-developed with Frontier Developments (Elite: Dangerous).

CreepStorm - The inevitable tower defense/MOBA. Partnered with Happy Tuesday (CoinDash!).

Saber’s Edge - The inevitable match-3.

I am depressed that this is where Clint Hocking ended up after his zero release stints at LucasArts and Valve :/

It makes me sad too. Will we ever get another Far Cry 2- or Splinter Cell-like experience with his contributions?

-Todd

These sound like 4 random Android games pulled from the Google Play store.

bump

Well… … he’s out again.

Notable game designer Clint Hocking, best known for his work on the Splinter Cell franchise at Ubisoft, has left Amazon Game Studios, Gamasutra has confirmed. The news first appeared in a story from IGN.

His tenure at a game company lasts as long as an AK-47 you just looted from a dead Ugandan soldier in Far Cry 2.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-29/amazon-game-studios-struggles-to-find-a-hit

Executives under Frazzini initially rejected charges that New World , an Amazon game that would ask players to colonize a mythical land and murder inhabitants who bear a striking resemblance to Native Americans, was racist. They relented after Amazon hired a tribal consultant who found that the portrayal was indeed offensive, say two people who worked on the project. The game, previously planned for release last year, is now scheduled for this spring.

Amazon is spending nearly $500 million a year operating the video game division, two people familiar with the budget say. That amount doesn’t include Twitch or a new project under different management, which is building a service to stream games to a computer, phone or Amazon Fire TV.

Amazon didn’t give employees much financial incentive to release anything, either. Most big game companies pay staff bonuses based in part on the critical and commercial response to their games, but Amazon’s stock plan only rewards employees for time spent at the company. That led some to prioritize job preservation over anything else, say three former employees.

Lots and lots more.

I really enjoyed that article :D. Its absolutely amazing (and in a perverse way, totally impressive) that a company can spend half a billion dollars trying to make video games and still fail utterly and completely.
The whole enterprise makes zero sense. They should just buy some existing, proven game studios with proven IP, and make those studios future games amazon prime exclusives. Job done.
They could even select 500 indie game devs and give them a million dollars each. The chances of one of those 500 games being a surprise hit are probably pretty good.