AWS re:Invent 2025 - Another Axiom: Migrating the backend for hit game Gorilla Tag to AWS (IND396)

Migrating the Backend for Gorilla Tag to AWS

Overview

• Another Axiom is a leading VR game studio, known for popular titles like Gorilla Tag and Orion Drift
• Gorilla Tag is the most popular game on the Meta Quest store, with 17 million lifetime unique players and peak concurrent users of 100,000
• Orion Drift also has very successful peaks of tens of thousands of concurrent users

Challenges of the VR Gaming Market

• VR gaming is highly seasonal, with peak concurrent players during the winter holidays being an order of magnitude higher than the summer lows
• VR games are also extremely social and viral, leading to sudden, unpredictable load spikes when the broader VR creator community runs events

Outgrowing the Initial Platform

• When Gorilla Tag was first developed, it was built on a popular third-party platform-as-a-service product
• As the game grew in popularity, Another Axiom found that they had outgrown the off-the-shelf solution and needed more control and customization
• The platform vendor was unable to provide the level of support, integration, and feature development that Another Axiom required for their VR games

Building Mothership: Another Axiom's Backend Platform

• Another Axiom decided to build their own backend platform, called Mothership, to have more control and flexibility
• Mothership has three main components: a backend service app, a developer dashboard, and a game SDK
• The Mothership app is a Node.js monolith deployed like a microservice, with compute and database sharded by feature area
• A robust CI/CD pipeline using GitHub Actions, AWS CodePipeline, and AWS CodeDeploy ensures continuous integration and deployment

Load Testing and Cost Optimization

• Another Axiom worked with a load testing partner to validate Mothership's ability to handle 100,000 concurrent users per vertical
• The main bottleneck was the cost of opening new database connections, which was addressed by using larger instances with more cores
• After implementing RDS Proxy and scaling down to smaller instances, Another Axiom's compute costs were reduced from $1,000 per day to $250 per day

Migrating to AWS Graviton

• Another Axiom explored migrating to AWS Graviton processors to further optimize costs
• Initial estimates showed 4-6% savings, but after consulting with AWS experts, the projected savings were 20-30%
• The migration to Graviton was surprisingly straightforward, with Node.js apps and Docker builds working well on the ARM architecture
• By leveraging their robust CI/CD pipeline, Another Axiom was able to migrate to Graviton with zero downtime and zero impact to players
• The Graviton migration resulted in a 60% reduction in compute costs and a 30% reduction in total cloud spend

Key Takeaways

1. Update assumptions as the system evolves, and don't assume past configurations are still optimal
2. Some changes that seem daunting (like a processor architecture migration) can be surprisingly simple
3. Work closely with your cloud provider's account team and experts to identify optimization opportunities
4. Invest heavily in CI/CD and test infrastructure to ensure stability and confidence in deployments
5. Explore different hosting models, like multi-tenant verticals, to enable cost-effective rapid prototyping

Future Plans

• Orion Drift and all future games are 100% on the Mothership platform
• Gorilla Tag is migrating more of its critical workloads to Mothership
• Another Axiom is exploring new hosting models, platforms, and service offerings to further evolve the Mothership platform