I hear what you are saying Justin. It's tough to depend on services that may or may not work all the time. Worse.. knowing whether or not a service will be around or not. No matter how fancy the site is behind the service, how robust it is, there is no telling how long a service provider can financially support the service. I've fought over similar issues.. paying a monthly fee to host a service is not cheap.. depending on needs of said service. For a basic roll-your-own, you can host at appengine, various java hosted sites, etc for little money. Will the bandwidth scale if your game takes off and your roll-your-own is suddenly inundated with requests?
This is my concern.. rolling your own means not only do you need to know a bit about server side, be it ruby, php, java, etc.. but you also need to know how to scale up should the need arise. If you just put your server side on some appengine or other host and have no clue how to handle large loads.. then you better not consider writing a game that may take off. :) It's a great problem to have.. if you have the time/resources to solve it. But if your service fails miserably and your game can't store scores or whatever.. then your reviews will reflect it, gamers will shy away, and now you are playing a catch up game to get the service able to handle things.. and then hopefully some how let the gamers that left know you are back in action.. etc. Did you lose loyalty at that point. Ugh.. lots to worry about. Using a service that supports all this in my opinion is the better way to go. The main thing is, as a developer using a service, I'd look to provide some sort of my own interface to support multiple services.. should the need arise. Maybe.. time again is not always on our side. The point is.. if I use Service A with their SDK.. and it fails, runs out of money, or changes APIs often... then I'd want another option possibly to use..without having to rewrite all my code that uses service A. Implementing some sort of service of my own that I can then re-implement for a different service at least provides a little bit of comfort should the service I currently use go belly up. The flip side of this is being able to license or pay a monthly fee to host your own service that is ready made for you. But as many pointed out, android/iPhone game developers already make little if any money..paying for a service be it one they can download and install/host themselves, or utilize a hosted service like OpenScore.. is not ideal. It has to be free to the developers that would use it. On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 10:26 AM, Justin Giles <[email protected]> wrote: > So I am curious, what sort of features for a service like ScoreLoop are >> sought after by developers? I mean, if a service offers a gamer profile >> capability, is that somethng that a lot of game developers would make use >> of, especially if the service works across different platforms that the game >> developer may target? I would think the ability to have a user "log in" to a >> profile that allows them to keep track of all games they play, scores, >> achievements would be nice to have. With services like ScoreLoop and >> OpenFeignt (although both target iPhone still, ScoreLoop has some sort of >> SDK for Android but it's not readily accessible from their site like the >> iPhone SDK is), why would you not use them, being free, over say rolling >> your own? If they offer a simple "high scores", as well as a user >> profile/gamer tag, and possibly things like downloadable content managment, >> micro-transaction processing for in-game addons/goods, what deters a game >> developer from using them? Is it the complexity of the API? Having to depend >> on a SDK from the service provider? > > > I see it as a couple of things. Please note, there are pros/cons > intermixed in my list... > > 1) Do you have the time to roll out your own? Is it worth the delayed > release to roll your own as opposed to releasing earlier to build a user > base (after having implemented something like ScoreLoop)? > > 2) Do you want to rely on a 3rd party SDK being stable? Do you think that > the service will be around in 3 months, 6 months, 12 months? What could be > the damaging effects of the service going away without a backup solution > ready to go? > > 3) Do you want to make your users sign up for yet another services where > they need to remember a username and password? Are you prepared to provide > support to the user in the event that the service is screwing them over? (I > know it's the services responsibility, but YOU will ultimately be blamed in > the Market reviews) > > 4) Do you NEED everything that a service provides? Could you make do with > a subset and rolling your own? > > My personal take on it is the following (keep in mind that this may be > unique to my situation): For something like game functionality, I really > don't want that in the hands of a 3rd party service or SDK. If anything > goes wrong, it's on me and I may not be able to fix the problems if it's the > services fault, thus my reviews go down. I would prefer to roll my own > system, albeit not cross platform and probably not as full featured. That > way I can own up to any problems that there may be and I am the one > responsible for fixing them. That way I can create a much better > relationship with my users, especially when problems do occur. You would > not believe how grateful users are when you respond immediately to problems > and have fixes shortly thereafter. Working with a service like those listed > above, it could take weeks to get something resolved. Users would be very > unhappy. Also, you aren't tying the user to yet another login service, one > that they may not really trust (due to lack of understanding or service > advertising). > > That being said....yes, it would be a lot of work to roll your own. I'm > still waffling as to which way I'm going to go as I really don't have too > much time on my hands right now to roll my own. Is it important to me to > get these features added in? Yes! Would I rather roll my own? Yes! But > time to develop and time to release is what I'm struggling with. I really > don't want my users to be tied to a services. I also don't want to depend > on a 3rd party service for how my game operates. I think a lot of indie > developers feel the same way as I do. They don't want to relinquish control > of their pride and joy. > > Justin > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Android Developers" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<android-developers%[email protected]> > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+ > unsubscribegooglegroups.com or reply to this email with the words "REMOVE > ME" as the subject. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. 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