iPhone Social Gaming Service Roundup

Christopher Ryan — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:00:38 +0000

Like any gaming platform, the sustained success of the platform itself is driven by its users. Social gaming networks allow for increased user interaction and, in many ways, a more engaging gaming experience. On the Xbox, you have the Xbox Live service; the Playstation 3 features the Playstation Network; and the Wii features WiiConnect24. So what types of social gaming services does the iPhone support? Come to find out, an increasing number of them. Here’s a look at the top three.

ngmoco’s Plus+

The company who dazzled your iPhone with hits like Rolando, Rolando 2, Topple (my favorite) and others, recently introduced their service called Plus+. This service allows users to challenge your friends on the network (or via Twitter) and track awards and top scores on leaderboards.

For more information, check out Darrell’s review of the service. From what I have been able to find, the Plus+ service is not open to outside developers at this time.

OpenFeint

If you are a fan of Aurora Feint, you’ve likely heard of their social gaming service called OpenFeint. This service allows users to interact similarly to Plus+, but is based around a concept they call “social discovery.” Some unique features to OpenFeint-enabled games include chat rooms for more open social discussion, the ability to see what other OpenFeint-enabled games your friends might be playing (and buy them from within the app), and the largest user base of games supporting its service, with over 100 games based on OpenFeint.

For developers, if you’re interested in integrating OpenFeint into your next masterpiece, its SDK is free to try and is available here. The size of your user base, or if an app is paid vs. free, determines the cost per user for developers to integrate OpenFeint’s service into their applications.

Scoreloop

Another service to enter this market is Scoreloop, a company and service formed by previous Apple and NeXT employees. Scoreloop is based around the simple objectives of global high scores and player challenges. Much like the other services, it also features integration with social networks such as Facebook, and allows for custom avatars and personalized profiles for tracking records and high scores. Scoreloop’s “economy” is based around coins, which helps to provide a unified scoring system between games, allowing users to maintain their collection of coins and gain or lose more via challenging other players.

While perhaps not as fully featured as other services, like OpenFeint, Scoreloop is, however, the first to announce that it is working to release its service on other devices, such as the Android platform. With a larger target market and a cheaper cost of entry for developers, Scoreloop could easily become more popular than OpenFeint (not to mention it’s user interface is more customizable to fit your application). For developers interested in Scoreloop, check out their free SDK here. Bug Landing, by the Scoreloop developers, is also a free application that features integration with this service.

Will one rise above the rest?

As Twitter became popular, we saw a plethora of competitors enter the market, from Plurk to Jaiku to Pownce. At the moment, a similar effect is starting to happen among these social networking services. Where on the console platform, each manufacturer has produced their own service, Apple has yet to bring any sort of unified service to its users. Since we all have an Apple ID for iTunes, Apple could easily integrate a beautiful solution so you can keep one central list of your gaming friends, awards and achievements.

Will Apple continue to stand by and allow multiple social gaming network services to evolve on the iPhone platform, or will they step in to offer their own service?

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Aurora Feint II: The Arena Arrives in the App Store

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 00:00:26 +0000

I’m a huge fan of Aurora Feint: The Beginning for the iPhone and iPod touch. It’s just the right blend of nerdy and casual for a mobile platform, and I could spend either hours or just a few minutes with it, depending on my schedule. And I did spend hours, which either proves that Aurora Feint is based on a solid concept, or that there is a certain type of person who will play any game that allows them to gain levels, regardless of how meaningless new levels actually are.

Given my affinity for the original, you’ll understand how excited I was as I downloaded Aurora Feint II: The Arena last Friday. The sequel to the popular puzzle RPG promised asynchronous online multiplayer play, and enhancements to the existing character and leveling system. How could you go wrong by bringing more awesome to an already awesome game? The answer: you can’t.

There are so many additions its hard to know where to start. Let’s start with basic game play. Even in the Mine, arguably the central component of the Aurora Feint world, there are noticeable improvements. The core play that makes the game so addictive is still there, but now animations are smoother, and you receive better, more visually pleasing tutorial tips throughout. Colors are brighter, and special combo animations are completely revamped. At any time during the game, you can press the arrow at the top of the screen to review your progress, go to the main menu, and return to the world map.

On the map, we find out that the area we could see in the original Aurora Feint, which is still included, is only The Town. The World is an entirely different parent map, featuring three locations: The Arena, The Town, and the Tavern. In The Arena, you can take advantage of the all new multiplayer aspects of the game. To do so, you first have to summon a Ghost, which is essentially a copy of your character that other players can do battle with. Summoning a Ghost is itself a mini-game, in which you try to maximize your stats so that your multiplayer substitute will be able to compete successfully.

Once you’ve summoned a ghost, you can do battle with other players. You’re not playing them live, but through an asynchronous battle system that pits you against their own ghost. Playing against another player’s ghost is essentially a race to burn as many resources as possible, filling up a meter faster than your opponent. I felt a real sense of urgency playing it, so even though you’re not actually playing live, it still feels sort of like you are. The always-on chat displayed at the bottom of the screen adds to the MMO feel.

There are other new features to explore, like the Academy, where you can review the game mechanics, features, and how to play. The Tower, the Smith, and the Store have also been tweaked. All the additions and refinements, and the already great Aurora Feint gameplay add up to make this feel as polished as any major developer release. Get it now in the App Store for $7.99, before it goes up to $9.99 after the holidays.