From Macworld: Discussion with Eros Resmini of OpenFeint

At Macworld we sat down with Eros Resmini of OpenFeint, and tried to find out as much as we could about the iPhone social network service in its current state, and any info regarding future plans. Note: We don't have much verbatim, so we have summed up most of what he said. Their main goal is to maintain an open network, and never change from that basic feature that has helped them with mass appeal thus far. "Build a really cool player experience that they love and listen to developers, but never restirct anyone from using our technology." Any developer can add OpenFeint into their game, and it has gone through a massive transformation in relatively little time. They thought, "Why don't we take things that were successful inside auroa feint and make it availble to everyone." There are currently over 1000 games using OpenFeint, and they're growing at about 10 games per day. Also they are at 12 million players right now. The core platform will always be free, but they are considering a premium version for developers who want to pay for it. The OpenFeint team is working on creating a multiplayer system that developers can then incorporate into their games. It's just beginning with a few select developers to test, but by the end of the year any developer will be able to include the functionality. With all of their data they have potential to suggest games to a wide audience. Currently they do so with their spotlight feature where they showcase their picks of great games. Also the favorites feature, and connection between users lets you see what your friends are playing and liking as another form of suggestions. "For someone who loves games we are a great resource." They have a Free OpenFeint game every day promotion, and have a connection with the freeappaday service though separate games are usually offered. According to Eros games have definitely succeeded using the service catapulting up into the top free games lists. Though they don't have enough stats regarding if there is revenue success. We know all of the capabilities of their service from the user side, but what about the developer side? OpenFeint has a couple of neat features developers don't normally take advantage of. The biggest one is peer to peer challenges so you can play a game session, it captures game data, and sends it to friends of your choice. Also developers can take the APIs and pull the data into the game not needing to go to a separate screen. OpenFeint does have a lot of things in the works, and many things going on simultaneously. The newest thing is OpenFeint X which now allows developers to create games with micro-transactions in them. This allows a store front architecture easily for developers. It's currently only in private beta, and developers have to request to be included with a game proposal. The service will be somewhat comparable to what Zynga has done with their most notable title Farmville. Another neat feature they have created is a sortable games catalog which has been absent for so long. Now you can view all games in the OpenFeint catalog, and sort by category and included features. For example you can find all racing games with achievements to truly find your next favorite game. Another idea floating around is to have an OpenFeint leaderboard of total OpenFeint achievement points by users. A new potential area of work is making a more synchronous experience of achievement points to combat some games with too many points for easy tasks, and others with hard ones worth hardly any points. The OpenFeint symbol in app icons is taking over, but it isn't their working, but rather viral, and picking up steam. Some players only want games with OpenFeint, and this is helping some apps stand out. Eros did confirm that "we are defintiely going to be doing things on the iPad." He couldn't provide any specifics, but an alpha is already out for developers, and the stand alone openfeint app will be ready at launch. With no specifics, the possibilities sound great by providing all of the great OpenFeint features but not taking you to a whole new screen, and instead overlaying them on the game. Before OpenFeint there was the game Aurora Feint, and its few spin offs. Well the main game developer who is now the CEO has gone back to game development. Jason Citron is working on a few things, and the entire staff is really excited about it. We have a few details on one game, code named VLS. It's a game that gives you some levels, and then everything else will be in-app purchases/micro transactions. The game sounds to be a sim type game that continues after you exit, and is potentially similar to Animal Crossing. There are a few different titles in the works too, but sadly no details. That's about everything OpenFeint at the moment. One other note is that the next game in the gold program is described as "f***ing awesome" and will be the second title with the distinction with the first being Fieldrunners. OpenFeint has huge ambitions, but overall, "eventually we want to make a lot of money at this, but we don't want to do it at the expense of the user." Let us know your thoughts about anything OpenFeint. Do you prefer OpenFeint over similar services? Will you use their new catalog search feature? What do you think of the logo on the app icons? Will you be interested in new games from them or their next gold game? Finally would you like AppAdvice to make a Top 50 OpenFeint games list with a similar style to our Top 100 Games list?

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