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How Facebook Connect works for iPhone games

We've been putting Who Has The Biggest Brain? through its paces

How Facebook Connect works for iPhone games

As you'll know if you read our earlier story, Facebook Connect is now officially launched for iPhone, with Playfish's Who Has The Biggest Brain? one of the first games to make use of it.

We thought you might appreciate a runthrough of how Facebook Connect works, showing how you log in to a game using your Facebook ID.

Obviously, the look and feel is specific to this game, but it'll help you get the general idea. So...

1. This is the opening menu screen, before you login. To start Facebook Connect, you need to tap on the Profile icon - the bottom left of the four main icons on-screen.

2. The Profile screen is empty when you start, since you haven't logged in. To start Facebook Connect, unsurprisingly you need to tap on the Connect with Facebook button.

3. This little warning message just tells you what you're about to do. Obviously, you'll need a network connection at the time (something for iPod touch users to bear in mind).

4. This is where a separate page pops up asking you to enter your details - the email address you login to Facebook with, and your password. We're assuming this page will be standard for all iPhone games using Facebook Connect, as it has the Facebook look and feel.

5. Cor, check the profile screen now! Your Facebook profile photo is now your photo, and all your previous scores from Who Has The Biggest Brain? on Facebook have been loaded in - the game is seamlessly cross-platform in that regard.

6. And now, when you tap on the Friends icon on the game's main menu, you can see the scores (whether on Facebook or iPhone) of all your Facebook friends. But also...

7. From now on, whenever you get an achievement or beat your highest score on the iPhone game, it'll be posted to your Facebook news feed just as if you'd done it in the Facebook version of the game.

And that's how it works, in a nutshell. We're looking forward to more iPhone games using this technology in the months ahead, since playing against your real-life friends is marvellous fun.

Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)