Turn Your iPhone Into a Nifty Gaming Device
The developer of the popular iPhone game Trism, Steve Demeter, is offering a free tool called Onyx Online. Onyx Online promises to add a slew of “social media” features to iPhone games, like leaderboards, achievements, forums, and the like. iPhone owners who play Onyx-embedded games will be able to view each other’s profiles to compare scores and see what games other people are playing. That would enable them to find more games or challenge each other to duels, Demeter explained.
“Right now games don’t introduce the social aspect at all on the iPhone,” Demeter said in a phone interview. “If there is a social aspect it’s an island. If these users are playing Trism, they’re playing Trism; it’s an island. How does that tie into other puzzle games? If players are still connected to a larger whole then they’re more likely to keep playing other games.”
Onxy was created more out of a sense of self-preservation amongst developers than it was keeping it real for people who game on the iPhone. Demeter said that business is slowing down for himself and many other independent coders, as new software continues to clutter the App Store. Thus, many high-quality games don’t get the attention they deserve, and independent developers are going to have a hard time standing out. As the App Store becomes cluttered with hundreds upon hundreds of throwaway games, Demeter told Wired the indie developer is in danger of being muscled out by big companies like Sega, who have the marketing budget to get their titles to the top of the heap.
Demter also claims that Onyx will “save” the App Store. He explained that the social-networking aspect of Onyx would benefit developers, because by connecting the games in one network, the developers would essentially be sharing each other’s customers, leading to growth. [Wired]
