OpenFeint vs. Agon Online vs. Scoreloop Now that we've heard several developer's opinions and feedback about the 3 social networking systems, we'd like to ask your opinion about the 3 as a gamer. Which would you prefer among the 3 and why? Any particular positive or negative experiences? We're thinking of adapting one of these in our games and possibly include it on our next updates. Thanks in advance!
OpenFeint is the only one I have tried, so far. So I would say it's got everything I want in an Service. I mean aside from updating the service often, and actually listening to people's suggestions. I think they're ahead of the game. Also they're design is beautiful and slick. <3
Openfeint [2.4] - Slick design, polished - Easy to navigate - Takes social game networking to a new level [forums, who's online, challenges, etc] - Much wider array of OF supported games than any other network - Quick load times - Offline support Plus+ - Limited, invite only network - Not many games - Design is ok - Achievements/Leaderboards take forever to load - No offline support Agon - Limited array of games - Clunky setup - Overall, not cool As you can tell, I prefer OF for many reasons. I'm sure Plus+ & Agon have other positives, but I really couldn't care less about them. OF remains my favorite.
Plus+ is my favorite. I know that's not a choice. And WTH is Scoreloop? I've never heard of it. Agon, the only reason I've heard of it is because of The Creeps! I don't like OpenFeint that much..... eh.....
Out of those 3 OpenFeint for sure. I actually like Agon ok, it's like the GoBot to the Transformer that is OF. But I've been hearing Agon can only be used with one device, which I didn't previously know, and that fact alone drops it down to near the bottom of the list. Plus+ is the closest to OF with most of the same major features, but I'm not in love with it's design or loading times. I don't know a lot about Scoreloop, but it seems like it's mostly based around high scores and challenges, which you get with OF anyway plus a ton more.
@derek420, @kgamelover1: I didn't include Plus+ because it used to be available for ngmoco games only but thanks for the tip, I checked their website just now and it seems to be available for 3rd party developers as well. @squeaker: Who's zincous? I guess OpenFeint seems to be the most popular because its used on most popular games? Scoreloop's currency system seems pretty interesting though and great for competitive players. What got me interested with Agon Online was its "lightweight" simplicity and the fact that it can work on both landscape and portrait games. OpenFeint just recently released support for portrait games. Thanks for sharing your experiences guys! Please feel free to add should you have anything more.
Yeah, Plus+ was probably the better choice back in the beginning, but because it was closed off it allowed OpenFeint to really gain momentum. Now Plus+ is playing catch up. One really annoying thing about Plus+ is that even if it's in a landscape game, all the Plus+ stuff will always be in portrait. So if you're going to check leaderboards or something, you have to rotate into portrait. It's really not a big deal, but it's a minor annoyance and seems like something they should have fixed a while ago. OF doesn't have this problem. I agree Scoreloop's whole thing is pretty interesting, the only problem is I don't really know anybody who's into it. I know I have a Scoreloop account, and a couple games with it, but I've never bothered to add a ton of friends to it or send out challenges or anything. I think it might be a cool concept, but it doesn't seem popular enough. I'm going to play around with my Scoreloop games and see if I can learn a little more about it. Another thing I heard about Scoreloop is you can't change any of your profile information without going into a stand alone Scoreloop app, which is pretty annoying. If you go with OpenFeint, I'd remember a few things: - If you add the OF logo to the game icon, try to do it in an elegant, non distracting way. People get really upset over this. - Don't flood every screen in your game with crazy OF branding. It can really detract from the enjoyment when there's OF stuff in the splash screen, in the title screen, options screen, game hud, etc. It might as well be an ad supported game IMO. - Make interesting achievements. I hate when a game has crappy achievments. That's one good thing about Plus+, is every game that has it has to get the stamp of approval from ngmoco so those games usually have well thought out achievments. - The challenge system in OF is awesome, so if your game has a competitive nature to it try to work that in there somehow.
@boardumb: Thanks for sharing your insights. Any suggested Scoreloop game? Hmmm, that's good point--our 2 games already have achievements and its just a matter of integrating it to whichever social networking system we choose. Speaking of achievements, how do you suggest we make it more interesting? Harder? Trickier? I've attached the Achievement Screen for one of my games below. This community is so helpful--thanks! Glad to have found this!
Lol, yeah if the achievements are worth it, I buy it. Me I have 70,000 OpenFeint points and play as many OpenFeint games as I can. So I think you can guess my vote
I would definitely go for OpenFeint. Very nice interface, easy to navigate, and it's definitely the most popular social gaming platform for iPhone at the moment, with many games already having integrated it into their setups. A stand-alone OpenFeint app has also recently come out on the AppStore Plus+ is pretty good too.
the only game I know that uses Agon is The Creeps! Is it because of Agon that you can restore your high scores and unlocked levels when you use your Agon account when playing The Creeps!?
Open feint all the way. Some achievements and game may be cheesy, but I'd rather have 250 games most good then 10 games all avg. OF just has everything, and is expanding!!!!!!!!!
I think I've maybe played one game that used Scoreloop, though I couldn't tell you what that was offhand (wonderful impression, huh?) Most of the games I have that use an online scoring service use OpenFeint, so that would be my choice for that fact alone. One thing I've noticed with Agon, though, is that it doesn't seem to save my password outside of a particular game, which means I have to look it up the first time I use a new game that supports that service. OpenFeint just spins a couple of seconds, says "welcome, RustySabre", and I move on. To me that's a much nicer setup.
Hey guys, I'm Junde from Scoreloop You can try these games Parachute Panic - $0.99 hit title by FDG http://itunes.apple.com/cn/app/parachute-panic/id317435143?mt=8 Code G - simple game, recent hit title http://itunes.apple.com/cn/app/code-g/id343291840?mt=8 Bug Landing - our free demo game. first cross-platform (iPhone + Android) challenge-enabled game http://itunes.apple.com/cn/app/bug-landing/id314131943?mt=8 Here's some other essential stuff to note about our product: - we're challenges-focused with push notifications - we already have virtual currency, used in challenges, and can also be used in purchase of virtual goods, new stages etc - we're cross-platform (iPhone, Android, more to come) Cheers, Junde http://twitter.com/Scoreloop http://twitter.com/junde
I totally agree with this assessment. OpenFeint is definitely my favorite by far, especially with all the new chatting/messaging and other features that they are constantly adding. Ideally I wish things would just standardize on a single system, but I don't see that happening any time soon, especially with bigger publishers like Chillingo and Gameloft coming out with systems of their own. It'd be so nice if OpenFeint was like the "XBOX Live" of mobile gaming on the iPod/iPhone and there was just a single universal gamer score to keep track of/compare. Probably the only annoying thing I've found with OF is that since it is so popular, there are loads of REALLY crap games adding it too. One nice thing about PLUS+ is that they seem to be much more selective with the quality of the games they let use their system.
Thanks for sharing your experiences with us guys! @zincous: Nice to meet you. @junde: Glad to have you in this discussion! We are in fact curious (and interested) about your challenges and virtual currency features. I personally believe you can do countless ways with it but I agree with most of the posts--there aren't that much popular games using Scoreloop yet. Are there any huge titles in the pipeline? @otggamer: I guess in the end, only one system will remain and popular enough for most titles will adapt it. This is the reason why we're also basing our choice on how "aggresive" the developers behind the system are.
I see openfeint as like the Wii and plus+ as the 360/Ps3. Openfeint may have more games, (most of them are crap except for minigore and a few others) but plus+ has almost all quality games in it's small catalog. In it's simplicity, plus+ is better.
SCoreloop Hi Guys, My name is Kevin and for disclosure purposes I am with Scoreloop also Junde is in a different time zone so I will make a comment So a little bit of background about me, I have worked in mobile gaming and for a number of years in pretty much every area: Developer Publisher Licensor Distributor Just as a heads up this is not going to be a post bashing other platforms, they are all great platforms; but platforms are like ice cream, I like chocolate, you might like vanilla. For me Scoreloop is my version of chocolate for a number of reasons, I would like to explain this with questions that I asked myself when I was approached to join the Scoreloop team: 1. From a business perspective, is a white label approach better for my brand than a model where I have to co-brand my game? OK so the answer for me here is pretty simple, as I used to license content for former employers etc, when looking at taking an iPhone game to another platform, I would look at the brand amongst other things. As an example, my former employer licensed iShoot for various platforms and it seems to be doing quite well on platforms such as Brew i.e. Verizon. Of course not all iPhone games can make the leap to other platforms, but fortunately iShoot could. I know a lot of people really don't like those platforms, but the simple truth is, is that the gaming industry is a business and a significant one at that. Tetris as an example has generated in excess of 300 million in revenues on Brew, J2ME, Blackberry, WinMo etc. Some people still believe that is real money. So when I looked at bringing these games to other platforms I would address a number of things, one of the main ones being: What is the brand like? If the logo is not 100% like the iPhone logo, I would immediately cease my interest because a large percentage of folks are looking at the logo on their friends iPhone, they are not motivate enough to play the game to buy an iPhone/iTouch, but they really like the game. Then Wham! They see the iShoot logo on Verizon, so they buy the game, but what if they do not recognize the logo? That represents a loss in sales. So I dig the white label approach, because it leaves the door open for 3rd party companies to license my content. Of course games such as pocket god do not have the OF logo so this is great and I hope this continues in the future as it protects the developers brand. This is one of the reasons why you will never see an EA or Gameloft game co-branded. 2. What if I want to refuse to license my game, but I want to take my game to Brew? So I have two phones, I have a Droid and I have an iPhone 3GS, one is for personal use and the other is for business. One of the things Scoreloop realized from the get go, was that Bob is not going to buy an iPhone because his buddy Jim has a chess game or whatever on it, but they would like to challenge one another. The Scoreloop platform is pretty agnostic in that you can play versus guys that have the same game on Android, Brew, J2ME or Facebook, it doesn't matter. This is a big thing for Kevin the gamer because not a lot of my friends have iPhones. 3. What if I suddenly wake up one morning and think "I don't like Chocolate Ice Cream/Scoreloop anymore"? Well you are not stuck with it, you can call us up and we can give you a database dump and you can move to whichever platform you want. The fact is, is that the gaming industry is in a period of disruption, I have been working in the business for over a decade and I have never seen this sort of disruption since the first console came out. So never say never EA may come along and decide you are the new Tetris and would require you move your community to another platform, if you say you can't for whatever reason they may still buy you, but it is going to cost you money, this also relates to the brand aspect. 4. How do these guys make money? OK since I have been in the business aspect of gaming for a long time, this is the first question I ask. Sure I can use every platform for free, but Scoreloop actually shares the money they make from your game with you and let's be honest, all of these platforms are making money somehow. Why should you give 100% of it up based on your success. You were the one that took the risk, the one that stayed up into the wee small hours of the morning, the one that stared at the artwork for hours, tweaking it until it was just right and the one that has to live with the possible time you wasted making a game that no one bought. The dev in me tells me that, that is a bum rap. These platforms are not run by the charity of St Steve of Poor developers they are businesses, they want to make money and their is nothing wrong with that, but my point is, is that you should be making some money if they make you a success. I am talking about real money, college money kind of thing. As I said at the top of the post, so far there are no bad platforms; from a tech perspective, I have always believed that there is no competition in the tech space, either people like it or they think it sucks, I like chocolate ice cream and I like Scoreloop, but you may just like vanilla If anyone has any questions, you can mail me at [email protected] I would be more than happy to help or answer your questions whether it is about social gaming, the licensing biz or the current state of the Oregon wine industry.
