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Posted on 2/18/13
  1. Someone recently convinced me to look at Heyzap as an alternative to Game Center for iOS metagame stuff (Leaderboards, Achievements, etc..) I came up with the following pro/con list (specifically for Button Brigade):

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p h1 Game Center ul li Built into iOS. User has nothing to install li(class=“alt-list-item”) Can cause my game to crash (yikes!) li(class=“alt-list-item”) Has a bug related to viewing the proper leaderboard li(class=“alt-list-item”) Limited number of leaderboards. Since I can’t do leaderboards for all levels, I decided to only pick 5 total. li(class=“alt-list-item”) Once a leaderboard / achievement has gone live, it is set forever li(class=“alt-list-item”) Interface is pretty ugly

  h1 Heyzap
  ul
     li (Basically) unlimited leaderboards. I can have a separate board for every level now
     li The company seems flexible and willing to reset scores (although there isn't an automated way to do this yet, it is supposedly coming soon)
     li In my limited experience playing with it, it seems faster than Game Center
     li(class="alt-list-item") User has to install the (free) Heyzap app
     li(class="alt-list-item") To view leaderboards, the SDK switches you over to the to the app, instead of opening a dialogue box
     li(class="alt-list-item") The app isn't universal (only sized for iphone)

  1. The decision to switch seems like a no-brainer. The barrier to entry for a user seems a little higher with Heyzap, but in my experience many people don’t seem to log into Game Center anyway if it’s not a core part of the game. I’d rather give a superior experience to the users that really want leaderboards and achievements.

  2. Although Game Center is a first party service, Apple doesn’t seem to give it the TLC it deserves. There’s a good article written on this: No skin in the Game Center. To be fair, I haven’t yet deployed with Heyzap, so it’s possible I’ll find bugs there as well. But so far it seems to treat developers (and users!) with a bit more respect. It seems much much easier to convince Heyzap to fix a bug than to get Apple to do…anything at all.

  3. I also haven’t researched any other services, so if you have your own favorite, shoot me an e-mail/tweet.