building social games

developers

Prashant Sridharangithub.com/CoolAssPuppy

@CoolAssPuppy

Building Social Games

Thursday, May 2, 13

iOS & Android Devices - Time Spent

Source: Flurry Analyticshttp://blog.flurry.com/bid/!"#$%/Flurry-Five-Year-Report-It-s-an-App-World-The-Just-Web-Lives-in-It

!"#Browser

$%#Other

&#Utility

&#Enterta-inment

'!#Playing Games

$&#Facebook

&' (&&'

"&'

Thursday, May 2, 13

!"#

$!#

US top %"" grossing iOS apps

Source: App Figures

Thursday, May 2, 13

!!#

$"#

US top %"" grossing Android apps

Source: App Figures

Thursday, May 2, 13

On average in March, how many games were added to the Apple App Store every day?

!"#Source: ($)Apps.bizhttp://()*apps.biz/app-store-metrics/?mpage=submission

Thursday, May 2, 13

!"#MGamer MAU

$"%MMobile MAU

%.%B+Global MAU

Thursday, May 2, 13

Facebook Provides Unique Social Channels

2012

Requests Sharing Scores &Achievements

Open Graph

Thursday, May 2, 13

Scenarios for Using Facebook Social Channels

2012

(. Invites$. Sending Gifts%. Leaderboards). Tournaments". Bragging+. Challenges

Thursday, May 2, 13

Sending InvitesCustomFriend Picker

Thursday, May 2, 13

Sending GiftsInvitationswith Value

Thursday, May 2, 13

Sending GiftsInvitationswith Value

‣Q: Why use this over native push notifications?

- Cross-Platform- Works with users who’ve not installed your app

Thursday, May 2, 13

Social LeaderboardsPeer Pressure

Bubble WitchSaga

Thursday, May 2, 13

Weekly TournamentsBuild regular engagement

DiamondDash

Thursday, May 2, 13

BraggingFinding natural moments to share

new share dialog screenshot needed

Thursday, May 2, 13

Start with Facebook Login

User’s identity Appearing in SearchUser’s friends Getting Distribution

Thursday, May 2, 13

Make Facebook Login Prominent

Explain what you’re going to do with user data and upsell on the value of Facebook Login

Thursday, May 2, 13

Ask for Read Permissions First

[FBSession      openActiveSessionWithReadPermissions:@[@”email”]                                                    allowLoginUI:YES                                          completionHandler:    ^(FBSession  *session,  FBSessionState  status,  NSError  *error)      {          //handle  result      }];

Thursday, May 2, 13

Ask for Write Permissions In Context

FBSession  *fbSession  =  [FBSession  activeSession];                            [fbSession            requestNewPublishPermissions:@[@"publish_actions"]                                                                                              defaultAudience:FBSessionDefaultAudienceFriends    completionHandler:^(FBSession  *session,  NSError*  error)  {        //handle  result                                      }];

Thursday, May 2, 13

Support Free & Paid Versions of Your App

FBSession  *fbSession  =  [[FBSession  alloc]  initWithAppID:@"480369938658210"                                                                                        permissions:permissions                                                                                urlSchemeSuffix:@"free"                                                                          tokenCacheStrategy:nil];

Thursday, May 2, 13

Requests

Thursday, May 2, 13

Get Existing Users to Recruit New Users

Thursday, May 2, 13

User Flow for Requests

Sending Receive Push Notification Light up notification jewel

Thursday, May 2, 13

User Flow for Requests

Sending Receive Push Notification Light up notification jewel

Thursday, May 2, 13

User Flow for Requests

Receive Push Notification Light up notification jewel Appear in notification list

Thursday, May 2, 13

User Flow for Requests

Receive Push Notification Cross-Platform(Web / iOS / Android /

Mobile Web)

Light up notification jewel Appear in notification list

Thursday, May 2, 13

Sending a Request

NSString  *message  =  [NSString  stringWithFormat:@"I  just  smashed  %d  friends!  Can  you  beat  it?",  nScore];                    [FBWebDialogs  presentRequestsDialogModallyWithSession:nil                                                                                            message:message                                                                                                title:@”Invite  Friend”                                                                                      parameters:params                                                                                            handler:nil];

Thursday, May 2, 13

Frictionless Requests

▪Automatically sends future requests without prompting the user

▪Useful for Games to send a “Your Turn” notification, to send lives/gifts to friends

Thursday, May 2, 13

Request Filtering

GET https://graph.facebook.com/USER_ID/friends?fields=devices

▪What if you don’t support all platforms?

▪Restrict Requests only to users that support your platforms...

▪Can query the set of devices a user has via the Graph API

▪Send the result of the query to your native Friend Selector

Thursday, May 2, 13

Demo: Sending Requests

Thursday, May 2, 13

Advanced Filtering

NSString  *fql  =  @”SELECT  uid,  devices  FROM  user  WHERE  uid  IN  (SELECT  uid2  FROM  friend  WHERE  uid1  =  me())  and  is_app_user  =  0”;

[FBRequestConnection  startWithGraphPath:@"/fql"                                                          parameters:@{@”q”:  fql}                                                          HTTPMethod:@"GET"                                            completionHandler:^(FBRequestConnection  *connection,                                                                                    id  result,                                                                                    NSError  *error)  {                                            //parse  list                                            }];

▪Remove friends who are already using the app

▪Send the result to to your custom Friend Selector

Thursday, May 2, 13

Deep Linking from Requests

fb[APP_ID]://authorize#expires_in=[ACCESS_TOKEN_EXPIRATION]        &access_token=[USER_ACCESS_TOKEN]        &target_url=https://apps.facebook.com/[APP_NAME_SPACE]/?request_ids=[COMMA_SEPARATED_REQUESTIDs]&ref=notif&app_request_type=user_to_user

Thursday, May 2, 13

Build Your Own Friend Selector

▪Build your own friend selector for better results

▪Use your game’s artwork for a more consistent user experience

▪Native dialogs will perform better

▪Send the selected friends to the Facebook Requests Dialog

Thursday, May 2, 13

Thursday, May 2, 13

Sharing

Thursday, May 2, 13

Using the New Native Share Dialog

[FBDialogs presentShareDialogWithLink:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://yoururl.com/"] name:@"Checkout how awesome I am" caption:@"See if you can beat me!" description:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"I just scored %d points!] picture:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://youurl.com/yourimage.jpg"] clientState:nil handler:nil];

Thursday, May 2, 13

Sharing

Thursday, May 2, 13

Demo: Feed Dialog

Thursday, May 2, 13

Share Interesting Moments

Thursday, May 2, 13

Support Deep Linking when Sharing

▪ Feed and Timeline stories link directly to the native app

▪ Don’t just send users to a generic title screen, provide context

▪ Parse target_url to provide a contextual experience

Thursday, May 2, 13

Scores & Achievements

2012

Thursday, May 2, 13

Graph API for Scores▪ Simple API, only for

games

▪ Post an integer score for a player

▪ We generate stories automatically

▪ These stories are only for desktop Facebook

▪ ...but the Scores API is still useful for mobile...

Thursday, May 2, 13

Example: Publishing Scores

NSMutableDictionary*  params  =      [NSMutableDictionary  dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:                                                                                          [NSString  stringWithFormat:@"%d",  nScore],  @"score",                                                                                          nil];                        FBRequest  *req  =  [[FBRequest  alloc]  initWithSession:[FBSession  activeSession]                                                                                    graphPath:[NSString  stringWithFormat:@"%@/scores",  playerFBID]                                                                                  parameters:params                                                                                  HTTPMethod:@"POST"];

[req  startWithCompletionHandler:^(FBRequestConnection  *connection,  id  result,  NSError  *error)  {}];

Thursday, May 2, 13

Creating a Social Scoreboard

GET https://graph.facebook.com/APP_ID/scores? access_token=USER_ACCESS_TOKEN

"data": [ { "user": { "name": "Christine Abernathy", "id": "1424840234" }, "score": 106, }, { "user": { "name": "Amir Naor", "id": "627802916" }, "score": 57 }, ... ]

Thursday, May 2, 13

Demo: Social Scoreboard

Thursday, May 2, 13

Creating a Tournament

DELETE https://graph.facebook.com/USER_ID/scores/

DELETE https://graph.facebook.com/APP_ID/scores/

Delete individual user score

Delete all user scores

Easily delete scores, per-user or all users and run weekly tournaments

Thursday, May 2, 13

Achievements API

▪Define a set of achievements a player can earn in your game

▪Each achievement can be earned only once

▪Publishes on user’s Timeline, appears in News Feed

Thursday, May 2, 13

Managing Achievements

<html><head><meta  property="og:type"  content="game.achievement"/><meta  property="og:title"  content="50  Score!"/><meta  property="og:description"  content="Smash  50  friends  in  1  round"/><meta  property="og:url"  content="http://www.friendsmash.com/achievement_50.html"/><meta  property="og:image"  content="http://www.friendsmash.com/images/achievement_50.png"/><meta  property="game:points"  content="50"/><title>Friend  Smash!  -­‐  Achievement:  50  Score!</title></head><body><p>Friend  Smash!  -­‐  Achievement:  50  Score!</p>

<img  src="http://www.friendsmash.com/images/achievement_50.png"  /></body></html>

POST https://graph.facebook.com/me/achievements& achievement=http://site.com/ach1.html& access_token=USER_ACCESS_TOKEN

Thursday, May 2, 13

Open Graph

Thursday, May 2, 13

Custom Open Graph Actions for Games

▪Custom actions and objects, tailored to your game

▪Publishes on the user Timeline and Newsfeed

▪Represents core gameplay interactions

▪Allows you to differentiate your game

Thursday, May 2, 13

2012

Requests Sharing Scores &Achievements

Open Graph

Thursday, May 2, 13