Playing games with others is a pretty popular pastime. With multiplayer systems like Openfeint and Game Center, however, you really only can connect players on an individual level. Likewise, high scores are only compared to GameCenter or Openfeint friends individually. The folks at TeamPlay have decided to take it one step further. They’ve created an environment to let individuals join teams and develop rivalries with local, national and global tournaments.

TeamPlay has created an SDK that will easily allow developers to add the TeamPlay group leaderboards as a built-in experience for gamers. The website promises that it takes minutes to get things up and running, as well as lower level API support to customize the integration.

If your app is TeamPlay enabled, you’ll be able to send your players’ score points, object collections, and other actions to the TeamPlay system in the cloud. These things are then added to the team totals. The concept here is simple – when people feel like part of a team, they’ll likely play longer and more intensely than they might as an individual.

This is a niche that’s been sorely needed since iOS gaming became a “thing.” The Portable Gamer (a 148Apps Network Site) put together something similar (yet horribly manual) back in 2009 with ClanWars, a way for players to sign up as a member of a competing website “clan” to compete as a team. It’s great to see something like TeamPlay now, as it will allow a much more user-friendly experience, handling all of the back end organization so developers and players don’t have to. While it’s surprising that Apple hasn’t added something similar into its own Game Center system, it does allow a third party like TeamPlay to come in and make some waves.

To sign up as a TeamPlay developer, head over to the TeamPlay website, or email developer@teamplaysdk.com for more details.

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