Playing Games

The Games Panel shows the games that you bought or that are available to you for free. The Game Store (full version coming soon) will allow you to see new games, choose games to demo, and buy full versions of your favorite games. For each game there is an icon representing the game and several buttons next to each game. These include Information, Download, Play, Configure, and Uninstall.

Clicking on the Information button beside a game brings up a web page with information pertaining to that game. If a Download button is visible beside a game, then clicking it will download and install the game for you. And if you've already installed a game, you'll see a Play button or in some cases a Config button. When you click a Play button, a Play Mode window (see below) is shown for the game. The Play Mode window allows you to either get a group of players together, use the Auto-Matching feature, vist the Games Lobby or just play the game by yourself (if a computer player if available). If there is a Config button for the game, and it's pressed then a game specific window will be shown.

Information and Play Buttons  The Information and Play buttons are pointed out by the arrows. Once a game is downloaded these buttons are always available, along with the Uninstall button.

Download, Config, Install, and Uninstall Buttons  The arrows point out, from top to bottom, the download Progress Bar, Download button, Config (optional on some games) and Uninstall button.

So you know what game you want to play? Just click the Play button next to the game you've chosen in the Games List (assuming you've already downloaded it). This will open the Play Mode window which looks like this:

There are a few choices here so lets examine them:

The Play vs. Computer button will be disabled if the game doesn't provide computer players. This is the case for Checkers and Chess.

Let's choose the Invite your Friends button, since playing with friends is the most fun:

When a game is selected in the Chat window we get lots of additional buttons. You can see there's a line near the top of this window that reads: For 1 to 4 players, 1 is ready. So we could start the game now and we'd be playing against 3 other computer opponents.

Since it's more fun to play with other people, let's use the Add Person button, add Zman, and wait until he is ready to play. Clicking the button displays the popup window on the left.

From this window you can highlight any number of people to join your game. We select Zman, and press OK. Once we have our game selected and players ready we can start the game by pressing the Launch Game button.

Player Rankings and Stats

Once you've played a few games you can track your current ranking and high scores on our ladders page. Each time you play a game you are ranked by our SkillRank service. The purpose of SkillRanks is to track the skills of gamers in order to be able to match them into competitive matches using our auto-matching feature. It's also just fun to see how you rank!

The SkillRank service uses the final standings of all players in a game in order to update the skill estimates of all gamers playing in the game. The ladder page has a leader board which shows some of the top SkillRanks. It also shows current high scores and all-time total scores. Keep outsmarting your opponents and soon you will be on the leader board!