Porting your game to Facebook, however, is not an easy job to do, especially if your game is deployed on multiple servers.

Browser Based Games found a solution for this. By using Browser Games Hub data and an OpenID provider, they provide players an easy way to play browser games with their Facebook or OpenSocial capable (Orkut, MySpace, Netlog, …) account.

OpenID?

This application requires OpenID support. OpenID is an open source system that enables users to use one identity across the web. Using one OpenID you can login to hundreds of websites without remembering all those passwords and logins.

Depending on how your game is written, OpenID is fairly simple to install. There are a lot of libraries in multiple languages and a rather extended quick guide can be found here.

On a sidenote, if your game supports OpenID, it will also support GalaxyNews ID, which is based on the OpenID technology.

Note: in order to add your game to the BBG application, your login script must receive the openid_url in GET, not in POST.

Adding your game
Next issue on the list is adding your game to BBG application. Since it uses the information provided by Browser Games Hub, you will have to add your game to the hub (see previous article). The most important section in your XML will be the servers element. If this section is invalid, your game will not appear in the application.

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<browsergameshub version="0.1">
	<servers>
		<server group="Pool A">
			<id>Server ID</id>
			<name>Server 2</name>
 
			<version>0.123</version>
			<game_url>http://link-to-your-game-server/</game_url>
			<openid_url>http://link-to-your-game-server/openid.php?openid_url=%s</openid_url>
			<players>2504</players>
 
			<status>open</status>
			<descriptions>
				<description lang="en">speed 1x</description>
			</descriptions>
 
		</server>
	</servers>
</browsergameshub>

Let’s take a closer look at the element openid_url:

			<openid_url>http://link-to-your-game-server/openid.php?openid_url=%s</openid_url>

This element should contain a direct link to the action of your OpenID login form. The GET variable declared in openid_url=%s will be populated with an OpenID. The Browser Games Hub will throw an error if it’s not working.

And next?

That’s it, really. Your game should now appear in the Hub with a lightning symbol, showing that your game supports OpenID. The application is only updated a few times a day, so it might take a while before all those facebook users start joining your game

When people ask me what the hardest part of browser game development is, I always answer the same thing: making people play your game. There are hundreds of so called browser games directories around and most of them are crappy. However, if you want to get your game known, you’ll have to add your game on various websites. Now, wouldn’t it be great if you wouldn’t have to do all that?

That’s why I came up with Browser Games Hub. Instead of putting your information on every bloody game directory, you force them to fetch your information themselves. In cooperation with a bunch of other developers, we developed an XML schema that holds all information about your game. This way, you can provide these websites with an accurate and up to date player count, a list of game servers, links to news, screenshots, logos, etc.

So, how does it work? You put a little XML file on your own server and put a link to this file on your game home page. Browser games hub will read this file once every day and update the information. The hub, in his turn, providers website owners the data of all registered games.

<browsergameshub version="0.1">
	<name>Dolumar</name>
	<site_url>http://dolumar.be/</site_url>
</browsergameshub>

This is, of course, only the first step; a name and a website are not very interesting to publish on a website. You can find way more information on browser games hub.

First off, make it easy to get in touch with you! The users who are willing to go to the extra effort of getting in touch with you are the users that you want to listen to – they’re probably also your game’s biggest evangelists.

What does it take to make it easy for your users to get in touch with you? The answer might surprise you: not much. Here are a few ways to make it really easy for users to contact you:

• Have a ‘Contact’ Page

  This has to be the very first option that I look for when I’m looking to get in touch with the owners of a game. I scan their navigation, and look for the word ‘Contact’ – or, if I can’t find that, ‘About’. Usually, one of those will lead me to either a form I can use to get in touch with the owners of the game, or an e-mail address that I can just send an e-mail directly to.

• Use IRC

  While this isn’t as applicable if you don’t have technically-savvy users, for a user who does know a thing or two, being available on IRC is always a bonus – a lot of things can get resolved faster via a quick chat than over e-mail. You can simply idle in a room dedicated to your game – and who knows, maybe the really dedicated players will start idling there too.

• Blog

  If you have a blog on your game’s site, leave comments enabled – you’d be surprised at how many users will leave you comments about any piece of your game that they like or don’t like – whether it’s relevant to the content of your blog post or not.

• Use Twitter

  One more option that is starting to gain a little more traction these days is Twitter – a micro-blogging service. The idea is that you would create a Twitter account for your game, and then use it to respond to any users on Twitter who are having the problem. This is just about as good as talking to the user on IRC, because if you’re both online at the same time you can have a quick chat about whatever’s on their mind. You can also use Twitter to market your game, by sending out tweets whenever you change something or a new version rolls out.

These are just a few of the myriad ways that you can keep in touch with your users – what do you use?