Bringing YouTube to your Games

Satyajeet Salgar (Technology Program Manager, YouTube)

Gamers expectations are fundamentally changing. Youtube can significantly enhance the complete gaming experience for your users. YouTube API's can accelerate that, and its API's and tools are quick and simple.

Why should you think about the youtube API's as you develop your games. YouTube gets over 13 hours of video uploaded every minute. Video views are in the hundreds of millions. If YouTube users were a country, they'd be the third largest in the world.

A lot of videos are related to games, especially trailers.

Spore is a great example. The creature creator logged over 130,000 uploads shortly after its release.

Lots of games have channels on YouTube. EA has done a good job creating YouTube-centered portals for games. As far as hardcore gamers, YouTube's channels have more members than the popular gaming portals.

The YouTube API's. . .

The API's allow you to access not only the video, but also the community itself (i.e. the comments). In the past year, YouTube introduced a “chromeless” player that allows you to “frame” a YouTube video in its own controls and interact with it. You could also overlay your own Flash content over the video.

YouTube doesn't consider themselves to be a “site” anymore, but a “platform”. API partners have the ability to search and play the largest index of video content in the world. They can use community data and tools to enhance products and applications. There are no video hosting, streaming and indexing costs. And exposure to the YouTube community.

Content examples. Second Life uses the YouTube API's to capture to Machinima content.

GaiaOnline uses YouTube as an embedded player in their virtual world.

EA was the first to integrate YouTube uploads into their game (Sport). Mainishi Issho and “Pixel Junk Eden” on PS3 (in Japan) also have YouTube upload capabilities.

EA created their own YouTube channel and held a contest where people could vote on their favorite “creature dance”.

YouTube community features allow you to grab the community comments and ratings and embed them in your own site.

TimeCube is an interesting example of a mashup, as it lets you do alternative searches of YouTube content.

YouTube options for game developers include upload, search, promote, content, and monetization.

YouTube API's are based on the Google Data (Gdata) API's. RESTful design (whatever that means, I'll look it up). Data is represented as Atom, RSS feeds.

It uses standard HTTP semantics.

Step one is to check out the API's and register for a developer key. You then have access to feeds of videos, subscriptions, playlists, contacts, comments, and user profile. All require a user's permission, of course. The feeds are all in standardized locations are are formatted as RSS.

Standard feeds are available from rss /feeds/api/standardfeeds/

Searches are available and can be ordered in whatever way you like.

Web applications authenticate themselves via AuthSub. Users log in on a Google web page. The browser then redirects back to your site with an authentication token, which can then be used on behalf of that user.

Installed applications use ClientLogin.

Write operations require user authentication. Each partner must register for a different developer key and client id. Every request requires the developer key, client ID, and token.

Ratings and complaints are write-only. Everything else (favorite, playlist, subscription, comments, contacts) are read-write.

URL parameters can control the player itself, specifically autoplay, related videos, looping, etc.

The aforementioned API link has plenty of API's for various technologies (.net) other than just Flash and Javascript.

Coverage by John Hattan

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