A new trailer for “Breakaway,” the multiplayer action game from Amazon Game Studios, encourages participants to “play like the world is watching.” And that’s certainly the overall goal as developers have partnered closely with Twitch in hopes of becoming the next big thing in the lucrative world of streaming gaming.
The trailer for the game, which is still an alpha release, was revealed at Gamescom in Germany this week.
“Players fight for dominance across fabled locations such as El Dorado, Atlantis, and Styx,” according to the game description. “They battle to control the Relic — the center of Breakaway’s action — passing it to teammates, defending it from attackers, and smashing it into an opponent’s base to score.”
Amazon acquired Twitch for $1 billion in 2014 and a new story in The Verge reveals the details in which “Breakaway” is being developed to succeed on the streaming site. Patrick Gilmore, the studio head at Amazon Game Studios Orange County, said that after a wave of feedback from Twitch, key elements of the game changed to make it more suitable for broadcast.
“When you’re watching a competitive match of any kind, you want the viewers to get to the edge of their seat because a turning point is coming,” he told The Verge.
Whether the game is as fun to watch as it is to play is where the nuance lies in finding Twitch success.
“In that first glance at the screen, I should be able to know exactly what’s going on in that game,” Kathy Astromoff, Twitch’s VP of developer success told The Verge. “In a way, it’s the ideal partnership, because we have Amazon Game Studios coming to us and saying ‘I’m about to start a game. What should I be thinking about?’ We wish all developers would come to us that early.”
Meanwhile, Amazon’s overall future success in the gaming industry is the subject of a new analysis on Seeking Alpha. The tech giant’s “vast ecosystem can easily become a basis for a complex gaming environment,” reasons Roman Luzgin. That ecosystem includes the platform for selling digital and physical content, integration with the cloud through AWS, its Lumberyard game engine and Twitch.
Throw in some key acquisitions and take a look at open jobs related to game and software development, and it’s clear that the company is taking the market very seriously.
