OpenFeint have five games on their website: Pocket God, Sentinel 2, Blocks 2, Stick Wars and Know-It-All 80's Trivia. But I'm sure there are more.
Plus+ response? Like others, I have written to the partners@ email and received no response. You may all be very swell guys, but the web-site gives the general appearance of being closed and hostile to new developers. Can you offer a path for me to integrate plus+ into my game that will result in actual forward motion? (No offense, but many have reported "no response", so maybe there's something broken at your end?) Thanks!
Ok, that was June 2009 (just reading fwd on this thread; that was #54.) Didn't see any additional response. So, did they ever get back to you?
I want to point out the only thing I don't like about feint, The avatars. I linked my account to facebook and I can't change it to something else. I would like it if I could either customize my avatar using a picture from my phone, or, have a way to "opt out" of using my avatar.
The Plus+ developer experience, blow-by-blow. My own Plus+ experience (email exchange): Ongoing impression: * All the other guys: Friendly, approachable web site with self-serve create-account, download SDK, install instructions. * Plus+: Evasive "who wants to know?" processes. I'm really hoping that I'm wrong about this, but it's getting harder and harder to take Plus+ seriously. I can understand that maybe they want to control quality or something, but I think it's going to bite them in the rear, as others storm the marketplace. We'll see what happens. I'll post again if there's progress. (My client-NDAs don't allow me to give much detail about the game -- certainly not to another game development company! -- so we'll see how they deal with that.)
I think there is a perfectly good reason for this. If you look at OpenFeint, it's a perfect example. Games that are automatically open to the social service can be a crap title with easy to get achievements. Not only does that ruin the fun, but it diminishes the standard of that social network. I think what the ngmoco guys are trying to do is establish a name that will be met with respect and insure a good purchase. If only the most elite of titles can secure a spot in Plus+, then when you come across a game that is Plus+ enabled you know that it is good. Just my two cents...
Scoreloop: 17+ rating and Landscape I was about to implement scoreloop, but then retracted due to the following concerns. 1. Regarding Nik's quote above, I had concerns over the selection of profile names potentially allowing bad language. Given Apple's tendency to pull apps for any infringement, and Nik's ocmments above, does that mean that all scoreloop games would need a 17+ rating, or could potentially be pulled due to someone using bad language for their username? Does scoreloop vet all user created profiles? 2. This one may have been fixed, but when I checked scoreloop a few weeks ago, it could only operate in Portrait mode, which is a bad user experience for a landscape app.
More evasion from Plus+ As promised, progress-report from the Plus+ guys. Why on Earth the Plus+ folks feel they need to be "involved in the initial integration" is beyond me. That, coupled with "you have to sign an NDA before you can even look at our SDK", "we want to QA your product before it ships" and "[we want] to be brought in to your NDA so that we know what product is being built" led me to send this response to my client: @BrazillianRider: You make a good point that systems which are fully open to anyone will acquire a lot of crap. They'll also acquire a lot of great. They'll also become the one everyone uses, because they're open & easy to use. As they grow, they'll become stronger and provide a better product. The iPhone itself is an excellent example of this. To be honest, it would not surprise me if, after a while, Plus+ decides that this little experiment failed, and pulls the product. Releasing on even 50 games (about 50x what they have, today) -- even if they're all top-100 titles -- is not enough to support a business unit. It's easy to imagine a future where one of the other guys dominates the market, and Plus+ is pulled internal, a feature of only ngmoco products, in much the same way that PlayStation-Live is only available on that platform. It's much harder to imagine a future where, say (to pick one at random), the OpenFeint guys say "well, THAT didn't work..." and reel-in the product. It's great if they want to co-brand their products and develop a reputation for "Plus+ games are the best games around" but, in the mean time, all the other guys are storming the market and taking-up share, developing loyal customers and establishing a brand that someone uses. If my client wants me to continue pursuing that path, I will. Otherwise, if they ever open up and make their SDK and support available and easy to use, I might give them a look. Otherwise, well... I've got WORK to do!
I agree that Plus+ requires to much at this time. OpenFeint is looking to be the best, and especially with there new updates so frequently. Plus+ only has the advantage of a better GUI.
I personally don't really like Open Feint. The interface is clunky and isn't organized well. At the moment, I prefer Agon.
The Agon people are super friendly and helpful. Anyone interested in one of these platforms should contact them, even if it's only to get more info. I like the fact that if something goes wrong, or I have any sort of trouble, I can talk to someone who will respond in a timely manner and do their best to assist me.
@chum Re: Plus+. I can understand your frustration with ngmoco and its platform, however the reason why I think it's out of the window, at least as far as integrating it into a game, is because to me it's a proprietary platform, hence the NDA for the SDK, and ngmoco would ideally look to publish your game itself. If you look at all the titles it has published so far, you'll see that it doesn't actually develop games itself, it partners with developers, and looks for titles with high production values and ways to continue to exploit it's Plus+ network. I think its treatment of your enquiry was off putting and I would put it down partly to the idea that it doesn't quite know what to do, or at least is being incredibly cagey at this point in time. Was your email from Simon Jeffrey? I know Simon from my days at Virgin Interactive, he's very good at what he does (even if he is really short, but don't tell him I said that...). I would look at the other platforms. Personally I'm using Agon in my first game as I've been really impressed with its speed, UI, and the Agon guys are really, really cool. I don't like Scoreloop as I think this whole coin business is a no-no for the customer. I know OpenFeint has just had a point release so can't comment on the new one. I didn't like the previous version though because of the whole avatar and chatrooms (I think you can disable chatrooms now though). Anyway, I just wanted to offer my thoughts on Plus+, and chime in on social platforms. Go Agon! Elliot.
i really like the new openfeint 2.1 version. i test for pocketgod so ive got the new version of feint already and i mod on the chatrooms for feint. They are working on more stuff for developers including making the moderation of the chatrooms better so that apple dont have a problem anymore. But yes now you can disable the chatrooms. The new discovery area so you can see what other games your friends are playing makes feint so much better.
