© 2013 Mountain Woods Media, LLC.

It’s all the little things we learn and apply to our apps that help create a better user experience.

Games need to be fun and entertaining, but we’ve also found out users like to compare their skills against other players via Apple’s Game Center.

In case you didn’t know, Game Center is a multi-player social gaming network which allows players to compete head-to-head. Users can invite and challenge friends or play solo within the network and try to earn top rankings. Top scores are displayed within the game’s leaderboards. Players can also check achievements (goals) against other players and friends. In addition, players can complete against each other in real-time, multi-player competitions.

We tripped in “Little’s Sparky’s Forest Fire Game” and in “Splatz and Batz” as Apple declined our use of their Game Center logo in our apps (something about a copyright issue here; although we’ve seen countless other apps with the identical rejected logo). However, “Roly Poly and The Lizard” was Game Center ready and experienced immediate success through head-to-head social play.

During the first day, 377 players downloaded and played “Roly Poly and The Lizard” and we tracked about 225 players were using it within Game Center.

Five players constantly vied against each other in an attempt to keep the top score. As the game’s developer, it was fun to watch the early players fight for a top score in our game!

Game Center is a must-have in all games. Nextpeer, another multi-player social gaming network, seems to want a piece of this pie, but has lately run into an Apple brick wall. Lately, we’re hearing games with Nextpeer are being rejected as Apple believes Nextpeer is gathering information from users. Hopefully, this will be resolved soon, but which multi-player network will developers use? Both?

As we move forward, we’ll be incorporating Game Center in all new games and in all updates. Nextpeer, we hope, will soon follow.