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OpenFeint Releases Free Standalone App

Posted by Robert Corra on January 12th, 2010
iPhone App - Designed for iPhone, compatible with iPad

OpenFeint has described their service as "think XBOX Live meets Facebook." They've quickly become the social gaming platform of choice for several game developers, even with competition from the likes of Scoreloop, Agon, and ngmoco's Plus+ network. OpenFeint has now released a free standalone app that gives you a central location for tracking all of your gaming accomplishments, and for interacting with the rest of the community. These features were previously only accessible from within each individual game.

With the new OpenFeint app, you can see your progess, as well as that of your friends, across the entire inventory of OpenFeint enabled games. This includes global, friends-only, and personal leaderboards, as well as specific game accomplishments. You can send challenges, participate in forums, and chat/IM. There are several features to manage your profile, such as linking your account to Twitter or Facebook for the incorporation of your profile picture and friend lists. The OpenFeint app also showcases a free/lite app everyday, shining the spotlight on that particular developer.

With hundreds of games already supporting their service, and the intent to eventually bring their community features to Android as well, OpenFeint may be steadily emerging as the de facto standard for social gaming on the go.

OpenFeint Platform Launches With Facebook Connect and Twitter User Authentication

Posted by Jeff Scott on March 19th, 2009

Today, Aurora Feint launched the version 1.0 release of their OpenFeint Mobile Social Gaming Platform. The platform, which has been in closed beta for a few weeks, includes leader boards and chat room functionality for applications that include it. Starting today, we should start to see updates from some of the publishers included in the 1.0 beta. The list of apps enrolled in the initial beta is impressive and includes games such as VectorTanks, PocketGod, 2079, Radio Flare and Lumen. The games were chosen across a wide range to show the versatility of the platform.

One of the key features with OpenFeint is the open authorization scheme. Users have the choice of authenticating into their OpenFeint account using either their Facebook, Twitter credentials, or neither. Future versions will include support for MySpaceID, OpenID, and anything else that they can get to work and makes sense.

The features of the 1.0 release, in use by the developers in the beta include:

- Player Accounts enabled with FbConnect and Twitter Integration -- users have the option of authenticating with these accounts or creating a new account.

- Developer Configured Leaderboards -- leader boards are very flexible, allowing the developers to tailor the leader boards to fit their games. Developers can sort the leader board as they choose and also create as many different ones as needed.

- Game Specific Chat Rooms -- chat rooms are also developer configurable and allow up to 50 users per chat room.

- Global Chat Rooms with Cross Promotion of Game Titles -- the global chat rooms are dynamically created as they start to fill up. There's a maximum of 50 users per chat room.

- Sample code and API are open source (GPL licensed) -- this allows the developer to modify both the display and the processing as needed and provides transparency. Some possible pitfalls could occur here, if the developer changes too much and things change though.

Additions for the 2.0 release, which is available for signup today, includes the integration of profiles and news feeds from Facebook and Twitter. Developers can apply for inclusion in the 2.0 version at http://www.openfeint.com.

Speaking with Danielle Cassley and Jason Citron, the developers of Aurora Feint, they are obviously excited about the possibilities that the notification service and other features in iPhone OS 3.0 can add to their platform. The ability to be notified instantly when your friends start a game, beat your high score, etc. are all very compelling.

Read the full press release after the jump.

Imangi

iPhone App - Designed for iPhone, compatible with iPad
By Jeff Scott on October 11th, 2008
Our rating: starstarstarstarstar :: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Imangi is a great word game with interesting play modes to keep you well engaged
Read The Full Review »