I believe it's just a convenience of expression when you say OF has many games, OF has great games and other games, and so on. Technically, it's actually the situation that many games are on OF, not so much "OF has them". Because OF is a platform, not a publisher. Personally, I would actually identify more with the studio, like MrFungfung's MiniSquadron, rather than the platform system in this situation. Plus+ would be slightly different, because ngmoco is also a publisher. So you can say that Plus+ has a certain game. So anyway my question to gamers is, does the social networking platform affect your purchase decision? How so? Because like you said, OF has many games, some great, some crap. So let's give them an guesstimated ratio - 50% of them are good games. Then we look at Plus+, you said they only have Eliminate, and overall they have less games than OF's great games. But Plus+ would have a higher percentage of good games, wouldn't they? i.e. If Plus+ releases a new game, based on track record, Eliminate, Rolando, recently announced GodFinger, you would be more assured of its quality, right? So coming back to the question. So how does the mobile social networking platform, be it widely used or not, affect your purchase decision? And how does this gamer perspective affect game developers' decisions? I think this would be topic-relevant and very interesting to learn for us all.
First of all, I think the discussion of total games vs. "good" games is only marginally relevant. The reason I say that is because "good" games is a completely subjective term. Based on Junde's example I would never be interested in Plus+ because I didn't like Rolando or Eliminate and I haven't played Godfinger, so that one can't even impact my decision. With OF, on the other hand, even though there have been quite a few games that supported the service that I didn't care for, there have also been many that I did and do still like and play. As a result, OF would be the better choice for me. In the end, though, what I mainly care about is achievements and global high scores, so as long as a service handles that well I'm good with it. As to whether or not I'd buy a game based on which social service it uses I'd say that probably wouldn't be too much of a factor. More important to me is how the developer implements the service within the game. I had one game that I really liked, but in order to complete the game after you died you had to go through the social service that it was linked to. There was no direct way back to the main menu. At the time I wasn't interested in signing up for that service (I forget which it was), so I ended up deleting the game.
I'm here to learn so please excuse my persistent questions When you said the above, did you mean that as a gamer or as a developer? If you meant it as a gamer, what does OF as a choice mean to you?
Yeah - they really should move the "choose account" and "settings" pages to in OF. How many people use multiple OF accounts anyway? One thing that would be awesome would be if you had the OF app on, you could specify this stuff in it's settings, and let OF enabled apps read it from there - removing all three screens entirely...
Sorry, I simply meant that as a gamer OF would make the most sense for me mainly because so many of the games I play already have incorporated OF as their social network of choice.
Yeah, I wasn't really clear about that, sorry. I was meaning to refer to the libraries of games that contain those services, not whether or not which one "has" the games or the other way around. Well, I sort of asked that same question in a thread here, so check that out for a few people's opinions too. But basically, I actively pursue OF and Plus+ games, regardless of quality. With both services there's games that I'd be getting anyway, and the fact that they feature one or the other is just a bonus. If a new Plus+ game comes out, I'll likely get it no matter what. They're usually cheap or free, so it's not really a big deal to get them just for the sake of the social network features. And if they end up being a good game, too, well then that's also like a bonus. I've definitely stumbled across some gems and some truly unique experiences in my quest for achievements. But, it's a lot easier keeping up with Plus+ games because there's fewer of them. It's ok to drop a couple bucks when new ones come out, and I have almost every Plus+ game. With OF, there's tons of games, and new ones daily. I'd be flat broke in no time trying to buy them all. So my current purchasing habits are pretty much: keeping tabs on the games at the OF website (which is phenomenal); downloading every free game that has achievements, regardless of what the game is about; check out the games that are only a dollar or two and possibly buy a couple based on if they look interesting; then sniping the rest of them and grabbing them when they drop down to free or a dollar (which happens frequently with a lot of OF games). So in essence, despite being a huge fan of the OF service, it doesn't always necessarily mean I'll purchase your game right off the bat if it has OF, even if it's just a dollar. There's enough free games and games I already own to keep me busy with OF that I can be patient and wait on the other ones. What I CAN tell you about having OF though, is that it guarantees that I'll at least take a look at your game, and could quite possibly purchase it down the road when I'm looking for something new. And it also means that I'll download it if it ever goes free, if you're looking for increased download numbers for a jump up the charts, or increasing a user base. There's other games that drop to free and I don't even bother with, because of my already overwhelming collection of games. In a sea of 130k apps, OF gives you an extra chance of visibility, IMO. All the services do, really, it's just that I have to limit myself and since OF and Plus+ were the first ones to latch on, I mostly stick with them. I've also got all the free Agon games I could, and there's some good games that have that service that I'll probably eventually get too. But more based on the fact that they look like good games, rather than the fact that they feature Agon. Hope this wall of text is useful, and gives you the idea from a consumers POV. Oh, and keep in mind that this totally disregards all the games I'd typically buy out of my own personal interest, whether they feature a service or not. This is strictly a look at how I go about buying games based only on their particular online service. I don't know if I'd qualify as your typical consumer, more of a social network junkie , but I know there's at least a few people that share similar buying habits.
On the developer side of life, OF drops to 50% performance when it's over my OpenGL|ES view. And the compiling times and design is really crap. I like AGON from that side. I just miss to find friends from my twitter account. Try the free "Atoms" game to take a peek.
Most of the reason why Plus+ is back to being my favorite network. OF I feel sometimes is just doing to much. Other reasons why Plus+ is my favorite: - Has little to no lag. - Loads quicker. - Feels more polished. - I enjoy the color scheme more. - I like the layout more. - Easier to navigate. - I like how it executes (Feels like your game is a page scrolling down). - Simple and straight to the point for my iTouch gaming. I do wish I could organize games I dont play/deleted by being able to delete them but since that page doesn't take forever to load either, its really no biggie.
I am a big fan of all the services.. actually lemme take that back, i have no affinity for over over another. They are all just ways for me to get to my achievements the social aspects of them are whatever.. they are just gravy on top. Its about cool games with micro-incentives and goals to shoot for. The one thing i will say that i find annoying.. is when i grab a game that has OpenFeint integration only to find out there are no achievements, just leaderboards. grrr as such a personal project of mine is trying to collect a full list of all game and their achievements. Mickey! http://iphone.gameachievements.org/
