Requiring GameCenter, a bad idea?

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by invulse, Jan 30, 2011.

  1. invulse

    invulse Well-Known Member

    So the current game I am developing is a multiplayer only game, and as such it requires some form of unique ID login system to keep track of players stats in a remote location (to stop some hacking).

    My first inclination is to use GameCenter logins as the players unique ID for the game, then tie scores, stats, and IAP's to their gamecenter ID. However since old devices (even 3G iPhones) dont support GameCenter I would assume that this would cause a drop in sales, but how much?

    Could any dev's who have created a game which use Game Center only comment on possibly the percentage of players which are using Game Center in their game (# of leaderboard players) vs the number of players who have purchased the game?

    For me it would actually be an advantage to support only newer devices which support GC since the game would be able to support better graphics, but of course if I were to lose 30% of players this would not be a profitable move by any means.
     
  2. Golden Hammer

    Golden Hammer Well-Known Member

    Dec 1, 2009
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    Indie Game Developer
    Boston
  3. invulse

    invulse Well-Known Member

    I wish this was the end-all number to look for when dealing with Game Center. It frustrates me that Apple doesn't include Game Center with 4.0 on 3G when it could obviously handle it. This really just makes it harder for devs to put full support towards the platform when you exclude an existing user-base like this.
     
  4. u2elan

    u2elan Well-Known Member

    Nov 8, 2010
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    iOS Developer
    Portland, OR
    It depends on how you implement Game Center. For Ramps, we require that users opt-in by tapping the Game Center icon from the title screen before it authenticates to your account for the first time (and then auto-auths after that).

    Because of this, our Game Center utilization is a lot lower than most apps which auto-auth from the get-go. I'm actually considering switching to that, because I thought users might be sensitive to being forced to participate in Game Center.. but in hindsight, I don't think they care.

    Anyway, given the context, we're seeing about 10% utilization as of a couple weeks ago, though I haven't checked lately.

    At this point, if people aren't on a version of iOS that supports Game Center, they're already missing out on a lot of great games that require support. We supported it from v1.0 because we see the value it adds to how some like to play. I figure those who haven't upgraded are on jailbroken devices, or older hardware, and would either be pirating our game (jailbroken) or would have a slightly less optimal experience (3G iPhone, 2G Touch).

    For what it's worth also, older devices account for about 1% of our total install base.

    My philosophy has always been to do what makes the game better overall. Even once you nail your best release (and that won't be 1.0), you can still please only 98% of your customers at best. Just make the best experience you can and the sales will follow, Game Center support or not.
     
  5. thewiirocks

    thewiirocks Well-Known Member

    Aug 28, 2009
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    Expert Software Engineer
    I know it doesn't really help, but Game Center uses the Multitasking functionality introduced in 4.0. You may notice that when you launch a Game Center game, the GC app gets quietly started in the background.

    That (I think) is the primary reason why GC does not support 3G devices.
     
  6. Noodler

    Noodler Well-Known Member

    Dec 25, 2010
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    #6 Noodler, Jan 30, 2011
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2011
    Run

    I dont really need Game Center for leaderboards etc.
    I only need it to actually run the game and run multi player.
    THeWii

    Are you saying that my game if run on Game Center without my own server will not run on 3G devices?
     
  7. Razoric

    Razoric Well-Known Member

    I got your game, awesome game BTW.... and I didn't even realize you weren't logging my Game Center stuff. I just assumed it was. :eek: I would def advise that you just auto-log in Game Center devices.
     
  8. nvx

    nvx Well-Known Member

    Jan 7, 2011
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    Our game 3D Olympus Archery is GC only so I can provide you with some relevant figures :)

    Since release on January 4th:
    - Downloads: 616
    - GC Leaderboard Players: 145

    Or approx: 23%

    Not very high at all, but that is the gamble we took by not going with OpenFeint.

    Bear in mind that our game runs on minimum iOS 3.1 so many pre-4.x iOS devices would not support Game Center anyway.
    GC features get disabled on older hardware so it doesnt require GC at all to run normally.

    The game has a single highscore, which makes the GC Leaderboard very essential and relevant.
    Interestingly enough, only 7 of the 145 GC users have managed to achieve the highest possible score in the game till date.
     
  9. K?!

    K?! Well-Known Member

    Nov 5, 2010
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    alea iacta est
    Check out the iOS developer guidelines, section 6.3... Sorry I can't copy and paste it as it's a PDF.
     
  10. invulse

    invulse Well-Known Member

    6.3
    Developers that attempt to reverse lookup, trace, relate, associate, mine, harvest, or otherwise exploit Player IDs, alias, or other information obtained through the Game Center will be removed from the iOS Developer Program

    To me this just seems to be saying that you cannot exploit game center data for other purposes. In my case the game center Id would only be used to keeo track of user persistent data. Gun bros does something similar where it stores an online save of your game on their servers which is linked to your gc id , then if you log on with another device you can use your online saved data if you wish.
     

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