At the ongoing Google I/O developer conference, the company is announcing a slew of new features across its many products. Among them is the announcement of the Google Play game services, which is Google’s attempt at making mobile games more social.
At its core, the Google Play game services makes full use of cloud services and cross-platform integration to take social gaming to the next level. With game services, game developers can now incorporate cloud saves via simple and streamlined storage API that sync between devices (so user who complete one level in a game do not have to replay the same level again on another device). Also, game devs can now add achievements to increase user engagement and promote different styles of play.
In addition, the new game services also seamlessly integrate a user’s Google+ circles to create specific friends-only leaderboards as well as a global public leaderboard. But perhaps the most crucial addition to the game services is the real-time multiplayer for online competitive or co-operative play on Android devices. Currently, the real-time multiplayer feature only supports up to four players (again using Google+ circles) but Google is working on adding support for more players soon.
At the announcement of the game services, there are already 32 games that utilize the new game services, including World of Goo, Eternity Warriors 2 and Super Stickman Golf 2. Also, developers can now add the feature via native SDKs for Android and iOS, while Web and other platform developers can use corresponding REST APIs with libraries for JavaScript, Java, Python, Go, Dart, PHP, and more.
(Source: Google Developer)
(Image Credit: The Verge)
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