Getting Social

One of the biggest trends in gaming in the last couple of years has been the integration with social media and services. Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit have become a part of many people's lives, and those people want their friends and family to participate with them in their games as well. What's cooler than having your dad beat you in the latest iteration of Zombie Shooter, right?

Both Twitter and Facebook provide APIs that let your games interact with their services. Want to give the user a way to tweet their latest high score? No problem—integrate the Twitter API, and away you go.

On a related note, there are two big services in the mobile space that make it their goal to connect gamers and let them discover new games easily: Scoreloop and OpenFeint. Each of these services provides an API for Android that lets players easily keep high scores, compare their achievements, and more online. Both APIs are pretty straightforward and come with good examples and documentation.