Prime Gaming

A publishing process built on manual work

The existing publishing flow required Technical Account Managers to manually collect assets from developers, then distribute content across Amazon's surfaces. AAA developers like EA wanted better self-service and engagement reporting. Small and indie developers needed a simpler way to get their games in front of players. And the internal tool the TAM team relied on required four weeks of training to use.

We weren't sure whether to fix the internal process or build something developers could use directly. We decided to start by optimizing for the TAM team while designing the foundation for eventual self-service.

The legacy tool developers had to work with

Research across the full publishing workflow

I interviewed four account managers, one project manager, and five game developers, then mapped everything into a service blueprint. It made the overlap obvious: TAMs and developers were constantly going back and forth on asset requirements, approval status, and quality expectations. Neither side had good visibility into what the other was doing.

The legacy tool wasn't scalable and errors happened regularly. Developers had no clear view of what was required or whether their assets were acceptable.

Service blueprint: publishing workflow across teams

Wireframing surfaced an insight about content lifecycle

I identified the core catalog structure from the discovery work: Games, Items, and Offers, where Items could be offered for set time periods.

While wireframing, I kept coming back to something developers had mentioned. They were constantly reusing content across different campaigns and time periods, but had no way to track when their items were actually available to players. I designed a view that showed exactly when each item would go live and expire, so nothing needed manual tracking. It also gave Prime Gaming a way to keep a steady stream of always-available content without the extra upkeep.

Wireframe: catalog structure and lifecycle view

Wireframe: content reuse and availability

High fidelity design centered on the content itself

I moved into high fidelity with a focus on game imagery. Developers should be able to find their own content quickly and understand what was live. Live content appeared at the top of lists with clearly surfaced offers. The tool automatically created and published offer detail pages and distributed content across multiple services, so developers had one place to see everything.

High fidelity: game catalog with live offers

High fidelity: offer detail and content distribution

Testing worked, but the catalog structure confused people

All four TAM participants successfully created a Game, Item, and Offer. But all four also wanted more information about how metadata would be used, and the automated offer detail page creation wasn't clear. They expected a separate page builder. Three of four didn't initially understand how Game, Item, and Offer related to each other.

The confusion around the catalog structure was consistent enough to shape the next phase. We designed a fast-follow that combined the three into a single Listing, guiding developers through publishing step-by-step. That also established the groundwork for a review and approval workflow between developers and TAMs.

Fast-follow: unified Listing with step-by-step publishing

Reflection

Amazon Gaming Central moved from concept to daily use by Technical Account Managers and select developer partners. The improved workflows enabled Prime Gaming to launch self-serve capabilities for Free Games with Prime.

Learnings

• 01Pick a specific customer and design for them from the beginning rather than trying to serve multiple audience types at once
• 02Focus on people and their needs. The final solution was more impactful than our ability to deprecate an old system
• 03Design directly for game developers rather than assuming internal optimization would automatically translate to external users