DEC. 10, 2010 • As more and more mobile phone owners are using their iPhones and Android handsets for game playing, wouldn’t something like Xbox Live to link these people together make a lot of sense? Very much indeed, which is why Aurora Feint is one of the major firms filling this space with its OpenFeint platform.

Social networks are no strangers to mobile platforms, but game-centric social networks are somewhat of a different animal with some unique attributes compared to their PC counterparts. Aurora Feint chief executive Jason Citron provided DFC with a wide ranging briefing on OpenFeint, which recently added Android support to the platform’s existing iOS services.

DFC: So give us the big picture overview of Aurora Feint. What are your primary products? How long have you been around? How many employees do you have? How many client developers do you have?

Jason: Aurora Feint was founded in 2009 as an iPhone game studio. We released several games, but started growing rapidly when we took the social features from that game and turned them into OpenFeint – our open source mobile gaming network. Today, OpenFeint SDK is our primary product and we are rapidly growing. We have over 50 million users and feature over 4,000 Android and iOS.

DFC: Please give us an overview of who the major players are in building social mobile networks.

Jason: In addition to OpenFeint, major players include Score-loop, Chillingo, Ngmoco, and Apple.

DFC: Some consumers only think of you as the developer of the hit iPhone game franchise, Aurora Feint. How are you leveraging that user base and street credibility?

Jason: We started as game developers, so we understand the problems that developers experience when making their games. We’ve built platform and the organization with that deep understanding. We think our reputation comes from putting developers first – at all times. Our developer relations and support teams are constantly reaching out to developers – offering quick and personal assistance. It’s this credibility that makes us the default choice for mobile game developers.

DFC: You got into a bit of a privacy kerfuffle in the last year with a community feature of the Aurora Feint game that automatically matched up people in a users address book with user lists on your servers. Treating this event as a learning experience, what did your team learn specifically, and what is your advice for other mobile startups in the business?

Jason: Lesson #1: Transparency is key whenever you access information on a device. Giving users power over their data and the ability to cut off your access to it is key to establishing trust and loyalty. Lesson #2: When you make a mistake – admit to it, apologize, and correct it. We took some hits for the way the system was first designed, but owned up to it and fixed the problem immediately. Our user numbers grew faster after the “kerfuffle.”

DFC: From both business and consumer perspectives, what sets OpenFeint apart from competitors like Facebook Connect, Plus+, and Scoreloop?

Jason: Three things. First, we’re open source. Our developers are free to modify the client code and suggest new features to help the cause. Second, we’re not a publisher. We don’t take a percentage of our developer’s sales to include them on the network. When we do share in revenue, it’s only after they’ve made money with programs like Free Game of the Day. Third, we’ve built a large-scale gaming ecosystem. We have the largest mobile gamer community, the largest developer community, and the largest game pipeline. Players and developers are joining the network that their friends play.

DFC: Some reviewers have described OpenFeint as imbedding Facebook into the iPhone. What is your take on this analogy?

Jason: We’ve used the analogy that OpenFeint is like Xbox Live meets Facebook for the mobile phone. The comparison makes sense. Our players are interested in what games their friends are playing, how they compare to their friends, and ways to play games with their friends. So, while we’re a social network, we’re not a catch-all place for socialization. OpenFeint is a place where gamers come to play games with their friends.

DFC: How has the jump to Android gone? How many games are you supporting on Android, and how many are you adding a week?

Jason: Adding support for Android games has gone incredibly well. We’ve formed great relationships with major wireless carriers like Verizon and AT&T to feature games on our network. Consequently, we’ve helped games like Fruit Ninja move to the top of the paid charts. In addition, we’re now in over 120 games on the platform and have 400 more in development. Android game development is tracking at a pace similar to iOS from a year ago. So we’re expecting strong growth on the platform next year, especially in international markets.

DFC: What have your learned in migrating to Android that impressed, and/or surprised you?

Jason: Android gamers will pay for games! There was a myth out there when we came over that only free games did well on Android. So we intentionally targeted high-quality games to launch on the network Android has an amazingly strong and impressive developer community. We’ve done quite a bit of work reaching out to some key bloggers so we can get a better feel for how the community works and what we can do to meet their needs.

DFC: As we understand it, many mobile game developers told you that they would make the jump to Android if OpenFeint jumped first. Was that the case, and if so, please tell us more details?

Jason: Android is a rapidly growing and influential mobile platform. So many iOS game developers were already considering the move when we started investigating. For many of our existing developers, it was important to have the same gaming network in both the Android and iOS versions of their game. When we approached them, it made the move easier.

DFC: How many games are using OpenFeint, and what is the monthly growth rate?

Jason: We’re at 4,000 games now. The catalog has grown by 119% in the last 7 months.

DFC: How many users now interact through OpenFeint, and what is the monthly growth rate?

Jason: We just passed 50 million users and are growing at 18% a month.

DFC: What percentage of developers who employ OpenFeint have opted for the premium service to sell virtual items, and have access to the currency wallet feature?

Jason: The first version of OpenFeint X (OFX) launched two weeks ago and includes support for developers to store and sell IAP items over the air. Support for virtual currency and a virtual wallet will roll out in a later update to OFX.

DFC: What is similar about conducting virtual item sales on mobile via OpenFeint compared to conducting micro-transactions via a computer, and what is different?

Jason: We don’t comment on Apple specific data. We value our partnership with Apple and want to ensure we’re complying with their ToS.

DFC: Do mobile gamers spend more or less on virtual items than their computer using counterparts? Similarly, do mobile gamers purchase virtual items more often or less often than their computer-using counterparts?

Jason: The jury is still out on this because the freemium model is relatively new to mobile. But the data we’ve seen points to very similar usage patterns. Of course, Apple’s ToS does place some boundaries on things like price points, so we expect we might see some minor variations from the web model.

DFC: What can you tell us about what you are seeing in the Android market? Are you finding any differences between Android users and iPhone users?

Jason: There are some clear differences between all of the platforms, mostly notably in discovery and payment methods. But these gaps are narrowing. Certainly developers are quite interested in the integrating of OpenFeint on both platforms and we’re going to help them do that.

DFC: When do you think your Android business will reach parity with your iPhone business?

Jason: There are too many external factors at play to provide an accurate answer here, but we’re seeing tremendous growth on the Android platform. It’s only a matter of time before it looks a lot like iOS.

DFC: What percentage of OpenFeint connected games are distributed on both the iPhone and Android platforms?

Jason: This is a relatively small number – less than 20% – but this is mostly just a timing issue. We have nearly 4,000 games on iOS and that took a little while, so developers just need a little time to make more games for Android. This is the trend we’re seeing now, and we’re only going to make it easier and better for developers going forward.

DFC: What is your take on the Ngmoco acquisition?

Jason: We were and are very happy to see the Ngmoco acquisition, and were particularly pleased by how highly valued Ngmoco was. Our network is an order of magnitude larger than theirs and our product offering is much more robust. We think we’ve created substantially more value.

DFC: The9 is another Aurora Feint investor. They have said they will introduce OpenFeint into the Chinese market this year. Tell us more how The9 intends to implement your platform.

Jason: We’re working very closely with The9 and will have news very soon on this front.

DFC: Will Chinese OpenFeint users be able to interact with OpenFeint users worldwide, or will they be walled off?

Jason: We’ll be able to provide more clarity on this very soon.

DFC: Please tell us more about your Game Spotlight app. How and why did it come about, and what are your plans for this product?

Jason: We are about to release a major update of this app on iOS and have renamed the app to Game Channel. We’re offering our developer partners some great ways to promote their games. As always, this will be on a revenue share basis. Soon we’ll be updated Game Spotlight on Android as well.

DFC: Tell us more about your FreeGameoftheDay.com site that you launched last March. What were your goal, have you met those goals, and how has been the response?

Jason: The goal of the site was to mirror what we were doing with our standalone apps and provide our developers with some additional exposure on the web. This site will be changing to reflect the changes we’ve made to Game Spotlight/Game Channel.