OpenFeint’s single sign-on for social games to replace Apple’s UDID (exclusive)

Apple caused panic among app developers last week when it announced that it would phase out an identification system for users on its mobile devices such as the iPhone. Mobile gaming company OpenFeint says it will help solve the problem created by the elimination of this feature by offering its own “single sign-on” identification system for app developers.

Apple’s announcement caused fear among developers because many use this unique device identifier (UDID) number to identify a user in order to quickly access that person’s history and offer cross promotions.?Apple decided to “deprecate” the UDID, meaning the company will phase out the use of the feature and no longer support it at some point in the future. Apple gave no explanation for the deprecation, but some speculated it was to end concerns about privacy.

“Developers have been panicking to some extent,” chief executive of OpenFeint, Jason Citron said. “That is why we decided to do this product.”

OpenFeint, which is owned by Japan’s Gree, said it already has 115 million users logging into games that use the OpenFeint mobile social gaming network for online play and leaderboards. Third-party app developers can now use the OFUID (OpenFeint user identification) to identify users in the same way that Apple did with UDUDs.

When a user starts playing a game or app with the OpenFeint system built-in, OpenFeint asks them to sign into their account. It asks the user if they want to access online play. If the user answers yes, OpenFeint signs them in and the app developer can get access to the player’s anonymized data and history, Citron said. OpenFeint has more than 6,800 games using its platform.

That’s certainly better than the alternative, where developers would have to create their own identification system requiring users to sign in with a username and password before playing a game. OpenFeint removes some of the potential hassle with a more streamlined sign-in system.

It isn’t a perfect replacement for UDID, which was able to log every time a user started a game. The OFUID can only gather information when the user logs into OpenFeint. That doesn’t happen every time a user plays a game. But Citron said this was the next best thing, as “the user can opt in with just one click.” The user has to have the OpenFeint app in order to sign in. However, to play online, users often have to download the OpenFeint app anyway.

The OFUID will give developers access to information such as what games are installed on the user’s phone, their usage of games, and what offers they have taken before. Developers would have otherwise had to figure out a way to do this on their own. To create the workaround, Citron said OpenFeint engineers had to figure out a way to do the single sign-on without using UDID numbers. Citron said that developers who use OpenFeint can learn how to better monetize their users with better targeting.

OpenFeint also announced an “install trade program” for developers that use the new sign-on process. OpenFeint will guarantee developers 1.5 new installs for every new install of Game Channel, an app that is needed for users to enjoy the benefits of single sign on. Game developers will be able to offer incentives for users to use the sign-on process, said Ethan Fassett, senior vice president of product at OpenFeint.

The single sign-on with OFUID will launch later this fall. Citron said that OpenFeint does not make money on this feature. On Android, Citron said that there are fewer restrictions related to the use of a UDID. But OpenFeint also offers its own single-sign-on process there.

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Tags: single sign on, UDID

Companies: Apple, Gree, OpenFeint

People: Jason Citron

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PapayaMobile reveals growth stats for mobile games

PapayaMobile, a Chinese maker of a mobile social networking platform,? is announcing today that its users have reached more than 25 million users, up 940 percent since January 2010.

The Beijing-based company also said that more than 11 million paid transactions have occurred using Papaya’s virtual currency. Those numbers suggest that mobile app and game developers are starting to get traction on the Android platform.

Papaya makes a mobile social network for game developers to use to help their games spread faster and become more social. It helps them make money by enabling users to buy virtual currency which can be used to buy virtual items in games. One of the big questions is whether the success in Asian social games or Facebook social games — where users are now quite comfortable buying virtual goods in games — will become as popular in mobile social games on smartphones in the West.

The Papaya network generates an average revenue per paying user of $22.60 per month (ARPPU). On average, one in five users purchases Papaya’s virtual currency in social games that use the Papaya Game Engine, which is used to develop social mobile games.

Those are pretty good figures, given that mobile users have historically paid less money for games than social gamers. Papaya said that the ARPPU is more than $10 per month for social games that were built using the Papaya Game Engine. And popular titles earn more than $20,000 in revenue per month.

“We think when it comes to monetization of mobile games, we have superior metrics,” said Paul Chen, head of developer relations at PapayaMobile. “We think that mobile games are gaining in momentum as an industry.”

And, get this, the top amount spent by a single user on the Papaya network is $4,440. Yes, somebody spent that much money for virtual goods in a game. That’s what you call engagement.

By region, China has grown the fastest, with users up 500 percent from January 2011. Europe is up 224 percent and the U.S. is up 222 percent. Users have sent 93 million messages across the Papaya network and they have played more than 874 million game sessions.

Chen said that Papaya’s numbers are much better than the estimate numbers that the company’s rival, Ngmoco, has seen on the Android Market in the four weeks since it launched its Mobage mobile social network.

PapayaMobile was founded in 2008 and it has 50 employees. Rivals include Gree/OpenFeint, DeNA/Ngmoco, and RIM/Scoreloop. PapayaMobile offers its own Game Engine software development kit as well as tools to make games more social with chat and leaderboard functions. It also has a monetization engine that helps games make money via offers and other means.

The company has raised $22 million to date from DCM and Keytone Ventures. Developers have integrated the Papaya Engine into 350 games.

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Tags: Mobage, mobile games, mobile social game networks

Companies: DeNA, Gree, Ngmoco, OpenFeint, PapayaMobile

People: Paul Chen

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18-year-old’s games get 10M plays in Roblox game world

Roblox is a thriving web-based virtual world where kids can create building-block creations in Leg0-like styles. It is far more successful than other virtual worlds, and 18-year-old Luke “Stickmaster Luke” Weber is one of the reasons for that.

For the past four years, Weber has been making games within the world of Roblox. Those games have been played more than 10 million times on the Roblox site, making Weber (pictured left) into a celebrity within the Roblox community of virtual tinkerers.

With Roblox, kids are architects of their own games and they learn software coding abilities that can help them later in life. Roblox uses physics to simulate a virtual world, allowing kids to construct things in building-block style. While the games aren’t graphically outstanding, they do remind everyone that a game doesn’t have to have high-end graphics to be fun. And Weber has proven to be a master at this art.

“Roblox is like a building game,” Weber said in an interview. “I started playing because I was always playing with Legos when I was younger.”

Weber, who took the “Stickmaster Luke” nickname from his early start making stick-characters animations in Roblox, hasn’t made any money from the free games. But he has picked up some skills on how to make games that could serve him well in the years ahead. And earlier this month, Weber attended the first-ever Roblox community gathering, the Roblox Rally, which was attended by more than 1,000 people at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Lots of kids came up to meet Weber, who just graduated from high school in Pleasant Hill, Calif.

The success of Weber’s simple do-it-yourself games is one reason that Roblox is thriving. The company has 6.8 million unique visitors a month, with a total of 942 million page views a month.That has made Roblox into the second-most popular kids entertainment site, and it has enabled Roblox to raise $4 million in funding from Altos Ventures and First Round Capital. Roblox makes money from premium subscriptions, sales of in-game virtual currency, advertising and prepaid cards sold at retail outlets such as Best Buy, GameStop and Wal-Mart. Revenue at the company is up 75 percent from a year ago.

Roblox users build games by resizing virtual bricks to build scenes and characters in the Lua programming language. Then they add scripts other coding for games. The process is relatively simple and it’s a good way to learn programming. Rival game worlds include Second Life and Minecraft. All of these worlds are part of what futurist Paul Saffo calls the “creator economy,” where users aren’t satisfied with passive entertainment and want to create their own.

“I was a complete beginner when I started,” Weber said. “I made quite a few games and most of them were bad. My first hit was one that allowed players to build in real-time with each other and then fight.”

Four years ago, it was a big deal if 60 players played a game at once, but now the audience is measured in thousands. Weber copied some other games to see if he could do them better. Then he got more experimental, making games where trucks fall down a hill and you have to dodge them in order to climb to the top. Weber is pouring increasing amounts of time into each game, though only gets half-way through many games. Each full game takes about 24 hours of work to complete.

Now Weber’s “The Underground War,” (pictured above) where players dig under the ground, has crossed 4.1 million plays. A handful of other Stickermaster Luke titles have also crossed a million plays. One of his newest games is Laser Tag, pictured right. Weber has started work on around 97 different places in Roblox, but about 30 have turned into finished games.

While Weber isn’t making money from his games, he does earn in-game currency every time someone plays a game. And Weber sells virtual T-shirts for 30 “Robucks.” Making money would be nice, but Weber says, “Making games is fun. There’s some hype and notoriety in it, and it’s fun meeting new people.”

As for the future, Weber plans on going to community college.

“I feel like I can do anything now,” he said.

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Tags: Minecraft, Robucks, Second Life

Companies: Roblox

People: Luke Weber, Stickmaster Luke

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