What is a data lake, and how does it benefit game developers? - Best Practices for Building a Data Lake on AWS for Games

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What is a data lake, and how does it benefit game developers?

A data lake is an integrated and centralized data platform combining data storage and governance, analytics, machine learning (ML), and visualization. It is a secure, durable, and cost-effective cloud-based storage platform that allows you to ingest, transform, analyze, and visualize structured and unstructured data as needed. Using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)-based data lake architecture capabilities, game developers can achieve the following:

  • Ingest data from a wide variety of data sources using different combinations of batch, near real-time, and real-time ingestion methods.

  • Store ingested data in a cost-effective, reliable, and centralized platform.

  • Build a comprehensive data catalog to enable easy access of data assets stored in the data lake.

  • Secure and govern all the data and business metadata stored in the data lake.

  • Monitor, analyze, and optimize cost and performance.

  • Visually map data lineage.

  • Transform raw data assets into optimized usable formats and query them in place.

  • Easily and securely share processed datasets and results across your organization.

  • Use a broad and deep portfolio of data analytics, data science, ML, and visualization tools.

  • Quickly integrate current and future third-party data-processing tools.

  • Subscribe third-party data in the cloud, load data directly into the data lake, and analyze it with a wide variety of analytics and ML services.

Amazon S3 decouples storage from compute and data processing, and makes it easy to build a multi-tenant environment. The real-time analytics capability that a data lake delivers can help track your most important Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) on performance, engagement, and revenue, and provide a complete view of the player experience and their Lifetime Value (LTV) at any point in their lifecycle. This allows game developers to investigate and understand player behaviors and experiences, make better decisions, and create and deliver new winning games.