Do people use Google Play Services?

[Tatoeternietoe]

Do people actually use Google Play Services? They have achievements and leaderboards etc. The thing that worries me is that it's connected with Google Plus, which is, to say it politely, not Google's biggest success.

 

[DJantel Ware]

Personally, I am really annoyed by all this Google Play Services stuff. This popup that wants me to login and bothers me every time I open an app is more than just annoying.

 

[victorafael]

Yeah, When I launched the first version of Atlantic Trip, it came with google play services, but I removed that because it was very unconfortable to the player... Sometimes when the user have a slow internet, the popup delays a lot to show up, sometimes when it appears, the player was already in the game... making him loose...

So I removed the google play services implementing by myself a global highscore (between ios, android and windows phone) and a achievement system.

 

[denath]

Our game WordMine by ADA Games, uses google play services for online scoring. I think that if you want to use leaderboards and online scoring Google Play Services is the best solution. Do you suggest anything else as alternative ?

 

[ImtiazR]

I'm actually surprised, I thought people would like Google Play Service integration because of the competitive aspect.

 

[MonsterLucha]

I think that if it wasn't for the score hackers, out there. The Google Play leaderboards would be more welcome.

I've played a couple of difficult games and scored a decent amount of points. But, when I go to the scoreboard. You'll always find people at the top with scores of 9,999,999,999 etc.

Which makes the entire leaderboard null and void.

 

[App Interactive Studio]

Adding leaderboards and achievements in the game bring up competitive feeling inside player either to be on top of leaderboard or may to unlock achievement, it should be added, though google plus is not big success but the all users have gmail id associated with there android phones.

 

[studio340]

I use googleplay services and haven't had any problems. I like their leaderboards. The login pop-up can be annoying though but the dev could always change that.

 

[DJantel Ware]

I think that if it wasn't for the score hackers, out there. The Google Play leaderboards would be more welcome.

I've played a couple of difficult games and scored a decent amount of points. But, when I go to the scoreboard. You'll always find people at the top with scores of 9,999,999,999 etc.

Which makes the entire leaderboard null and void.

Yep, I heard and saw this several times as well. As for the people I know, a lot of them play regularly, noone looks at the scoreboard because there are obviously false scores in there. It takes out the fun of your own score.

 

[MonsterLucha]

Yep, I heard and saw this several times as well. As for the people I know, a lot of them play regularly, noone looks at the scoreboard because there are obviously false scores in there. It takes out the fun of your own score.

It's pretty lame. You'd think that if you were to hack into the scores. You'd give yourself just a bit more than the person in 1st - so it looked somewhat legit.

My favourite was on Spin Copters (I struggled to get past 10). Someone had a score of 999,999,999,999 - or something equally as stupid.

If someone was to actually get that score. It would take them weeks, probably. Weeks of no sleep, rest etc. etc.

On iOS, I had the choice to make a "Max Score" on the leaderboard. Which left me with a problem. I'd like to make the score anywhere up to a billion - or whatever, but. Seeing as though people take advantage of this. You have to cut the number down - but add a bit of room for potentially legitimate highscores.

What ever happened to playing a game, till you master it - thus getting a highscore? They take the fun out of it and ruin it for others...

Especially those with legit highscores.

 

[Tatoeternietoe]

It's pretty lame. You'd think that if you were to hack into the scores. You'd give yourself just a bit more than the person in 1st - so it looked somewhat legit.

My favourite was on Spin Copters (I struggled to get past 10). Someone had a score of 999,999,999,999 - or something equally as stupid.

If someone was to actually get that score. It would take them weeks, probably. Weeks of no sleep, rest etc. etc.

On iOS, I had the choice to make a "Max Score" on the leaderboard. Which left me with a problem. I'd like to make the score anywhere up to a billion - or whatever, but. Seeing as though people take advantage of this. You have to cut the number down - but add a bit of room for potentially legitimate highscores.

What ever happened to playing a game, till you master it - thus getting a highscore? They take the fun out of it and ruin it for others...

Especially those with legit highscores.

I think that with GPS you can also set a max score actually!

 

[Teedo145]

Maybe you should add a poll? I'm interested to know if i should add google play services too, or just leave it as using facebook.

 

[zynigma]

I use it for all of my games, mainly because it's so easy. It was the first I tried, and I never had to look elsewhere.

Personally, I am really annoyed by all this Google Play Services stuff. This popup that wants me to login and bothers me every time I open an app is more than just annoying.

I did receive complaints about the pop up asking to sign in repeatedly. To fix this, I made it where the player is prompted to log in once at the beginning, and then only when clicking on the leaderboards button. And also, only use the "SubmitScore" event AFTER checking their connection. If you start that event and they aren't connected, it will prompt them again, which is annoying to the people that don't have a connection or don't want to connect. And to clear the air, have a message that tells them that if they don't connect, their scores won't be submitted and achievements can't be earned (unless you have a local achievement system).

...It's pretty lame. You'd think that if you were to hack into the scores. You'd give yourself just a bit more than the person in 1st - so it looked somewhat legit.

My favourite was on Spin Copters (I struggled to get past 10). Someone had a score of 999,999,999,999 - or something equally as stupid.

I haven't had any problems with people hacking my games. But I don't have a million players on my leaderboards either.
I really hope this doesn't happen. The good thing is, you can set a score limit. So if you know it would be impossible for someone to score 1000 points on your game, you can set that limit. Anyone trying to submit a score over that will simply get ignored. Also, you can reset the entire leaderboard by starting a new one and just adding a line of code to reinsert their highscore when they connect. It's not a great backup plan, but at least it's there.

 

[hypernovaStudio]

Enlightening info, guess we'd need to consider other cross platform leaderboard in our next game.

 

[VikSoft]

I don't really like Google Plus as a social network, but I use Google Play Services in my game