We’ll be posting videos as part of this series leading up to BlackBerry Jam Americas in Orlando in order to give some more background surrounding the topics that we’ll be discussing in detail during the conference.

In this video we’re joined by Dale Ducharme (against his will) to talk about the cool features available for gaming developers on BlackBerry 10.

Social networking has dramatically changed the way mobile games are being designed, played and discovered. Less than ten years ago, the shift from asynchronous messaging and stable home pages to instant status updates and socially engaging interactive experiences on social networks pushed the rise of the web 2.0. The same change is currently ongoing in games. For game developers, this means new possibilities to gain better retail presence to drive downloads and revenue.

Whether it be fighting alongside your friends in Clash of Clans or sharing tips how to reach three stars on all levels of Angry Birds, gaming is more social than even. Mobile has brought games to the fingertips of everyone. The gamer is no longer just you and me; it can be your mom, a business traveler waiting for the next flight, grandma, or the little kid next door. Along the expansion of gaming audiences, game developers are facing the problem of all the time rising user acquisition costs and very limited retail presence for their games.

It doesn’t help at all that mobile application stores are full of high-quality games but only a fragment of those get featured. Instead of trying to beg and bribe the platform owners, or putting your money to banner ads, mobile video, cross promotion, community marketing, in-game advertising, free-app-a-day campaigns and similar, you might want to think of ways to leverage the crowd.

Emotions drive discoverability

Casual gamers do not queue outside game stores overnight to get the latest Call of Duty or read articles from gamer magazines. Casual gamers are the same rankers and raters that populate Pinterest, Youtube or Facebook. They stumble upon new games by learning from friends. They play only for seconds at a time and often do not even remember the title of the game, not to mention the developer.

According to this Nielsen study, Xbox gamers spend 84 hours on gaming per month. Mobile gamers spend only a little over 7 hours a month. It is much more difficult to get a mobile gamer to become engaged with a brand. That’s where emotions come in. Gaming is about emotions, and emotions are fuel for sharing. People share funny cat videos, engaging game play footage, victory moments and ridiculous jokes. These same basic motivational factors apply to games – when reaching a high score or passing a game on Veteran level, we want to share our achievements with the world. Emotions are instant. This means new marketing opportunities for game developers without paying big buck for it.

Games app drives discoverability for social games

Social games get additional visibility through the Games application on BlackBerry 10. This top 50 grossing games list is heavily populated by socially enabled games like 10 Pin Shuffle, World of Goo or Wacky Rapids. What’s even more interesting is that currently, nearly all socially enabled games are on the top grossing games list. That’s because every time a user reaches high score, achievement or completes a challenge, it will be posted to the timeline of the Games application and to the Popular games list for other gamers to see. Remember long tail?

Social has been the game-changer that the gaming industry was looking for. People who never played anything get hooked with fast-paced driving of Beach Buggy Blitz or flashy Fruit Blitz and start inviting their real-life friends, who then start playing too.

So, how do you leverage the crowd? The Games application on BlackBerry 10 is the social store window for all social games. All a developer needs to do is to integrate the social features provided by BlackBerry (Scoreloop SDK). That’s it. Check out the getting started guide for how to build Scoreloop into your BlackBerry 10 game.

In my last blog post, you got Up and Running with Cocos2d-x library on BlackBerry 10. Assuming you are well ahead in porting your game, may I suggest a wonderful idea to make your game go viral? Make use of Scoreloop and the power of our Social Gaming hub.

BlackBerry 10 comes with a lot of surprises for gamers including the introduction of the BlackBerry Social Gaming Hub via the Games app. Gamers can now meet new friends, discover popular games and share their experience through the Games app.

It doesn’t stop there. The Games app enables Scoreloop-integrated games to automatically post activities such as achievements, challenge results and high scores to a gamer’s timeline. With over 250 Million users already playing Scoreloop-powered games across platforms, this gives any game a great chance make a viral impact. There are also some good featuring opportunities in the “Games” section of the games app.

In this post, I will walk you through the process of integrating Scoreloop into the cocos2d-x BBTemplate project we setup in my last blog post. The instructions are generic enough and can applied to any other open library with minor modifications.

Set up Scoreloop account

First, create a Scoreloop developer account at https://developer.Scoreloop.com. If you already are a BlackBerry user and have a BlackBerry ID, there is no need to create a new account. Simply choose “Login with BlackBerry ID” and enter your BlackBerry ID credentials.

After logging in, you will see three options. You can skip the first option as the BlackBerry 10 Native SDK comes preloaded with the Scoreloop SDK and there is no need to download any external libraries. Now create a game title and choose “BlackBerry” option. If the game’s name is not already taken, a profile will be created.

Once the game account is created, you will see various options to customize your game’s social gaming options. If you already have an account and have already published titles using Scoreloop, you can choose the newly created game from the drop down menu.

Getting started

Follow the instructions below to include the Scoreloop library to the BBTemplateProject.

1. Right click the game project settings
2. Select C/C++ Build -> Settings -> Tool Settings -> QCC Linker
3. Add “scoreloopcore” library to the list of Libraries

To be able to make use of Scoreloop’s features, the infrastructure need to be setup and it all starts with creating an instance of Scoreloop client. Add Scoreloop’s main header file in HelloWorldScene.h and add the below mentioned Scoreloop variables in the “HelloWorld” class.

#include <Scoreloop/Scoreloopcore.h>

In your Scoreloop account, fetch the application data corresponding to your game title from the “Game Overview” section. It should look something like this:

Platforms	BlackBerry
Game ID	xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx
Game Secret	Xxxxxxxxxx
Game Currency Code	IBI

Add this information to your code along with the game version and language:

static const char SCORELOOP_GAME_ID[] = "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxx";
static const char SCORELOOP_GAME_SECRET[] = "xxxxxxxxxx";
static const char SCORELOOP_GAME_VERSION[] = "1.0";
static const char SCORELOOP_GAME_CURRENCY[] = "IBI";
static const char SCORELOOP_GAME_LANGUAGE[] = "en";

In the init() method, initialize the Scoreloop client and its data components as shown below:

SC_InitData_Init(&scData);
SC_Error_t errCode = SC_Client_New(&client, &scData, SCORELOOP_GAME_ID, SCORELOOP_GAME_SECRET, 
SCORELOOP_GAME_VERSION, SCORELOOP_GAME_CURRENCY, SCORELOOP_GAME_LANGUAGE);

Note: If the user had not already setup his Social Gaming Hub account, he may be prompted to sign in with his BlackBerry ID and credentials.

Fetching information from the Scoreloop server

To fetch user information from the Scoreloop server, a Scoreloop user controller needs to be created. Queries receive asynchronous response and needs a callback function to be registered. In the snippet below, fetchUserComplete will be called upon a response from the server.

SC_Client_CreateUserController(client, &userController, fetchUserComplete, this);

For example: if the game needs to query the current session user’s information call

SC_UserController_LoadUser(userController);

Once a user controller is successfully created, it can be used to query information. There are two approaches to get the desired information from the server.

1. Via BlackBerry Platform Services (BPS) events.
2. Using a custom events

Approach 1: Via BlackBerry Platform Services (BPS) events

Cocos2d-x absorbs all the BPS events in its implementation and you can modify the cocos2d-x source code directly and have it call back whenever a BPS event arrives. CCEGLView::handleEvents() is where the event handling takes place and it calls the callback function that was registered through the “setEventCallback()”. The advantage of this approach is that it does not have event-polling overhead. The code snippets below show the changes made to the cocos2d-x library and the BBTemplate project to accomplish Scoreloop event handling via BPS events.

CCEGLView.h

void * m_eventCookie;
CEGLViewEventCallback m_eventCallback;
void setEventCallback(CCEGLViewEventCallback callback, void *cookie);

CCEGLView.cpp

void CCEGLView::setEventCallback(CCEGLViewEventCallback callback, void *cookie) {
	m_eventCookie = cookie;
	m_eventCallback = callback;
}
bool CCEGLView::handleEvents() {
	...

	for (;;) {

		if (m_eventCallback != NULL)
		m_eventCallback(m_eventCookie, event);
...
    }
}

HelloWorldScene.h

void fetchUserComplete(SC_Error_t result);
static void fetchUserComplete(void* userData, SC_Error_t result) {
 (reinterpret_cast(userData))->fetchUserComplete(result);
}

HelloWorldScene.cpp

bool HelloWorld::init() {
...
scData.runLoopType = SC_RUN_LOOP_TYPE_BPS;
SC_Error_t errCode = SC_Client_New(&client, &scData, SCORELOOP_GAME_ID, SCORELOOP_GAME_SECRET, SCORELOOP_GAME_VERSION, SCORELOOP_GAME_CURRENCY, SCORELOOP_GAME_LANGUAGE);

CCEGLView::sharedOpenGLView()->setEventCallback(StaticOnScoreloopUIEvent, (&_scInitData);
...
}

static void OnScoreloopUIEvent(void *cookie, void *event) {
SC_HandleBPSEvent((SC_InitData_t  *)cookie, (bps_event_t *)event);
}
void HelloWorld::fetchUserComplete(SC_Error_t result) {
...
}

Approach 2: Via custom events

An alternative approach to handle Scoreloop events is to use the Scoreloop custom event queue. The difference here is that incoming Scoreloop responses are processed by periodic polling. The good news is that cocos2d-x already has an infrastructure to support scheduling and the disadvantage of this approach is that polling takes place periodically and sometimes even when no Scoreloop event is expected.

The custom event handler can be called in game’s update() function or scheduled via cocos2d-x schedule() function.

HelloWorldScene.h

void OnScoreloopCustomEvent(float o);
void fetchUserComplete(SC_Error_t result);
static void fetchUserComplete(void* userData, SC_Error_t result) {
 (reinterpret_cast(userData))->fetchUserComplete(result);
}

HelloWorldScene.cpp

bool HelloWorld::init() {
...
scData.runLoopType = SC_RUN_LOOP_TYPE_CUSTOM;
SC_Error_t errCode = SC_Client_New(&client, &scData, SCORELOOP_GAME_ID, SCORELOOP_GAME_SECRET, SCORELOOP_GAME_VERSION, SCORELOOP_GAME_CURRENCY, SCORELOOP_GAME_LANGUAGE);

// schedule to call this method with every frame
this->schedule(schedule_selector(HelloWorld::OnScoreloopCustomEvent));
...
}

void HelloWorld::OnScoreloopCustomEvent(float o) {
SC_HandleCustomEvent(&scData, SC_FALSE);
}

void HelloWorld::fetchUserComplete(SC_Error_t result) {
...
}

Well, there you have it – you are up and running with cocos2d-x and Scoreloop. Here are some great resources available to you to get more out of Scoreloop SDK:

Scoreloop SDK Guide

Scoreloop Integration Sample -101 Scoreloop Integration sample

Belligerent Blocks – A Sample 1 level game that showcases great use cases of Scoreloop

What a week it’s been! After a crazy BlackBerry® Jam Americas 2012 in San Jose showing and the jaw-dropping milestone of reaching 200 million users, we are thrilled to announce the most exciting features yet for BlackBerry 10, all in one convenient package. Ladies and Gentlemen, meet the Games app.

We’re putting a comprehensive social gaming hub powered by Scoreloop at your users’ fingertips, but we’re delivering much more than an application to house your games. We’ve taken the tools of game discovery and played with the very laws of nature itself to create a streamlined, elegant way for gamers and games to meet.

Here’s a little sample of what’s in store within this dedicated gaming HQ:

• Instant Community - Finding friends used to be hard. Now, through the magic of the Scoreloop and BBM™, your players can effortlessly find and connect with other BlackBerry 10 users right out of the box.
• Game Discovery - No wish list? No problem! Users can view their friends’ favorite and recently played games, providing your game ever more chances to be noticed.
• Be The News - With dynamic gaming timelines, bragging and game promotion are simultaneous…and automatic!
• There Can Only Be One - Light the fire of competition within your users. Players can compare their skill levels and wage epic challenges.

For those of who you are already on board, we’re delighted to share a quick-start guide for getting a title integrated with the Games app in record time. For those of you still on the fence: what are you waiting for? Come take advantage of our industry-leading, cross-platform toolkit and grow with us through the next generation of social gaming!

Cheers,

The Scoreloop Team

Some of the new APIs being introduced include:

Scoreloop™ SDK 2.0: Our Scoreloop social gaming SDK provides APIs to set up user profiles and global leaderboards, award achievements, and challenge other players. Game developers in particular can enhance their games by adding cool new functionality for social gaming.

Payment APIs: Our payment APIs will help facilitate the integration of in-app payment processing mechanisms in apps.

Battery Monitoring and LED Control: These APIs will give apps access to hardware components on the device. Battery monitoring in particular will allow our applications to read the battery level, so they can inform their users about potential loss of data if the battery level is too low to complete an activity. It also allows an app to register for battery level notifications so that it can receive low battery warnings and handle them accordingly.

On the tooling side, we are introducing a limited beta version of the new BlackBerry® Plug-in for Microsoft® Visual Studio. We’ve been listening to our game developers who develop their titles using the Visual Studio IDE, and this plug-in will now make it easier for these developers to adapt their games for our platform. The Visual Studio plug-in provides options to register for code signing keys, create developer certificates, create and upload debug tokens as well as to build and run applications on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 2.0 and BlackBerry 10 platforms. The plug-in can be installed with either Visual Studio 10 Standard or Professional edition, though it is still in Beta and lacks support for features such as debugging. We are interested in getting your feedback as you start it to build your apps, and would like you to report any issues or concerns through our BlackBerry developer support forums, which are monitored regularly.

This new BlackBerry 10 Native SDK is just the start of the journey. We will be bringing additional APIs along with associated tooling improvements, and we are continuing to work with our third party partners and developers to ensure that their needs and requirements are being taken into account as we continue to release new functionality. This will not only help our developers build and monetize their apps for BlackBerry, but also enrich our BlackBerry App World™ with new and exciting content.

We are excited to announce the launch of the Scoreloop™ SDK 1.0 for BlackBerry® Native SDK for PlayBook OS. We have received a tremendous amount of feedback from you, our developer community, since the launch of the Scoreloop SDK Beta for the BlackBerry Native SDK for Tablet OS at BlackBerry DevCon Americas last October. Now we’re gold and can offer access to the best set of social features for native games on BlackBerry PlayBook OS.

Scoreloop is the leading cross-platform social gaming ecosystem with over 120 million users, offering developers a fully-flexible set of tools to power their games with social gaming features including Leaderboards, Achievements, Player Challenges and Player Profiles. The SDK is fully customizable, allowing developers to choose as few or as many features as they want and build them seamlessly into the look and feel of the game.

During the beta, we worked with Paw Print Games Ltd. to integrate Scoreloop into their awesome title KAMI RETRO HD. “Our experience integrating Scoreloop features into KAMI RETRO HD on the BlackBerry PlayBook has been seamless,” explains Steven Craft, Director of Paw Print Games. “We have integrated the main features such as leaderboards and awards. These social additions add a layer of fun and connections for our users. Our next title, Wacky Rapids, due April 2012 on PlayBook will follow in KAMI RETRO HD’s footsteps with Scoreloop integration.”

Get started right away with:

• Leaderboards – Allow players to compete on regional and global leaderboards
• Awards and Achievements – Keep players engaged with challenging achievements
• Player Challenges – Add competitive edge with social challenges
• Player Profiles – Personalize the experience with editable profiles
• Friend Management – Spur competition between closest rivals

Take a look at our Scoreloop pages where we have a comprehensive set of resources to help you get started.

We can´t wait to see what you do!

We’re well into the holiday season, and Santa and his elves are busy in their workshop making sure all the good boys and girls have fun and exciting presents to open. What about the elves here at RIM? Well, I’m happy to tell you that the hardworking teams have version of the BlackBerry® Native SDK 2.0 for Tablet OS ready for you now! I know, I know…the title’s a mouthful but, like a festive holiday meal, the mouthful is worth it!

Continuing on the success we saw with our launch of the BlackBerry Native SDK for Tablet OS at BlackBerry® DevCon Americas this fall and the release of an initial beta for the BlackBerry Native SDK 2.0, the second beta release contains:

• The inclusion of the Scoreloop SDK 1.0 beta 1
• Updated documentation to help developers solve tricky problems
• Tooling/IDE changes:
• A streamlined deployment setup wizard designed to help with the setup of your development environment and to provide better feedback when there are issues in the process. It also leverages the automatic device detection feature to help you set up your targets.
• Adobe® AIR Native Extension (ANE) support – New workflows have been added to the IDE to help you build and debug native extensions. This includes an ANE project type that works with the Adobe command line tools to generate ANEs. In addition, the new ANE launch configurations helps you debug your ANE on the device.
• Per project SDK support – You may now configure your BlackBerry Native SDK on a per-project basis. This allows you to have projects in your workspace build against different versions of the device. For example, you could have one project in your space build against the latest release BlackBerry Native SDK (1.0.8) and another build against the latest developer SDK (2.0 DR2). Previously, all projects in your workspace built against the same BlackBerry Native SDK.

We continue to evolve and improve the developer experience on the BlackBerry platform. In that same vein, we have produced a BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet OS 2.0 beta 2 (DR2) for our native BlackBerry Native SDK users. Be sure to white list your device’s PIN so that you can download the DR2 release (Developer Release beta 2) of the BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet OS.

As mentioned in the list above, the BlackBerry Native SDK 2.0 for Tablet OS 2.0 beta includes the Scoreloop SDK 1.0 beta 2 release – the next-generation technology that enables mobile social gaming. It lets you integrate the Scoreloop SDK’s set of social gaming features into your games.

The Scoreloop SDK is a fully customizable SDK that is designed to allow you to seamlessly integrate the Scoreloop SDK’s features into your games while maintaining the look and feel of your applications throughout. The social features are modular, so you can integrate as many or as few social features as you want.

Some of the features currently available include:

• User profiles
• Leaderboards
• Challenges
• Awards and achievement

It’s a great time to be developing for the BlackBerry platform!

On that note, happy holidays to everyone. Thank you for your continued efforts, and I look forward to sharing more exciting news with you in the new year. I’ll be showing up at as many meetups, Mobile Mondays, events, conferences, and developer gatherings as possible. If you see me, come say hi, and let me know how I can help you succeed in your mobile development challenges.

To get a firsthand account of how the Native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook OS and the Scoreloop SDK beta will help BlackBerry game developers, I sat down with Eudaimonia CEO, Ezequiel D’Amico. Eudaimonia is a game development and publishing studio based in Buenos Aires that focuses on online and mobile games with social components, using their proprietary engine for cross-platform development (Ezequiel is also speaking at BlackBerry DevCon Americas during the DEV15 – Game Makers Dream: The BlackBerry Native SDK for BlackBerry PlayBook OS session, so be sure to check it out).

Where does BlackBerry fit in today’s mobile gaming ecosystem? What is most surprising about BlackBerry games?

BlackBerry smartphones and the BlackBerry PlayBook are great platforms to deliver cutting edge games and applications. BlackBerry has an incredible audience for games, despite what people might think. The average BlackBerry user wants great gaming applications on their mobile device.

With the global success of the BlackBerry platform and through distribution on BlackBerry App World, we have achieved incredible success in the development and publishing of MTV Entertainment applications; a global brand that is highly focused on reaching young people with their fresh and cool entertainment content.

What makes BlackBerry the top mobile gaming platform from your perspective?

We believe in making BlackBerry smartphones the top mobile gaming platform. With the availability of new hardware and the great development tools available, there is not a single reason to not believe this.

BlackBerry App World has unique advantages compared to other application stores, as it holds the biggest market share here in Latin America and the second biggest worldwide; more than 165M BlackBerry smartphones have been shipped.

We just need to start delivering high quality games, focusing on great user experiences, in order to achieve this goal. There is a huge market out there waiting for our games.

[YouTube link for mobile viewing]

How is the introduction of the Native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook significant for you and what new opportunities does it present?

Primarily, this was an enabler for us to integrate the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet into our MoWeb! engine. This greatly facilitates our ability to quickly bring great games to the device. Also, with the availability of the Scoreloop SDK beta, we are able to easily integrate social features that are now so critical to succeeding on mobile platforms. We are proud to be launching an original and extraordinary social game at BlackBerry DevCon Americas, showcasing the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet‘s gaming capabilities combined with the social features powered by Scoreloop.

These two tools were the key factors in developing our plans for 2012 – to deliver a very high quality game every single month and revolutionize the games on BlackBerry.

You mention how social integration has become critical to success on mobile platforms, why is this and from Eudamonia’s perspective, what makes a social application successful?

Everyday human activities are social; working, playing sports, even studying is a social interaction between teacher and student. Therefore, it is only natural for users to have social interactions when playing games on their mobile devices.

But social is not enough. You need it to be viral so that the app can essentially distribute and spread itself. If the app quality is high enough, the user experience is excellent and enjoyable to play, people will instinctively want to share it with their friends.

With the availability of the Scoreloop SDK beta for the Native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook, developers now have suite of social gaming features available to them. Can you share your integration experience?

Integrating Scoreloop features was very straightforward. They have really good documentation supporting their APIs, making it incredibly easy to integrate social features into our games. With the availability of the Scoreloop SDK beta, we can make any of our games social with very little effort, allowing us to focus on delivering exceptional user experiences and maintaining our reputation for developing high quality apps.

What has been the key to Eudaimonia’s success as a mobile entertainment developer and publisher?

MoWeb!, our proprietary engine, is the only cross-platform engine that is compatible with many of the BlackBerry OS smartphones. With our technology, we have developed award-winning games for very well known and established brands such as Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, MTV and Discovery Kids. With the introduction of the Native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook, we have been able to expand the capability of MoWeb! to that platform.

What is Eudaimonia’s plan for success in 2012?

Our plans for 2012 are quite simple: make BlackBerry smartphones and the BlackBerry PlayBook our new top gaming platforms, develop very high quality games, and deliver one rocking game every single month of the year. Creating blockbusters for these platforms will make all other game development studios turn their attention to bringing their content to BlackBerry, generating a gaming revolution.

Today we are pleased to announce that Scoreloop has joined Research In Motion (RIM). We’re excited that the Scoreloop team is joining the BlackBerry® Developer team and bringing their expertise in creating social and collaborative gaming toolkits for mobile developers to the BlackBerry platform.

Scoreloop is a pioneer in mobile social gaming and offers a customizable and cross-platform social mobile gaming developer tool kit. If you are not already familiar with them you can find out more about Scoreloop at http://www.scoreloop.com/.

We have recently enabled our developers to create social app experiences through our BBM™ Social Platform and have seen some very innovative applications result from that. We look forward to working with the team at Scoreloop to provide tools that will further enable our developer community to take gaming to a new level of social integration on the BlackBerry platform.

Stay tuned to the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog and our @BlackBerryDev Twitter account for further updates on Scoreloop and the BlackBerry platform.

- Tyler Lessard, VP Global Alliances & Developer Relations at RIM