iPhone in-game twitter disappointment and a missed opportunity
August 5th, 2009 by Andy Merchant
Late last night sitting on the sofa, nothing was on the box so i turned my attention to my iPhone. Every so often I check out the apps store to see if there’s anything I fancy. Having checked out the top 25 free apps I came across a neat game called Real Tennis 2009 by gameloft. It was only the demo version, but judging by the graphics it looked like a bit of a time killer.
I proceeded to download the trial and in a matter of minutes I was activating the game and at the main menu screen options page. 3 options appeared; 1 instant play, 2 buy full version and 3 Twitter. A Twitter option in the main menu screen of a game, is that a first? It is for me anyway!
However, my interest quickly turned to disappointment. Having clicked on the link that took me to the game’s Twitter profile Tennis_Open I discovered the profile was following 1 person, has 168 followers, but has updated only once on the 3rd of April.
Gameloft have missed a real opportunity here, the 168 people that have signed up to follow could have been engaged and encouraged to find out more about other Gameloft titles, news or products. At the very least they could have put in a twitterfeed of some sort.
So top marks for trying to integrate Twitter into the game, but no marks for doing the hard bit – conversing.
Just to let you know the game was average and it took me 2 sets before I won my first point!
Tags: gameloft, iphone, real tennis 2009, twitter