Michal Ždanský Game Center integration was certainly a great move by Apple. It unified the systems for leaderboards, achievements and enabled real-time online multiplayer, making it much easier for developers to implement such a system. But is that enough?
iOS devices have become a full-fledged gaming platform during their existence, and in addition to various casual games, there are also strong titles that excel in gameplay and graphics. Portions of older popular games, their remakes or completely unique games like it Infinity Blade draws players more and more to touch screens. Gaming on the iPhone, iPod and iPad has become mainstream, yet there is still a lot of room for improvement. That's why I've put together five things where Apple could still work to bring an even better gaming experience for players.
1. Support for turn-based games
Automatic search for teammates and subsequent real-time multiplayer is flawless. The system is very well tuned and for various games from Fruit Ninja po Infinity Blade serves excellent. But then there are those games that are completely impossible to play in real time. These include various turn-based strategies, board games or various word games, e.g. Words with Friends.
In these games, you often have to wait for long minutes for your opponent's turn, while you could, for example, be handling e-mail during his turn. In the above-mentioned game, it is solved smartly – every time you are on a turn, the game sends you a push notification. So you can play the game for several days and with several players at the same time. It's up to you how quickly you react, while your opponent doesn't have to stare blankly at the screen and watch your inaction.
This is exactly what Game Center lacks. Again, this system would be unified and there would not have to be different implementations of extras for each game. A single Game Center implementation would be enough.
2. Synchronization of game positions
Apple has been dealing with this problem for a long time. Currently, there is no simple general solution for backing up data from applications. Although each backup is saved to the computer or iCloud, there is no way to extract them separately. If you delete a played game, you have to play it again after a fresh installation. Thus, you are forced to keep games on your phone until you finish them, during which time they use up valuable megabytes unnecessarily.
It's an even worse problem if you're playing the same game on your iPad and iPhone/iPod touch at the same time. The game runs on each device separately, and if you want to play it on both devices, you need to have two games played, because Apple doesn't offer any tool to synchronize game positions between devices. Some developers have solved this problem at least by integrating iCloud, but such a service should be provided by Game Center.
3. Standard for gaming accessories
Gaming accessories for iOS devices are a chapter unto themselves. On the current market, we have several concepts that are supposed to facilitate playing on a display that does not offer any physical response and thus partially at least emulates the comfort of button control.
They exist from the portfolio of various manufacturers flinging whether Joystick-IT, which attach directly to the display and act as a physical link between your fingers and the display. Then there are more advanced toys like iControlpad, iCade or GamePad by 60beat, which turn an iPhone or iPad into a Sony PSP clone, a game machine or function as a separate gamepad connected by a cable. Even Apple has own patent for a similar controller.
All three of the last-mentioned accessories have one big flaw in their beauty – a small number of compatible games, which for each model is in the tens at most, but mostly in units of titles. At the same time, big game players like Electronic Arts whether Gameloft they completely ignore this accessory.
However, this situation could easily be changed. It would be enough if Apple added an API for hardware game control to the developer tools. Compatibility would then be independent of who makes the controller, through a unified API every supported game would be able to correctly process signals from any device that uses the API. The level of play would thus be raised by three levels, and controlling action games from a first-person perspective would suddenly become comfortable.
4. Game Center for Mac
In many ways, Apple is trying to bring iOS elements to OS X, which it showed with the latest version of the system, 10.7 Lion. So why not implement Game Center as well? More and more iOS games are appearing in the Mac App Store. In this way, saving positions could be solved in many ways, even between the two Macs you own, multiplayer would be simplified and the system of rankings and achievements would be unified.
There is currently a similar solution for Mac – Steam. This digital game distribution store is not only for sales, it also includes a gaming social network where you can interact with your friends and play online, compare scores, achieve achievements and last but not least, sync your game progress between devices, whether it is a Mac or a Windows machine. All under one roof. The Mac App Store already competes with Steam, so why not bring other functional things that work elsewhere?
5. Social model
Game Center's social options are severely limited. Although you can view your scores and achievements from games and compare them with friends, any deeper interaction is missing here. There is no option for you to communicate with others - either chat or voice communication during the game. And yet that could take gaming to a whole new level. Listening to the opponent on the other side trying and getting angry can be interesting entertainment after all. And if you don't care about it, you can simply turn this feature off.
Likewise, the ability to chat directly in the Game Center application would make sense. How many times do you know a given player only by his nickname, it doesn't have to be a person from your life at all. So why not exchange a few words with him, even if it was just to congratulate him on the victory? True, social networks are not exactly Apple's strong point, if we remember, for example, Ping in iTunes, which even a dog does not bark at today. Still, this experiment would be worth trying, all the more so because it works on rival Steam.
It's also a shame that you can't use the points you get for completed achievements in any way, they only work for comparing with other players. At the same time, Apple could use a similar system here as in the case Playstation Network or Xbox Live – each player could have his own avatar, for which he could, for example, buy clothes, improve his appearance and the like for points taken in the games. At the same time, he does not have to wander in the virtual world like v Playstation home, but it would still be a great, albeit infantile, added value rather than just bluntly increasing the point rating.
And how do you think it could contribute to a better gaming experience on Apple devices?
I agree above all with point 3, playing on an iPad would be a completely different experience. It's not bad like that, but games like Asphalt, for example, don't play well with a large device in hand, and a controller that can be connected to the hearing aid input/output would be great :)
In GameCenter I see completely meaningless scores for many games, obviously someone knows how to "hack" the encryption system that sends scores to GameCenter. It would require Apple to delete such absurdly high scores and ban players. I mean, for example, those games where the vast majority of players have a maximum of around 20 thousand, for example, but the top five have a score of maybe 100 billion = obvious fraud.
Most games can be hacked using a jailbreak. There are a lot of tutorials on youtube on how to do this.
This is exactly what annoys me too. I'm hacking Fruit Ninja, I'm surprised the glass on my iPad doesn't melt, but then there are some who have scores in the millions. The same with Temple Run, for example. What joy should I have from it then, when my efforts are defacto useless.
It's primarily the fault of the players (cheaters) who do this. That they think of such a thing. The second fault is that Apple "allows" them to do it.
Something like this couldn't happen on Steam. I've been a Steam user since the early years when everyone made fun of it and it didn't have any other games besides Half Life. And how does he look today?
By that I mean it probably needs time. As the player base on Mac and iOS expands, an adequate environment must surely be prepared for it. But when Apple gets a lot of sleep, someone else will take advantage.
This is a nice article! I have nothing to add. Or yes, I'll deliver something. It's strange that Apple hasn't come up with something like this a long time ago. After all, games are big business for him, and gone are the days when the iPhone was presented as a purely tie-dye phone with that strange built-in application for tracking stocks...
Totally agree with Martin - GameCenter makes no sense until hacked scores are checked or prevented.
I would say that the first thing we need for this is HW. The iMac is great, the MacMini too, but every PC gamer will laugh at them. The first thing that should arrive is something like a Cube, or "MacPro mini" in short, something where you can replace (expand) the graphics card. A typical example: the father has an iMac in the extreme edition, the fault of which is that X-Plane 10 runs smoothly, only the second GB of GFX RAM. Unfortunately, with Apple there is no other solution than to sell and buy a new whole machine. There is no Mac Pro solution either, because a year and a half old thing would be fine if it had more modern GFX cards and Thunderbolt.
I don't want to write nonsense, but I think that the graphics and the iMac can be replaced unofficially. It was probably on iFixit or something similar. Try googling.
I'm not even sure if you can only put the graphics that Apple uses, or if you can put some other type as well.
But in theory it should work. We know Apple uses laptop graphics. So the exchange should be possible. In the end, the question remains whether it is not solved as, for example, with the Mac Pro, where the graphics slots have a slightly different dimension and thus you cannot put any PCI Express Graphics there.
Good article, I totally agree with many of the points, although I'm not sure if some of them are somehow no longer working. If I remember correctly, support for turn-based games was talked about during the announcement of iOS 5. Otherwise, I'm not quite sure about the last paragraph. On Xbox Live, nothing can be bought with points from achievements, Microsoft has completely different points for this purpose, which must always be bought. A slightly different thing is that for certain achievements the players will get a game picture, but that is not often seen twice anymore. It is much more common for the creators of a newly released game to make a set of clothing accessories that the player can purchase. I don't see if it's the same on PSN
Well, if I had to choose a single thing that I miss the most, then I would definitely call for the synchronization of saps not only between iOS, but mainly iOS/Mac. Because I also have Angry Birds on my Mac, but I upload them. I'm tired of playing it all over again…