| 11 September 2010
Earlier this week iOS 4.1 was released for the iPhone (and iPod Touch), which sports its new cross-game feature, Game Center. Before Game Center, there were several social gaming extensions available on iPhone apps, with OpenFeint being the largest and most similar to the experience you'll find on its big brothers, XBLA and PSN. I had high hopes for the service, since Apple usually does a great job of skimming down the details and only leaving you with the most essential features; unfortunately, my initial impressions of Game Center are less than I expected.
Game Center supports three critical tiers of social gaming - multiplayer, leaderboards, and achievements. The leaderboards look fine to me, and I haven't tried the multiplayer yet, but it was the achievement process that I was really looking forward to getting my hands on. The achievements themselves work well, although there doesn't seem to be a standardized point configuration - some games have 900 achievement points while others have 1000. But what really seems like a sidestep on Apple's part is the fact that there is no gamerscore - your total achievement points - instead, you can only see how many achievements a friend has unlocked. In other words, my "gamerscore" is 1 - because I've unlocked a 5-point achievement for finishing a game's tutorial; but if I had unlocked a 500-point achievement for beating the game, I would still have a "gamerscore" of 1. Without a genuine gamerscore, there are no real incentives to go for any of the big-point achievements.
Hopefully, Apple will upgrade Game Center in the future, to include real gamerscores, a way to access Game Center besides just your iPhone, app rating integration, and the ability to find friends based on your iPhone's contacts. As it stands right now, Game Center can't hold a candle to OpenFeint and their Game Spotlight app (which features a new free game every day), but with its mega infrastructure Apple should be able to overtake OpenFeint someday. It's a sluggish start, but Game Center does most things right and could be awesome provided it gains some needed features soon.
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