Last year, Aurora Feint launched a comprehensive social gaming platform dubbed OpenFeint. The platform has seen considerable success in attracting independent iPhone game developers to its rapidly growing community and Android developers as well. Today, the network is launching PlayTime, a set of technologies that will allow developers to make real-time multiplayer games with voice chat across iOS and Android.
PlayTime for Casual Games gives developers the tools to create a simple multiplayer game based on highscore competition. The PlayTime for Casual Games SDK will include drop in widgets for displaying progress, an embedded VoIP client for group voice chat, a lobby, a matchmaking system for starting sessions, and a synchronized event system for passing data between games.
With PlayTime for Core Games, developers can built build a more complex real time multiplayer games with group voice chat for team coordination, as well as a skill based lobby and matchmaking system. PlayTime will launch later this year as part of OpenFeint 3.0.
Of course, PlayTime faces competition from Apple’s Game Center solution for developers, which also provides a real-time gaming platform. But OpenFeint claims that PlayTime will keep games in play even if one gamer drops connection (GameTime apparently disconnects the entire game if one player loses connection). And OpenFeint promises a simple install of the PlayTime SDK.
The OpenFeint platform is already quite popular amongst developers and already powers social gaming services for 37 million users and 2800 connected games. This new offering should help boost the platform’s presence even further.