@jerejigga, FYI, unity is now free if revenue is under $100k but I agree the learning curve is steep if you are not from a .NET background.
In case anyone is implementing GPGS into their Corona games using the Corona GPGS Plugin, I just finished an example app to share: http://animonger.com/gpgstester/
Cheers,
Warren
I haven’t had a lot of luck with GPGS real-time for Corona. It has a lot of functionality that isn’t exposed, like selecting a random opponent for example which is pretty common in my experience for real-time games. Additionally it seems quite flakey. The same code on one device running the same version of play services will result in the invitation listener getting called always while on another device almost never. Its quite frustrating and if you look in the actual Android log cat you’ll see the plugin throwing exceptions left and right.
I will also add in terms of Unity I have a real-time multiplayer game in the market I’ve done with it and the official GPGS plugin there and its not any better. I have yet to use the GPGS SDK natively but at this point I’m not convinced its very robust.
Yes, the Corona GPGS plugin is missing some good features of the native GPGS SDK but it does have real-time auto matched games. You have to pass the number of auto matched players picked by the user in the GPGS UI when you create the room:
gameNetwork.request( 'createRoom', { playerIDs=selectedRealTimePlayerIDs, minAutoMatchPlayers=numOfMinAutoMatchPlayers, maxAutoMatchPlayers=numOfMaxAutoMatchPlayers, listener=onRealTimeRoomGPGServicesCallback } )You could also use local realtime multiplayer over wifi. I have been using it in my game works great. Does not require server and is cross platform across all platforms. It is free.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4nni4s085ofhg3y/pong%20demo.zip?dl=0
There is also
https://github.com/Overtorment/NoobHub
Edit:
The problem with the current google play game services plugin is it is only for Andoid. You may not think this is problem till you want to publish to IOS or Desktop or Tv. Plus if you use gamecenter IOS and GPGS for android, you have stop your players from playing together. Plus Gamecenter does not support realtime and Google play does not support IOS, no offense but the current game network plugin are not really cross platform network friendly and not as good as it should be. Sorry for the rant.
@Enthusiast–thanks for the additional info. I didn’t realize this feature was available. I will definitely take a look.
@Scottrules44–WIFI is interesting but one of my games has 250K active users around 7 countries so we had to go with something that does have a server for match making to connect everyone. Though your pong demo using UDP broadcast is definitely cool. I’ve been looking at services like photon but I fear in the end I may end up having to do something myself with websockets and a back-end. Boo 
I had such high hopes that real-time would make its way to Corona Cloud before that whole thing went kaput. Keeping my fingers crossed for Coronium
Coronium 2 has been put on hold for a while according to Chris. Coronium beta is what I am using and have set up random play and local play (use gps to find local players) works great. Coronium is easer to understand. I have heard nothing about corona cloud but “I” imagine something will happen this summer. Something to consider is Coronium (maybe corona cloud (assuming corona cloud is like Coronium)) is not really meant for realtime (Coronium Gs might). For realtime games I would use app warp they have great demos and stuff. Once you get the hang of app warp your good. Pubnub might be something you should look into. I would not limit yourself to just plugins on the marketplace take a look around and find what works for you.