We've contacted Plus+ to see what kind of deal they have, but we have yet to hear back from them. Openfeint charges a percentage of your profits that we thought was unreasonable. However, I'm having a call with them today to make sure I have understood everything correctly. Jasonsmith: I'm really sorry that you were disappointed with the length of the first episode. As we mentioned in the press release, the second episode will be much longer - but I guess that doesn't make the first one less of a disappointment for you. What is it that you guys find best with Openfeint, or Plus+?
My vote is definitely OpenFeint. Plus+ is nice and all, but i stand by OF. and, OF has a larger following
Wah.. thats a pretty hard question to answer. Im okay with either but if I really have to choose one, Id pick Plus+. I think it is more exclusive (it accepts fewer games than OpenFeint) so it may be better for your game if it has Plus+.
I don't know.. I just think there's a lot more replay value if there are achievements. More appealing too. I would prefer Open Feint, but either is fine. Looking forward to episode 2
Well, I just talked to the people at Openfeint and it seems like I've got my information wrong so I'll definitely be considering them along with Plus+.
I'm really glad to hear this. To answer your earlier question about why we like OF and +, I was originally an xbox 360 gamer and one of the reasons that kept me coming back to its games was how neatly organized their live system was. I'm not talking only about the smooth online gameplay, I'm also referring to the fact that you could find a player's info all in one gamertag: what games he/she likes, how thouroughly the person plays them and pretty much how good he is. Open feint and Plus+ mimic this quite accurately. Not only do you get info about the current game, but also their other games. It's a great way to compare and find things in common. It just feel like you are part of something bigger. Visually I think Plus is better, it's very polished. Nevertheless, I feel it really slows down games. The new Doctor Awesome takes soo long to load because of Plus it's really annoying. I hope this only happens to me and if there is a way to avoid those loading times, it's as good or better than open feint. However, it seems many more games are taking advantage of Open feint and that is a big plus (few games besides ngmoco's seem to use plus). You can't go wrong with either and I guess it depends on which one your fans want more. Hope this helps.
We have OpenFeint integrated into a few of our games which are due to release anytime now and according to all material I have been able to gather there is no cost to use OpenFeint for the user or the developer. In their developer section after you register they have a price information page which states in bold letters that it is free for both the developer and the user. They further explain how this is possible in the following paragraph:
Thanks for the input Themendoz! Shawn[QS]: You are absolutely correct, and the quote you posted from Openfeint describes how the process works. We had got our information all wrong, but the people at Openfeint have now cleared that up for us.
This game needs plus+, it's the most complete of all the online networks. and with the upcoming global release of Eliminate, it will soon have a huge following
Actually OpenFeint has more features than Plus+ and with their recent multi-million dollar investment from DeNA it should improve a lot.
Plus+ all the way! I fins it way more satisfying than OpenFeint, and as someone else said, the release of Eliminate will generate an enormous Plus+ following.
There's also another aspect to this situation and that is that both Openfeint and Plus+ have so many features that they can become overwhelming for casual users. When I tried the Openfeint system the first time, my gut reaction was that I wanted to turn it off because there were just too many options available to me. I like the fact that you can just start playing Dark Nebula without hassle, and without being confronted with a million options before you can start playing. For the update we just want a few added features like highscores, challenges, achievements, facebook posting etc. But if we go with a system like Openfeint we are adding unnecessary complexity to a game that doesn't benefit from it. Openfeint allows us to pick out the parts of their system we want to use, so we can easily just add what we want and forget about the rest. This would mean that casual players can see their highscores on a global leaderboard, compare with their friends etc. But if we just implement part of the system, I feat that the hardcore users will feel that we've cut away all the features they use. How do you guys feel about this?
I only ever use the leaderboards and achievements in OpenFeint, so if you implement them I'll be happy.
im ok without openfeint or plus+, about the online highscores and achievements, its good if you can do it in-game yourselves.
Same here. I love when games have achievements in Plus+ or Openfeint. When you start the game the first time you can use Openfeint or Plus+ or not. I don´t think this will bother anyone. I see is a good strategy for sales to use this plattforms, there are gamers that buy games mostly for the achievements
i use open feint for the global high score and achievements.. the other crap just makes the game bulky and it is not necessary.. even better if you made your own stuff and not use their UI.. i HATE playing and BLAM.. "hihi wanna publish to facebook twitter?" and when you are trying to click on menu items on the bottom of the screen.. BLAMMMMM open feint pops up and stays there for like 5 seconds before it pisses off... very annoying.. maybe have it only accessible via the main menu screen and NOT popup telling us.. "OH HI I AM ONLINE AND HERE I AM OBSCURING THE BOTTOM OF YOUR SCREEN" /the end
Thanks for your input Hapz! For the second episode we want to add a lot of new content - levels, enemies, obstacles, features, and new art. It's not just an expansion pack, it will be a whole new game - much longer than the current one as well. At this point, there is simply no way for us to finance the project if we would give it away for free at release. I'm afraid that's just the reality of our situation as an independent developer.
