Let The Games Begin!

Apple’s grip on the mobile gaming market tightens with the iPhone’s Game Center app in the iOS 4.1 update.

Game Center basically provides the infrastructure for Apple’s iOS games to offer multi-player and leaderboard sharing options. Like iTunes' new Ping, Game Center has a social networking aspect to it - letting you add friends and see their status as well as which games they’ve been playing and their high scores. Unfortunately sometimes it lets you get a little too social, as I’ll touch on in a minute.

Don’t get too excited about Game Center if you’re still using an iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G or the first-gen iPod touch - you’ve been left out in the cold as Apple tried to encourage people to upgrade.

When you first launch Game Center you need to login with your iTunes account details and then create a profile, which is basically just choosing your location and a username (it’s another land rush, so get in early if you want a common name). You can also nominate extra email addresses which people can use to find you as a friend, which is handy if your iTunes account doesn’t use your primary email address.

There are a few ways to add people to your friend list. Firstly you can click on the Requests tab and then enter someone’s email address, which will attempt to auto-complete using your phone’s address book. When you’ve sent the invitation, your friend receives an email with a link to the Apple website telling them how to create a Game Center account and accept your invitation.

If your friend has already created an account, you can send them an invite using their Game Center username. If their iPhone is logged into Game Center, they’ll get a pop-up message with a bloody loud trumpet fanfare asking if they want to be your friend. Game Center stays logged in, in the background, so perhaps try not to invite your friends in the middle of the night. You’ll get a pop-up to confirm they’ve accepted, then you can see them in your friend list.

What’s strange is that changing the defaults under Settings/Notifications/Game Center makes no difference. I sat down with two iPhone 4s and switched off all Game Center notifications on one, but there were still pop-ups and trumpets when that phone was invited to join a game or received a friend request from the other phone. This is going to be a major hassle if spammers start to target the service. Unless you’re a keen social gamer, I’d recommend logging out when you’re not using Game Center.

When you’re first setting up Game Center you’ve the option to disable “Find Me By Email”, which you would think means friends will only be able to find you if they know your Game Center username. This doesn’t seem to be the case. I had a friend disable “Find Me By Email” and I could still email him an invite, or else use his Game Center username. The setting, and the fact you can add extra email addresses, implies there is some way to search for users - as you might with Skype or Facebook - but I can't find such an option.

What’s really weird is that I had someone show up in my Friend list that I’m pretty sure I didn’t invite or accept. His username was Adam but it's clearly not me, so perhaps I invited him by mistake or perhaps Game Center got its wires crossed - I’m not sure. I sent him a message by removing him as a friend and then reinviting him and changing the default text, but he hasn’t replied. Once someone accepts you as a friend you can’t keep sending them messages unless you unfriend them again, but I don't want to hassle the poor guy too much.

Once you’ve found a friend, wanted or otherwise, you can see which Game Center-compatible apps they have installed and click on them to buy them from the app store (I can hear Steve Jobs’ evil villain laugh from here as he racks up another sale). You can also tap Find Game Center Games in the Games tab, which will take you to a list in the iTunes store.
by Adam Turner

Via smh.com.au