How to Integrate Video Calling into Your Gaming App?

Why Video Calling is Essential for Gaming Apps

Integrating video calling into casual games, social games, and online card games is immensely beneficial.

Firstly, these features significantly enhance the overall gaming experience. When users participate in casual games, social games, and online card games, video feature allows them to see each other’s expressions and actions, while voice feature enables real-time communication. This combination creates a more immersive experience that closely resembles offline gameplay. Whether sharing laughter during a casual game with friends or strategizing in a competitive online card match, video and voice features add enjoyment and authenticity to the gaming experience.

Secondly, these features encourage deeper user engagement. Players are no longer just facing a cold screen or virtual opponents; they can interact with real people, sharing the highs and lows of their gaming journey. This heightened sense of involvement fosters a stronger identity and belonging within the platform, which significantly boosts user retention. Users are more inclined to remain on game apps longer, participating in both gaming and social activities.

In this article, we will explore how to integrate ZEGOCLOUD RTC video calling capabilities into your app’s game rooms.

How to Integrate ZEGOCLOUD’s Video Calling Solutions into Your Gaming App?

Before You Begin

To add audio and video calling to your game room, you first need to refer to our official documentation to integrate ZEGOCLOUD Video Call SDK. Select the integration guide based on the platform you are using for your app development:

Platform	Integration Guide
Cocos Creator	https://www.zegocloud.com/docs/video-call/sdk-integration?platform=cocos-creator&language=typescript
Android	https://www.zegocloud.com/docs/video-call/sdk-integration?platform=android&language=java
iOS	https://www.zegocloud.com/docs/video-call/sdk-integration?platform=ios&language=objective-c
Web	https://www.zegocloud.com/docs/video-call/sdk-integration?platform=web&language=javascript

Join a Game Room

The sequence chart above illustrates the process of how a user joins a game room as follows:

1. First, you need to initialize the SDK by calling the createEngine method and implement the ZegoEventHandler interface to listen for SDK event callbacks.
2. When a player joins the Rummy game room, use the game room ID to call the loginRoom method and log in to the RTC room.
3. When a player successfully logs in to the room, other players in the room will receive a notification of the new member through the onRoomUserUpdate callback.
4. After logging in to the RTC room, the player needs to call the startPreview method to preview their video.
5. Then, the play call the startPublishingStream method to publish their audio and video streams to the remote end.
6. Other players in the room can then receive notifications about new audio or video streams through the onRoomStreamUpdate callback.
7. Upon receiving the notification, call the startPlayingStream method to play the player’s audio and video stream.

Leave a Game Room

The sequence chart above illustrates the process of how a user leaves a game room as follows:

1. When a player clicks to leave the room, the stopPreview and stopPublishingStream methods need to be called to stop the preview and audio/video data streaming.
2. The other players in the room will receive a notification of the stream deletion through the onRoomStreamUpdate callback interface.
3. After receiving the stream deletion notification, the player needs to call the stopPlayingStream interface to stop playing the stream.
4. Then, the player needs to call the logoutRoom interface to leave the RTC room.
5. Other players will be notified of the member’s departure through the onRoomUserUpdate callback interface.
6. Finally, call your business backend interface to exit the your game room.

Enable Face Detection

In card or tabletop games, face detection is commonly added to prevent cheating and enhance player interaction. When the camera feed does not detect a face, a notification message is sent to the player.

1. To integrate the face detection feature, you first need to refer to our official documentation to integrate ZEGOCLOUD AI Effects SDK. Select the integration guide based on the platform you are using for your app development:

Platform	Integration Guide
Android	https://docs.zegocloud.com/article/9910
iOS	https://docs.zegocloud.com/article/9909

2. Call the setEventHandler interface to set up the face detection result callback.

// Set up the callback for face detection results
mEffects.setEventHandler(new ZegoEffectsEventHandler() {  
    @Override  
    public void onFaceDetectionResult(ZegoEffectsFaceDetectionResult[] results, ZegoEffects handle) { 
        // Retrieve face detection results, including the number of faces, confidence level for each face, and their Rect position information
    }
});

3. Call the enableFaceDetection interface to activate the face detection feature.

// Set the callback for face detection results
[self.effects setEventHandler:self]

In addition to face detection, beauty and makeup features can also be utilized to boost players’ confidence, encouraging them to turn on their cameras more actively. The background segmentation feature can be used to obscure the user’s real space and replace it with a preferred image, effectively protecting the user’s personal privacy.

Conclusion

In addition, ZEGOCLOUD offers a range of complementary products and solutions to enhance the experience and enjoyment of game video rooms, including gifts, instant messaging, content moderation, and conversational AI assistants. The integration of audio and video calling capabilities into games has clearly become a significant trend. We believe that as the industry continues to evolve, audio and video calling features will play an increasingly important role in gaming, providing players with a richer and more engaging gaming experience. Sign up today and enjoy 10,000 minutes free of charge to start enabling video calling features in your gaming app today and unlock endless possibilities for connection and engagement!