The Mac has had its share of games over the years, but it’s never been much of a haven for gamers. But the Game Center app does make the Mac a little bit more of a hospitable place for the games people play.
Game Center began life on iPhones and iPads in 2010 as a way to compare scores with friends and challenge buddies to games. Several updates and 130 million people later, Game Center on iPhones/iPads is a certified hit.
Little wonder then, that Apple would want to create a Mac version of Game Center to promote gaming on the Mac. It performs the same functions as the iPhone version of Game Center—but opens up the possibility of playing games on your Mac against people with phones and tablets. (That miracle, of course, is possible only in cases when the same game is available on those different gadgets.) Someday soon, Apple hopes, there will be one glorious, universal game ecosystem of Apple machines.
When you open the Game Center app, start by signing in. If you’ve used Game Center on your phone or tablet, your Apple ID appears automatically; just type your password. From there, Game Center imports everything—your nickname, your list of existing Game Center friends, and even the photo you use to identify yourself.
If this is your first time with Game Center, fill in your Apple ID (DVD Player) and password. You’re asked to create a nickname—“AngriestBird” or “BobSmith2000,” for example. This nickname is public and can appear on the leaderboards for games (scoreboards that show the highest point winners); you can also use this nickname when you play games against other people. Within your Game Center account, you can also turn two settings on and off: One lets friends invite you to play games; the other makes your public profile visible to other Game Center members.
That public profile includes space for a short description and photo of yourself. You can grab a picture from a list of recent photos (any images you’ve used as your Messages icon, for example), Apple’s standard OS X icons, or a photo you take with your Mac’s built-in camera. The Mac’s Game Center gives you a few more photo editing options than you get in the iOS version: In addition to zooming and placing the image, you can also apply a filter, giving your photo a tinted, distorted, or pixelated look.
Tip
Any change you make to your Game Center profile on a Mac will also show up on Game Center on your iPhone or iPad—and vice versa.
Once all that’s in place, the Me tab in Game Center displays your nickname, that clever little phrase you wrote, and your picture. Beneath that, multicolored banners display the number of Game Center–compatible games you own (either iOS or Mac games), the number of Game Center friends you have, and—perhaps most significantly—the number of points you’ve accrued from your gaming activities.
Points play a leading role in Game Center. You earn them by racking up achievements in Game Center–compatible apps. Smash enough blocks in one of the many versions of Angry Birds, or expand your territory in Civilization, and you unlock achievements in those games; those achievements translate to points, which show up in your Game Center profile.
Those points also provide a way to measure your personal worth against your friends’. On Game Center’s Friends tab, your friends appear in a pane on the left side of the Friends window (Figure 18-13).
If you click a friend’s name in that left pane, you get a choice of three views: the games your friends play, the names of their friends, and the number of points they’ve tallied. The points view features a side-by-side comparison showing your respective accomplishments in commonly played games, so you can settle once and for all who’s tops at Cubemen. (Game Center also shows the points your friends have racked up in games you don’t own, which is Apple’s way of suggesting that maybe you should download more games.)
Of course, before you can compare your scores with your friends’, it helps to have some friends. (Insert your own joke about hard-core gamers here.)
You can invite your real-life pals to join you in Game Center by clicking the Add Friends banner near the top of the left-hand pane on the Friends window. You get a pop-up message window, where you can type in a person’s Game Center nickname or email address to send a friend invitation. (Email is probably the better choice, as you may not know your friend’s Game Center nickname; he might not even be signed up to the service.) You can also issue invitations from the Requests tab, which is where you typically accept invitations that come in from other Game Center users who want to befriend you.
Figure 18-13. You can sort the Friends list alphabetically, by how recently your friends have played a game, or by the total points they’ve accumulated in Game Center apps.
But what if you don’t have any existing friends, or at least none that you know are on Game Center? Above the Add Friends banner, a Friend Recommendations button brings up a list of potential buddies. These are strangers, of course, but they’re based on friends and games you have in common. Clicking on one of those names takes you to a page that shows common friends, if any, and a Send Friend Request banner.
You can also find gaming companions through your other Game Center friends. Just click one of your friends’ names, and then select the Friends view on her page to see who she hangs out with in Game Center (when she’s not matching scores with you, of course). The list of her Game Center friends appears under a list of shared friends and notes how many games you have in common with this would-be buddy.
Game Center can also help you find games to play—well, at least games that are designed to tie in with Game Center. The top of the Games tab features a Recommendations section that takes you to a list of suggested games. Game Center bases these recommendations on what you already own, what your friends play, and popular App Store downloads.
While you decide what games you want to learn, you can always fool around with the Chess game that comes with Mavericks; it’s Game Center–ready.
You get to most of the Game Center management features from the Me tab. That’s where you can change your photo and status message, manage your privacy settings, and even sign out of Game Center. But there’s another aspect of Game Center that you manage in a completely different place.
Game Center notifies you whenever anyone asks to friend you or accepts your Game Center invitation. These notifications usually appear as banners, flashing in your upper-right corner briefly before they disappear. You can, of course, shut them up; open System Preferences→Notifications, click Game Center, and customize the settings as described on Messaging, Tweeting, or Facebooking.