Despite its quirky aversion to case sensitivity, appMobi has reached the public beta availability stage of its playMobi HTML5-based game development SDK. Positioned as a JavaScript API solution, the new release targets common game developer challenges by addressing issues relating to user authentication, in-game payments, social player engagement, and scoring/leaderboard management.
The core technology of playMobi is based on the TapJs game-hosting platform and API, which has been lauded as influential in the quest to bring a social networking element to HTML5 games. According to tapjs.com, TapJs allows developers to integrate games with player accounts, server side data storage, high score leader boards, badges, and Facebook via a JavaScript API.
According to the platform's website, "TapJS is a game-hosting platform with community features, NOT a game portal. When you upload your game, you specify the URL of your game. It can be its own domain like angryrobin.com or a subdomain like angryrobin.tapjs.com."
"With a single JavaScript API, playMobi gives HTML5 game developers all the tools they need to create interesting and socially engaging games that run on iOS, Android, and Facebook platforms," said Sam Abadir, CTO of appMobi.
As of now, playMobi includes in-app purchasing capabilities based on appMobi's "1Touch" technology — plus, playMobi offers game developers the ability to "write it once" and deploy the same code to iOS, Android, Facebook, and the open Web — "Fully compliant with each platform's terms of service," says Abadir.
In what the company claims is an "industry first", playMobi enables cross-platform in-app purchasing with its 1Touch in-app payment system. When a player makes a purchase, playMobi automatically completes the transaction using the correct in-app-purchase backend system, based on the device in use. When running on iOS, playMobi uses iTunes; on Android, Google Payments; on Facebook, Facebook Credits; and on the Open Web, PayPal. By providing a simple JavaScript programming interface that supports e-commerce on the four most popular mobile gaming platforms.
The development team behind this technology highlights the fact that playMobi also gives HTML5 game developers new insight into how their games are actually being played, saying, "Detailed analytics can be captured as the game is played, isolating trouble spots or levels that are too easy. Because high-score cheating is an issue on the open Web, playMobi allows developers to create rules-based checks on posted scores, eliminating most score hacks and protecting leaderboard validity. Integrating playMobi analytics into a game is simply a matter of adding the playMobi JavaScript library and a few lines of JavaScript code."
