Your game needs a community to survive. Your community needs rich functionality to thrive. What to do? What to do?

Sure, there are tools that do some of this out there already. (mIRC, anyone?) But do your community a favor and add this all directly in the game so that everyone can easily access it.

Add a buddy list. But not just any buddy list… add one that works across multiple games - even across multiple platforms. Put your players to work for you as salesmen, encouraging them to invite their friends to play in your game.

"GameSpy Brigades" Teams System

GameSpy Brigades is an easy-to-implement service that will allow players to organize teams, form social identities, and track persistent statistics across those teams. Brigades supports any combination of in-game and out-of-game implementations, and plugs into several of GameSpy's other services to provide statistics, messaging, history, and more.

• Team Creation - Personalize your team with tags, logos, MotDs, and URLs
• Recruiting types - Allow players to apply to a team or set the team to be Invite Only
• Player and Team Search - Enable players and teams to find one another
• Roster Management - Players can promote and demote players, remove players, transfer leadership
• Custom Titles - Every member on the team can be assigned a unique title independent of their rank on the team
• Custom Roles - Players can create and manage their own hierarchies to fit their needs and management style, while developers can manage the defaults for their game
• Permissions Management- Players can choose which permissions each individual member on the team will have
• Custom Permissions - Developers can create permissions and attach them to objects within their game, such as "Access the guild chest" or "Enter the team headquarters"
• Team Statistics - Track stats as a team, and roll individual player statistics into team aggregates
• Team History - Maintain a multi-layered log (member level, leader level, admin level) log of team activity and match history
• Messaging - Send messages back and forth amongst team members through Comrade and email
• Remote Auth - Support for GSID or your own account system
• Robust Admin Panel - User-friendly tool for community manager and customer service reps to support the teams within your game

Ready to learn more? Download the Brigades product brief!

"GameSpy Comrade" Presence & Messaging

The Presence & Messaging SDK handles both account creation/authorization and buddy list functionality. Accounts are available to use across multiple games allowing for cross-title communication.

Buddies can communicate both in-game and out of the game from the desktop using the Comrade desktop application. Your community can be connected to your game whether playing or not.

• Account creation (with optional demographic fields)
• Support for authentication with 3rd party account systems (such as Playstation Network)
• Send/receive buddy messages peer-to-peer or relayed through server, including offline message support
• File transfer between buddies
• Player invitation system
• Online status support (Online, away, playing, etc.)
• Rich game status support (game location information, in-game score, etc.)
• Automatic Comrade compatibility for in-game/out-of-game messaging
• Buddy following from Comrade desktop application

"GameSpy Sake" Persistent Storage

The Persistent Storage SDK allows a developer to store arbitrary data on a secure, online service. Use Sake to build an extensive player profile, maintain game play stats or store ghost data for your racing game. Allow players to create and share their own content with the rest of your community - all from within the game itself.

• Per game schema, managed through an intuitive web-based interface
• Supports multiple tables per game, multiple fields per table
• Numerous data types: numeric (float, int), string (ascii, unicode), boolean, date-time, binary or file
• Robust file distribution support
• Built-in ratings system to enable "hall of fame" creation

Voice Chat

The Voice SDK facilitates in-game voice communication between players.

• Network independent, sends prepackaged voice data packets over existing connections
• Flexible in-game communication (1-to-1, 1-to-many, and peer relay)
• Multiple codecs available based on CPU and/or bandwidth requirements
• Plug-in architecture allows custom codec and new audio devices to be used