How players connect to games - Amazon GameLift

How players connect to games

A game session is an instance of your game running on Amazon GameLift. To play your game, a player can either find and join an existing game session or create a new game session and join it. A player joins by creating a player session for the game session. If the game session is open for players, then Amazon GameLift reserves a slot for the player and provides connection information. The player can then connect to the game session and claim the reserved slot.

For detailed information about creating and managing game sessions and player sessions with custom game servers, see Add Amazon GameLift to your game client. For information about connecting players to Realtime Servers, see Integrating a game client for Realtime Servers.

Amazon GameLift provides several features related to game and player sessions.

Host game sessions on best available resources across multiple locations

Choose from multiple options when configuring how Amazon GameLift selects resources to host new game sessions. If you're running fleets in multiple locations, then you can design game session queues that place new game sessions on any fleet regardless of location.

Control player access to game sessions

Configure game sessions to allow or deny join requests from new players, regardless of the number of players connected.

Use custom game and player data

Add custom data to game session objects and player session objects. Amazon GameLift passes game session data to a game server when starting a new game session. Amazon GameLift passes player session data to the game server when a player connects to the game session.

Filter and sort available game sessions

Use session search and sort to find the best possible match for a prospective player, or let player choose from a list of available game sessions. Use session search and sort to find game sessions based on session characteristics . You can also search and sort based on your own custom game data.

Track game and player usage data

Automatically have logs stored for completed game sessions. You can set up log storage when integrating Amazon GameLift into your game servers. For more information, see Logging server messages in Amazon GameLift.

Use the Amazon GameLift console to view detailed information about game sessions, including session metadata, settings, and player session data. For more information, see View data on game and player sessions and Metrics.