Richter - Beginning iOS Social Games

Kyle Richter 2013

Kyle Richter 1

(1)

Abstract

Welcome to Beginning iOS Social Games ! This book is designed to walk you through the process of adding Game Kit, Game Center, and other social functionality into your iOS apps and games. It is centered on a sample game called UFOs that you will be introduced to later in this chapter. However, if you have an existing app or game to which you want to add social functionality, you may use that project instead. This book is written as a reference and resource tool to aid you in the process of adding social functions into your iOS app. Although I recommend you read it from beginning to end to learn the most about the technologies covered, that is not a requirement. Every chapter stands on its own. You can freely skip ahead to the chapters that are relevant to your project needs and quickly implement that functionality into your app.

Welcome to Beginning iOS Social Games ! This book is designed to walk you through the process of adding Game Kit, Game Center, and other social functionality into your iOS apps and games. It is centered on a sample game called UFOs that you will be introduced to later in this chapter. However, if you have an existing app or game to which you want to add social functionality, you may use that project instead. This book is written as a reference and resource tool to aid you in the process of adding social functions into your iOS app. Although I recommend you read it from beginning to end to learn the most about the technologies covered, that is not a requirement. Every chapter stands on its own. You can freely skip ahead to the chapters that are relevant to your project needs and quickly implement that functionality into your app.

While this book covers a number of aspects of social gaming, its focus is Apples social gaming platform Game Kit, and by extension Game Center. When Apple announced Game Kit on March 17, 2009, it was presented as an answer to the difficulty of real-time networking on iOS devices, which until that point had been challenging. Game Kit added support for Bluetooth and LAN as well as voice chat services. Shortly after, Apple announced the Game Center addition to Game Kit as part of iOS 4.0. With the newly announced SDK version, Apple brought a wealth of new featuresthe Game Center being the most important to the scope of this book. With iOS 5, Game Center once again saw additions, most notably the addition of turn-based gaming to the framework. Apple continued the tradition of supporting Game Center in iOS 6 with the addition of Game Center Challenges. In addition to the Game Center changes, Apple added OS-level support for Twitter in iOS 5 and for Facebook in iOS 6. With the introduction of iOS 7 at WWDC 2013 Game Center saw a complete redesign from the ground up to match the flatter look and feel introduced with UIKit.

Commonly developers in the iOS community have a tendency to think of Game Center as a separate set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). This is a fallacy. Game Center is an integral part of Game Kit. The two complement one another and work hand in hand. You will see much evidence of this in the following pages. For the purpose of this book, we are going to address both of these technologies together as Game Kit; however, we may still refer to Game Centerspecific functionality by its proper name.

The first ten chapters of this book are dedicated to Game Kit functionality; the remaining chapters cover additional social elements such as Store Kit and In App Purchasing in .

Please note that despite their names, Game Kit and Game Center are not designed for just games. Although recently Apple has begun cracking down on Game Center technology being used in non-games. Some developers have received the following type of rejection email from Apple.

The intended use of Game Center is to complement game apps or game functionality within an app. However, we noticed that your app does not contain any game play or game features.

These rejections seem to apply mainly to the use of leaderboards and achievements in non-gaming apps. The argument can easily be made that adding a leaderboard or achievement system to your app adds a gameplay element. If you happen to receive this rejection you still have the option of appealing it, I have yet to hear from a developer who has not successfully appealed on these grounds. There havent been any instances of rejection for using Game Kit networking in any app that I have observed.