The developers behind the innovative Aurora Feint series of iPhone games have announced plans to open its social platform up for use by other independent iPhone developers.
The platform is called OpenFeint, and will allow developers to use the same real-time chat, profiles, friend lists, walls and news-feed features seen in Aurora Feint II: The Beginning.
The OpenFeint Server element works with Google's OpenSocial REST API, and Aurora Feint (it's the company's name as well as the games') will host the server on developers' behalf.
The company's founders, Jason Citron and Danielle Cassley, reckon it'll let developers do in a day what would otherwise take them two months to code themseves.
"As Indie developers ourselves, we can attest to the sheer amount of work, time, and effort it takes to develop and operate our online social features and servers, so we'd like our friends developing games for the iPhone to be able to skip the headache and gain from our experience," they say.
OpenFeint will be free for a limited number of concurrent users, but developers will pay if they plan to have larger numbers of players. The beta version of OpenFeint will be available in March, with more information available on how to sign up on its website.
Interestingly, Aurora Feint isn't the first indie developer to announce plans to make its own platform available to other devs.
Demiforce - the firm behind iPhone puzzler Trism - is working on its Onyx Online platform, which it's pitching as an Xbox Live style community for iPhone.
News
Contributing Editor
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)
Top Stories
News
Apr 27th, 2024
PocketGamer.biz Podcast Week in Views E09 - Supercell's Squad Busters goes global, Embracer Group splits, and Apple's Vision Pro flops
News
Apr 26th, 2024
Week in Views - Squads busted, Apple crushed, War zoned and Snoozin' with the Snorlax…
Feature
Apr 26th, 2024
Speaker Spotlight: Dubai Future Foundation's Faisal Kazim on leading Dubai's gaming charge
Events
Esports Future Summit | Middle East | Apr 27th |
Dubai GameExpo Summit 2024 | Middle East | May 1st |
The MENA Games Industry Awards 2024 | Middle East | May 2nd |
GameDev Atlantic 2024 | May 4th | |
Mobidictum Meetup Berlin May 2024 | Europe | May 7th |
Mobidictum Meetup Tallinn May 2024 | Europe | May 21st |
Israel Mobile Summit 2024 | Middle East | Jun 6th |
DevGAMM Vilnius 2024 | Europe | Jun 14th |
Popular Stories
News
Apr 23rd, 2024
Supercell’s Squad Busters soft launches today with over 100,000 Google Play downloads
Feature
Apr 24th, 2024