Google is making mobile gaming more social, and not just on Android, either. A new system called Google Play Games Services will bring notifications, friends, badges and the ability to save your game progress online and switch between devices to Android, iOS and desktop.
The company revealed the new platform at its I/O event in San Francisco and hopes that game developers will use its new SDK (Software Developer Kit) to bake its features into their games. A selection of big name games such as World of Goo and Shine Runner will carry the features from launch, along with around 25 others.
With these features you’ll be logged in as a gamer on a network, just as you do with Apple’s Game Center on iOS and even on home consoles like the Xbox 360. You’ll be able to add friends, view public leaderboards for games and play against others on a real time multiplayer system. This latter feature uses Google+ Circles so that you and up to 3 friends can game together, competitively or co-operatively. If you don’t use Google+ you can be auto matched with other gamers so you can still play together, which is cool.
To encourage mobile gaming Google is also bringing achievements, with badges and points earned for completing levels, finding hidden bonuses and such.
Through working in the mobile industry we often find ourselves switching phones and so completing levels in a game seems pointless when you have to re-install and start all over again with a new device. The same thing happens when you upgrade your phone or get it replaced, but thankfully Google’s new system will save your games in the cloud so you can continue where you left off on any device, so long as you sign in with your Google account.
Although game services seems tailored for Android, Google is also making it available for iOS developers to put into iPhone and iPad games. Web developers will also be able to use it on desktop games, so in the future we could be playing games on our Android tablet against other people who are playing on a PC or iPad, which sounds awesome.