Heyzap has released a new feature that allows game developers to integrate a leaderboard into their games, making them more addictive, as users can now see how they fare amongst their friends and challenge their friends to beat their scores.
The leaderboard is a 100px panel at the bottom of your game where users can see their friends' scores and invite friends.
Want to dramatically increase gameplays overnight? Check out our API here to see how easy it is make your game social!
Heyzap has expanded our accepted payments offerings through PayByCash and the Ultimate Game Card, which will increase your eCPM and allow teenagers to play your games.
Users can buy the Ultimate Game Card at the following retailers:
Users will now be able to purchase in-game virtual goods using:
* New API call for developers to arbitrarily give users points in-game, without having to go through achievements. Ex: experience, or small amounts of points. (We also limit this every day so a player can’t abuse it.)
* Developers can set goods to be buyable with just coins, just points, or both coins and points. Previously all goods were buyable with both coins and points.
* Developers can name in-game points. Ex: silver, ore.
* Developers can upload a custom icon for in-game points
With our previous API, the only way users could get points was by completing achievements. Now, developers can integrate giving users points any way they wish, whether it be for playing a certain amount of time or for playing a certain number of levels continuously. Eg. The typical XP system that people set up in their games can be used with this API call. You can get started here.
With the new API call, developers will be able to:
Set whether certain virtual goods can be bought with solely coins, solely points, or a combination of the two. Previously, all goods could be bought with either coins and points. Now our developers can specify whether a certain item needs to be paid for solely with coins, solely with points, or a combination of the two. This allows the developer more freedom in integrating built-in incentives for their users, allowing the developer to maximize purchases and virality.
Name in-game points to match the style of their game. Are gold coins really relevant if you developed a Platypus game? Not so much. Now you can name your points with more relevant terms.
Upload a custom icon to represent in-game points. Now that game developers have the opportunity to change the in-game points to literally anything, like Platypus Points, it’d be silly not to let them use their own icon!
Haven’t signed up to take advantage of the leading Virtual Goods dual currency? Why not get started today?
Dual Currency – Reward users with points that they can use to redeem virtual goods.
Achievements- game players will now be able to play one another anywhere on the web and record their in-game achievements to their Heyzap profile.
Twitter and Facebook Connect- users can share their achievements, scores, and activity stream with their friends.
Dual Currency System for Flash Games
Players can now also gain points inside games by completing certain achievements and use their points to purchase in-game virtual goods and level access. This now links Heyzap’s existing currency, Heyzap Coins, with in-game points to form a dual currency system that’s never been made accessible to independent developers. Now any game developer can take advantage of the growth of social gaming by integrating viral loops, achievements,Twitter and Facebook connect.
Heyzap Coins can now be linked to in-game points
Game Profiles & Achievements
Nobody likes playing games by themselves! With Heyzap’s new gamer profiles, you’ll never have to play alone again. Gamers can now record all their achievements, virtual goods, and high scores in a single profile. Think of it as OpenID for online games.
Heyzap’s game network now exceeds 100,000 websites and powers more than 10 million game plays a month for over 15,000 games. We’re expecting exponential growth for 2010 and are doubling the number of our employees. Think you’ve got what it takes?
We are excited to release our new community area for Heyzap!
Developers now have a profile page where they can showcase their portfolio of games, and there’s a great new forum to discuss everything related to flash game development, like announce your new game, or discuss how you are using Heyzap Payments in your next title.
Publishers can also add profiles and include links to their sites.
The best way to get involved is make a post about your most recent game or Heyzap publisher implementation here.
We have just released a feature that a lot of our users have been asking for – search. You can now find this in the top right hand part of the widget (large or expanded view). The search contains ratings, a thumbnail and the game title. So go ahead, search through the massive selection of games we have.
This brings the power of thousands of games to your blog. We have it installed on this blog, some of the other blogs that have the plugin in the wild (completely unaffiliated with Heyzap!):
A lot of users were installing on blogs so we decided to make it even easier to install on Wordpress and Blogger blogs. If you want to track all the game plays and customize further you can add your site to Heyzap through heyzap.com/publishers/new_site.
We have had a very busy weekend at Heyzap. Its been an amazing response since our launch. We have added some of the other press we received to heyzap.com/docs/press, will keep that up to date.
One of the major request we got was for a medium sized version of our widget, so we made one that is 425px by 344px. This brings the game up on the page in a lightbox. The medium size widget can be added through heyzap.com/publishers/new_site or if you want the code without creating a site (no tracking) then here it is:
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