1st Impressions

In the beginning, there was Aurora Feint, a really cool game that offered something really unique…a social platform that enabled game players to communicate with each other and share scores and such.  Then the developers decided to open up the technology to others, and OpenFeint was born.  Now I’ve seen several attempts to create some sort of iPhone based community before, it they usually reminded me of the old bumper sticker, “Suppose you threw a war and nobody came.”  It was like that.  Nobody was at the party.  But OpenFeint is different.  Folks showed up to the party.  And now, it seems that every week produces more games that are “OpenFeint enabled.”  So I thought I’d give some first impressions of it.

Once I went back through my library of iPhone apps and started enabling the OpenFeint capabilities, I was surprised at how many I had.  By editing the random accounts associated with my iPhone ID and consolidating all of them under one ID, all my high scores are stored under one ID.  OpenFeint also displays all my enabled games (a couple of screens worth at this point) on my profile there.  But storing high scores and comparing them to global leader boards is just the beginning of what OpenFeint will do.  By importing your Facebook and Twitter friends, it will not only show you what games they are playing, but also allow you to chat with them as well.  Chats can be in open forums or in game-specific rooms.  The OpenFeint system also utilizes Facebook-like walls, although it has significantly less information on it that would help you identify friends from their OpenFeint IDs.

From what I understand, the OpenFeint platform is free for developers to use.  This might be one reason why it is so popular.  It offers considerable functionality which doesn’t have to be created by each developer.  It isn’t just the “little developers” though.  Game powerhouses like Chillingo and Astraware are also putting it in their games.  I had to wonder about this marketing strategy of “giving away the store” though.  How does it make money?  If it doesn’t cover costs, how will it stay in business?  Turns out that the platform not only shows you what games your friends are playing (or played last), but also allows you to purchase them.  I’m sure there is some kind of profit-sharing or commissions going on there.  Also, if the game turns out to be a huge hit, developers are expected to offset some of the costs of their OpenFeint participation.

The platform is a great start at something with huge potential, but that does not mean that it cannot improve.  Besides the issue of it importing friends without really telling you who that OpenFeint ID belongs to, but it also does not seem to allow you to comment on their “wall”.  Also, the chat room feature is nice in case you want to ask strangers about a particular level in a game or something, it shows player ID’s and what game they are playing, but no time-stamp that would indicate how recent (or live) any comments are.  Another thing that is a bit frustrating is that every game that uses the platform has a different method of gaining access to it.  Sometimes these are hard to find, and once discovered, only allow for the option to add your scores to the global leaderboard or something.  There doesn’t appear to be any kind of consistency in implementation.  I’m afraid that poor developer implementation reflects on the platform itself.  I’d also love to see a stand-alone OpenFeint application that would let users create chat rooms that their friends could join that would allow for push notifications of chat requests, wall comments, and game recommendations.  Right now, OpenFeint is open to developers, but not really “open” for users.  You can see what games a friend may have played, but not when or if they are online right now.  Unless you happen to catch them playing the exact same game the same time you are, chances are that you will not be able to catch them in any kind of chat notification.  Finally, it would be nice if there was an incorporation of something more on the line of game forums in the game.  That way, in case you can’t find any live help, you could post messages or read messages in a forum type environment or send users friend requests or private messages. I’m afraid that if OpenFeint does not solidify their place as the leader in “communities” with enhancements like this, some of their recent competitors like PlayHaven or Plus+ will increasingly take market share from them.

As comprehensive as I tried to make this “review”, OpenFeint is best experienced.  There are free apps out there that implement it to one degree or another.  AppShopper.com is a great place to find them.  Just search on OpenFeint and sort on price.  The free app OpenChat gives a nice interface to OpenFeint general chat rooms, friends, and so forth if you would like to give it a try.