As the concept of the “social graph” began to gain focus and attention, a buzz around the notion of multi-player social games began to grow as well. How cool would it be to play a game of pong between two users of a social network, right? And yet most multi-player games are limited to Chess, Checkers, and Poker. It’s not that there’s a shortage of companies developing casual games—in fact, money is being poured into the space in truck loads. Yet the multi-player games we were teased about have failed to materialize so far. Don’t despair though because salvation is upon us and it comes in the form of Come2Play’s multi-player API.
In my initial review of Come2Play I dubbed them the “Ning of social gaming networks“. Today they are upping the ante by putting out an open source multi-player API aimed at allowing Flash game developers to create real multi-player games.
The logic behind Come2Play’s move is to free game developers from matters revolving around the infrastructure necessary to drive multi-player games. The company believes it can catalyze a multi-player casual game revolution by removing this barrier and doing all the heavy lifting itself, specifically: hosting the infrastructure, providing emulations, and delivering distribution and reporting.
Released under the GNU Lesser General Public License, the API currently supports two players and will be gradually ratcheted-up to include a theoretically unlimited number of players. Developers will be able to create multiplayer games using ActionScript 2/3 which they should feel more comfortable with than server side scripting languages such as .NET, Java, and PHP. Social features that can be leveraged through the API include: Game rooms for up to 60 players, chat, leader board, ranking system, tokens, reward system and an ad-space-sharing mechanism.
Come2Play’s API could be perceived as a “honey trap” for several reasons. First, game developers can focus on developing games, rather than developing and maintaining infrastructure. Second, they get to keep all in-game ad revenue. Third, the developers get instant game distribution through Come2Play’s publisher network. Plus, all games can be automatically ported to Facebook and OpenSocial apps.
And now comes the trap (it is not as bad as it sounds). First, games built upon the API must be hosted on Come2Play’s infrastructure. Second, the games will be published in Come2Play’s game galleries and channels by default. Third, Come2Play reserves the right to display ads in the game wrappers and in the pre-game loading screen. The company splits this revenue 50/50 with publishers. CEO Alon Barzilay indicates that the company is open to flexible options in regards to the last two points. However, this will have to be done on a business development level.
So no more excuses… Can someone please develop multi-player pong for me…?
Is this really an old timey asp site, as in microsoft asp, as in state of the art in 2000? Check out this URL…
http://www.come...m/Developer.asp
how embarassing
It could be written in COBOL on stone tablets for all I care, as long as the API is developer-friendly.
Well said! Plus as long as the interface looks sharp and user friendly, which I think Come2Play delivers..
Nonoba has already done this:
http://www.nono...yerapi/overview
And there’s a whole slew of other multiplayer Flash APIs in the works right now too.
nonoba give an API which relies on you learning an entirely new scripting language , come2play allow you the same integration with just using a set of functions
nonoba.com has been providing a similar API for months now
its not open source though
http://nonoba.com/developers
nonoba’s API requires server side scripting in .Net!
In contrast, Come2Play’s API is ALL in flash!
try developing a game in both API’s and tell me which one is better
I’d hardly say money is being “poured into the space by the truckloads” by citing TrionWorlds’ 70M series C. Money going to a studio/ IP development isn’t money going into the gaming economy as a whole, which I can tell you, isn’t happening by the truckloads.
Investors need to wake up to the gaming space; bigger than Hollywood last 3 years, bigger than music last year – where are all these savvy investors at?
Money is going in at a really fast rate. My own table http://bit.ly/3xqylM shows $350 million for this year alone and Adam’s list http://bit.ly/4ql5sV shows another $150 million for European companies in 2006-2008.
Neither list captures all of the deals, so the totals are definitely higher than that.
K1ller: game software doesn’t not even nearly beat Hollywood’s total output when you consider also DVDs and TV network sales. This is a common fallacy which compares the box office receipts to total game software sales. The total game software sales for year 2007 globally were estimate at $37 billion and growing around 15% CAGR. Even music globally is still bigger (around $50 billion, but going downwards).
Games software is bound to go past music sales in a couple of years, but we aren’t there yet.
Oh and cafe.com just released a similar, but far more featured API with e.g. virtual goods support http://openbar.cafe.com/.
Three Ring’s Whirled has a very impressive system (multiplayer + virtual world) for developers http://bit.ly/3MAKYa
simplicity is better than more features. come2play’s API has everything needed to built a multiplayer game. other features like tokens, rating, virtual goods,etc, should be handled by the container, not the game.
How about cross-plataform gaming? Will it support something like multiplayer pong from a PC player against an iPhone player? Now that’s what I wanted to do…
real man and developers dont make games in flash.
ducks away
http://playum.com >> open source multi-player API Cool
I can’t believe this entire article was written without mention of Game Trust. Nearly every bullet point cited here was at least attempted by Game Trust over 3 years ago (albiet with little success). Leaderboards? Chat? High Scores? Ranking and matching systems? Game Trust’s platform had all of those things. Game Trust raised ~ $20 million, spluttered along for about 4 years and was ultimately acquired by Real Networks about a year ago for a firesale price.
While the idea of being “infrastructure for casual games” sounds good in theory, there are harsh realities when it comes supporting a multitude of small-time, low-budget developers while simultaneously trying to monetize your platform and secure distribution deals.
The article states that: “Third, Come2Play reserves the right to display ads in the game wrappers and in the pre-game loading screen. The company splits this revenue 50/50 with publishers. CEO Alon Barzilay indicates that the company is open to flexible options in regards to the last two points. However, this will have to be done on a business development level.”
This is exactly the approach that contributed to Game Trust’s failure to gain traction. There’s no way small indy game developers will ever pay out of pocket for API access and hosting services (most indy developers, despite being creative and talented, are living just above the poverty line). After splitting ad revenue with publishers and developers, there’s won’t be much left over for Come2Play. Non-integrated advetising around casual games does not perform very well – for the same reason ads on social networks don’t perform well – people are simply too engrossed with specific tasks to pay attention. When you consider these factors you’re looking at a trickle of diluted ad revenue supporting a business that needs a hefty development team, a dedicated support team (both for developers and publisher integrations), biz dev people who are developer facing, biz dev people who are on the distribution/publishing side, and a marketing team to raise awareness.
Also consider that negotiating custom revenue splits and deals is time consuming. Early adopters of this service, both publishers and developers, will most likely be small-time with a low chance of providing any sort of return on the time investment required for deal negotiation, integration, and ongoing support.
Finally, consider the significant customer support overhead that comes from trying to support a multitude of one and two person companies attempting to integrate with a new API.
All this is also assuming they can even ink any half-decent distribution deals – which is not easy since the casual game space is dominated by large publishers (i.e. miniclip.com, shockwave.com, Real Arcade) and portals (Yahoo Games, MSN Games, etc). These publishers already have multiplayer game content directly from the premium developers and, even if they bite on embedding Come2Play widgets, they will often require complex custom integrations such as signle sign on capability (i.e. MSN Passport or Yahoo ID), score syndication, content resizing, etc.
I could keep going, having been very close to this space for a long time but let me instead close by simply saying that I wish these guys the best of luck. This post was not meant to be harsh or insulting, just a dose of reality from someone who’s been down the path these guys are walking. They face an uphill battle and would do well to dig into the annals of Game Trust history to see where they went wrong.
P.S. – I just noticed these guys are from Israel. Another Israeli company Double Trump is also in the casual game space and are actually attempting something new in the space. They have an interesting pay-per-minute-to-own model that has proven to convert much better than standard download game sales. If TC is going to write an article about innovation in the space, these guys should at least be on the radar, although I actually see greater potentialf or their business in B2B software than I do in casual games.
Their consumer site is PlayOnArcade.com. This page explains their model: http://playonar...aspx?page=learn
I plug these guys because (1) I do feel they are doing something different and noteworthy, and (2) I happen to know the founders and they are good guys and very bright. They have been under the radar for a long time and I think their overdue for their 15 minutes of TC fame.
Multiplayer pong you say?
Like the ones made on top of the nonoba API?
Ex; http://nonoba.c...ultiplayer-pong
well i seen this site and im very glad im not gonna be useing it lol i will make my own games and add chat and a lobby into them with xml thats the true staff and soon i will have my site up and running this thing you cant do much they only allow 100 max people into 1 room and they let you make alot of rooms but only 100 come on your supposed to be a multigaming lobby room at least make it with a limit of 250 to 500 per room and not being able to customize and add games your self why run it i would want to run the stuff on my own site and not have to go there to add a room or other stuff heck if its gonna be open source give them full access to it and the files and sql files exc sheesh i hope they read this maybe then they will do it right if it was me doing it i would have giving them all files to upload to there own site and make them come to upgrade or download the game files
Não consigo acessar e ter um registro no come2play do orkut no meu nome.Só consigo entrar nesta sala no nome de um sobrinho.Aguardo um retorno não sei mais o que fazer.Obrigado!
i would like to know how to git tokens
for the gamesi win in chess from come 2play
i have 0 tokens and won games
but no tokenes .
plese tell me howto get tokens..