amazon-lumberyardThanks to Amazon Web Services, budding game designers can now tap into a new design studio to create the next Mindcraft or Angry Birds.

Amazon’s Lumberyard will offer designers a sophisticated set of tools to design multi-player games on Amazon’s GameLift cloud network, which is optimized for mobile and virtual reality games.

Designed for startups and small studios, Amazon hopes Lumberyard will boost their presence in this rapidly growing and lucrative market. The platform allows developers to focus more on game play and community building rather than the back-end complexities of building game-engine components and managing servers.

To learn more about Lumberyard and how Washington State is on the leading edge of game design, check out the article in The Seattle Times.