Feature

Opinion: What iPhone networking platforms need to do better

All about friends and those we've not yet met

Opinion: What iPhone networking platforms need to do better
When it comes to social gaming networks, the simple goal everyone needs to keep in mind is that I want to play with my real friends.

This is the overwhelming lesson learnt from companies such as Playfish, Zynga and Playdom. That's why these companies operate on social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace. Because that's where people's friends are.

The obvious obstacle for the iPhone social gaming networks is this not where they are.

Making the best of a bad hand

To that degree, OpenFeint, Plus+, Scoreloop and the rest are operating one step removed from the action. This can be moderated but you have to rely on gamers actively hooking up their Facebook accounts themselves; something a percentage will be unwilling to do, either because of privacy fears or technical gremlins.

Good design can ease this process. Booyah Society is the best example I've yet seen of integrating an external iPhone app with my Facebook friends.

In contrast, OpenFeint, Plus+ and Scoreloop currently have issues in this area.

My OpenFeint friends list has been randomly filled with 18 people, only one of whom I know. With Plus+, I had to manually type in the names of my friends to see if they were also in the system. I currently have 1 friend connected, and that's because Tracy emailed me to tell me what his Plus+ gamer tag was.

At least, Scoreloop shows me the complete list of my Facebook friends but there's no context about whether they have the Scoreloop app or any enabled games. And I don't have any Scoreloop-enabled games anyway. Just the free app.

Of course, this situation is bound to get incrementally better with time.

But even when this occurs, I'll still be reduced to playing with a subset of my Facebook friends. Obviously, this will be the subset who have an iPhone or iPod touch, and any supporting games installed. Because of this, the number of available friends on any iPhone social network for any player will always be a subset of their friends.

Hence, the larger the percentage of players who don't actively hook up their Facebook accounts, the less enjoyable the experience will for their playing friends who have done so. This could become a vicious cycle.

Are gamers friends we've not yet met?

If I can't play with the majority of my real friends, who can I play with?

Significantly, a lack of some real friends isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm not friends with all my Facebook friends. Some of them I don't actually know, so as long as I have some real friends, perhaps I'll find some new friends playing iPhone games.

At this point, the process boils down to social engineering.

There's a reason for me to challenge those people around me on leaderboards for example, not for who they are but because of where they are in relation to me on the leaderboard.

However there's not yet enough control in terms of how I present myself, whether by avatar customisation or the information I list about myself within the iPhone gaming social networks for anyone to really care who I am.

Add a web interface for the creation and viewing of my details - even if constrained within the context of the iPhone games I play - and we could be onto something.

Who's the maven? Who's the daddy?

There are plenty of other wacky experiments to be tried too.

Some companies may promote game champions I can play against. They may not even be very good champions, as few people like losing, game champion or no.

I'd be up for beating Trip Hawkins at 20Q Mind Reader or Neil Young at Star Defense.

I won't care if I've beaten the real Trip or Neil if I got an achievement for my prowess either. Hey, most gamers don't know who Trip and Neil are, but if you tell them they're important and let them challenge and beat them, then they'll care.

Potentially there's also a lot of possibilities in terms of using the data in my game profile. Find me someone else who likes The Starting Line, Kurt Vonnegut and foreign affairs and I'll give them a bad game of whatever for sure.

Here comes the pain

Yet, in the medium term, the only thing that's certain is that gamers are going to get confused about what OpenFeint, Plus+, Scoreloop, not to mention AGON, UbiFriends, Crystal etc etc are about.

The best thing for everyone concerned would be if the competing companies could agree a simple framework that enables a universal shared log-in and profile system. This would make the most important part of the process transparent for gamers, while behind-the-scenes, all the other data such as achievements, game leaderboards, revenue shares could be chopped up and parcelled out.

It will never happen, so publishers and developers will have to muddle through until the VC money has been spent and the technology companies consolidated, or Apple does the decent thing and forces everyone to use its version of the simple framework.

So while we're waiting for one of these events, please just remember, I want to play with some of my real friends, and if you can't manage that, people I might be friends with or, at least, have a reason to beat.

Oh, and don't forget about Trip either.

Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.