I’m trying to determine whether or not to include Facebook in my game. I’m not real clear on what all including Facebook really means.
Can someone tell me what “feature” or what I would be allowing the user of my game to do if it is connected to Facebook?
Would the game have to be playable on their computer if it is connected to FB?
Thanks,
Lori
Hi Lori,
So much of this depends on what you want to accomplish by including Facebook. It can vary from the most basic “features” to very complex things, and I should caution you that if you embark down this path, it can get really tricky because there are many factors involved in the overall process.
Start by reading this guide:
https://docs.coronalabs.com/guide/social/implementFacebook/index.html
Take care,
Brent
There are a couple of popular things to do with Facebook. One thing is to invite friends to play your game. For a multi-player game (like Words with Friends), accessing your social network friends was the main way to match up games with others. The other invite is to spam your friends with game invitations.
However, developers abused this and Facebook has had to respond to the complaints and it’s really hard now to get peoples attention.
The other thing that’s popular for developers to do is to share game results to their own timeline, hopefully not irritating your friends enough that they unfriend you. Game developers can get some exposure this way, but I’m not sure how effective it is.
Facebook for non-games can do some good things, for instance RunKeeper, an app that tracks your runs and walks lets you share your post-exercise results to your friends. Most people don’t mind these kinds of updates.
Rob
It’s also a good way to allow the user to “login” to your game. For instance when the user logs into to FB in your game, you could perhaps save their game data to a server. Then if they login on another device, they could retrieve that data and continue from where they left off.
This means you don’t need any horrible “register for a MYGAME account” nonsense, but it does involve some server setup.
One thing worth mentioning on that note, many users will uninstall games that have a mandatory FB login rather than just having the option to do so - so tread carefully if you want to use it.
Hi Lori,
So much of this depends on what you want to accomplish by including Facebook. It can vary from the most basic “features” to very complex things, and I should caution you that if you embark down this path, it can get really tricky because there are many factors involved in the overall process.
Start by reading this guide:
https://docs.coronalabs.com/guide/social/implementFacebook/index.html
Take care,
Brent
There are a couple of popular things to do with Facebook. One thing is to invite friends to play your game. For a multi-player game (like Words with Friends), accessing your social network friends was the main way to match up games with others. The other invite is to spam your friends with game invitations.
However, developers abused this and Facebook has had to respond to the complaints and it’s really hard now to get peoples attention.
The other thing that’s popular for developers to do is to share game results to their own timeline, hopefully not irritating your friends enough that they unfriend you. Game developers can get some exposure this way, but I’m not sure how effective it is.
Facebook for non-games can do some good things, for instance RunKeeper, an app that tracks your runs and walks lets you share your post-exercise results to your friends. Most people don’t mind these kinds of updates.
Rob
It’s also a good way to allow the user to “login” to your game. For instance when the user logs into to FB in your game, you could perhaps save their game data to a server. Then if they login on another device, they could retrieve that data and continue from where they left off.
This means you don’t need any horrible “register for a MYGAME account” nonsense, but it does involve some server setup.
One thing worth mentioning on that note, many users will uninstall games that have a mandatory FB login rather than just having the option to do so - so tread carefully if you want to use it.