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Google releases Games for Google+
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Khao 15y agoI love how Google has really taken time to address the problem number 1 with Facebook games : they are spam machines! Games in Google+ will feel more like real games (pc, mobile or console games) as in if I feel like playing a game and I see my friend also plays that game, then we can share scores and stuff. But when I'm not feeling for games, then games don't invade my news feed. What would be the point anyway in knowing my friend had a high score in a game I wouldn't play? It's only spam. Clicking on that "Game" tab on Google+ will be just like opening Steam and seeing all your friends' activity and going "Cool, which game do I play now? Is there anyone online right now?" and I love that!
- alecco 15y agoMy bet is the Zyngas will adapt and do "social" marketing by paying people to promote their games through shares.
- CWuestefeld 15y agoYes, the blog says "you can comfortably share your latest high score--your circles will only see the updates when they’re interested in playing games too." Sounds like a winner to me. I won't have to keep blocking every new game that comes along.
- timwiseman 15y agoIt looks promising. Now, will it offer a way to play Go?
- doctoboggan 15y agoAs long as they offer a REPL I'd be happy
- Groxx 15y agoI think that's available IRL via ARM and HAND. Parallel processing included, though it's not overly necessary for a board game :)
- brown 15y ago> What would be the point anyway in knowing my friend had a high score in a game I wouldn't play? It's only spam. Most of us hate this kind of stuff. I know I do. It's super annoying. Furthermore, as a game developer, it would kill me a little bit to "sell out" like that. However, this is why Zynga is worth a bazillion dollars. They understand the power of "virals". Have you ever talked to a Zynga employee? "Virals virals virals". They are one of the few companies who really understand the power of converting social pressure into profit.
- zem 15y ago> What would be the point anyway in knowing my friend had a high score in a game I wouldn't play? the serious answer is that it keeps you constantly aware of the game, increasing the overall probability that you'll sign up.
- Darmani 15y ago"problem number 1 with Facebook games : they are spam machines!" Really? I remember when I first joined Facebook, and my News Feed came to be quickly dominated by Zynga items, and my notifications came to be dominated by reminders to see how fast I can type A-Z. I remember last summer after I joined Facebook as an intern, when the head of the newly-created Games team announced that they would collapse all the Zynga notifications into "Bob and Sally are playing Farmville." Now, I don't remember the last time I saw any Facebook game spam. I hear people say this a lot, but is it true? (Just checked my last 300 feed entries. There was one notification about someone beginning to play Jeopardy. Spam machine indeed.)
- rplnt 15y agoIt is not true anymore but people remember the bad things, right? It was horrible maybe year or two back. Gazillion of notifications, wall completly covered with app spam... Now it's quite good. If anything appears it is very easy to hide the app, no more notifications (invites or whatever), .. quite clean. On the other hand. Those polls are The Evil now. Absolutely no way to get rid of them (w/o using external scripts).
- Khao 15y agoI never really realized this had stopped. I thought it was due to the fact that I clicked so often on the "Hide publications from game X" that now I had hidden most of them. I think it all comes down to the fact that I remember clearly how bad it was because I had an emotional reaction to that spam ("fucking farmville get the fuck out of my feed arrrrrrr!!!") instead of now that I didn't even notice it one bit. How could the situation I didn't see come to mind before the one that got me pissed a few months ago? And that's why everybody still says that games on Facebook = spam.
- ristretto 15y agoLook, guys, you have to realize that even though many frown upon the social games market, it's a niche market that's here to stay. After all, social networks are mostly entertainment media and people have been playing games even before they learned to write. Social games are dumb most of the time, a mindless way to interact with friends, but people like them. The "games" tab certainly seems compelling, however they need to be aggressive on removing spam apps. That's exactly what facebook didn't do and what zynga took advantage of to the maximum possible degree. Social app developers are almost always aggressive about exploiting user behavior and communication channels to funnel growth. If google is not vigilant about enforcing their rules correctly and tuning their algorithms to be fair to all developers, it's going to be the facebook nightmare all over again.
- AshleysBrain 15y agoSo are these games all HTML5? Or a combination of technologies? I can't find any info about that. Looks very cool though!
- jerhinesmith 15y agoDefinitely a combination of html, flash, etc. These aren't games developed by Google -- rather games running on Google's platform (similar to Facebook games).
- AshleysBrain 15y agoCool. Would be nice to hear that they're definitely supporting HTML5 though!
- AshleysBrain 15y agoWhy all the downvotes? Isn't the technology they're supporting important? :P There's not even any mention on their developer blog here: http://googleplusplatform.blogspot.com/2011/08/stepping-onto-google-platform.html http://googleplusplatform.blogspot.com/2011/08/stepping-onto...
- Cushman 15y agoI think it's because "supporting HTML5" is something with nebulous meaning, and not allowing people to make canvas games in this day and age would be shooting themselves in the foot big time, so it's quite unlikely that they won't. I don't think that deserves downvotes, though. People just surly.
- AshleysBrain 15y agoI see. Still, I don't think "HTML5 games" is as vague as "HTML5" - it pretty much means either canvas or SVG. And it would be nice to hear an explicit line from Google on it - not sure why they haven't actually stated the supported technologies yet. I suppose they're still working on it.
- DanielRibeiro 15y agoIt would be nice to announce an open API as well. Hope it comes soon.
- mindcrime 15y agoYes, and - for one - really hope the eventual API builds on stuff they've already pushed in the past, and doesn't go in a whole new direction. I very much want to see OpenSocial, OAuth, GData / AtomPub, and existing open standards used for whatever they cook up. And given how much Google have put into these various standards in the past, it's what I expect... I just can't shake this sneaky fear that they're going to hit us with a big swerve and roll out a lot of new, incompatible stuff.
- tomjen3 15y agoI hope they don't. OAuth is a nightmare (I just tried to make a simple client for IOS, right now I want to beat up the guy who made that standard) and the rest is far more complicated than a simple json based rest api.
- mindcrime 15y agoWell, if you don't use OAuth, then what? You'd have to have something roughly equivalent to deal with authorizing API requests, no? As for GData / AtomPub and REST... AtomPub was designed specifically to be a restful protocol, and GData is heavily based on AtomPub... but also has a JSON mode, so you get your wish there. Anyway, the point I was getting at isn't about any one (or two or three) specific items of how they implement their API... just a hope that they stick (mostly) to established / open standards. By the same token, I hope Google are - or become - involved in the Federated Social Web initiative and adopt the work that comes out of that. But that's just me...
- tomjen3 15y agoI would use password based authentication. The pattern is well established, users know how to deal with it and it is simple from an implementation point of view. If you don't want to do that, then let me just pass as a parameter a nonce and then, if the user clicks agree or whatever, allow me to use that as the password. Just skip the consumer secrets, token, two or three step authentication and HMAC based authentication. It is a social media system, not a stock-trading application.
- alecco 15y agoThis is problematic given the current vulnerability to spam Google+ has. Anybody can friend you, via your own friends.To make it worse, Google will give you a red notice for this on every service, even search. I've been friended by multiple online media sociopaths through my friends. Say Mr. X social media adds a few of your publicly listed friends. And some add him back. Then Mr. X adds all their friends by looking at their circles (both ways). This includes unlisted people. They add all of them. Again, some of them add them back without double-checking. This is reinforced when Google+ shows contacts in common. You think, hey this is a friend of a friend. Often they have more than 2 contacts in common. It's either spreading like fire or my friends are particularly vulnerable to this, wich I doubt as most are tech-savvy. I hope Google takes care of this issue before the Zyngas creep up and make the service as trashy as Facebook. Edit: reworking examples to make it a bit more clear.
- munificent 15y ago> Anybody can friend you and it will be shown across all Google pages, even search. I've been friended by multiple online media sociopaths through my friends. I don't see how that leads to spam. Friendship isn't symmetric in G+. Media sociopaths can follow me all they want. If I don't follow them back, I don't see a word they write in my stream.
- alecco 15y agoMr. X adds me. Looks like a normal guy and G+ shows we have 2 contacts in common. So I add him. Then I get his spammy stream. The only way to verify is to go check their page before adding, but that's a hassle. So most people just add them. And while they keep the spam rate low and make it look OK most people just leave them. This happens in particular with users who visit G+ less frequently. This happened to me several times in the last few weeks. EDIT: I am aware of this so I don't add them anymore, but many of my contacts, perhaps most, keel falling for it. And I cant escape the constant notices of MR Xs adding me on G+ even when I'm not in G+. I can't tell G+ not to notice me of spammers adding me and just do it for actual friends. BTW, downvotes? Wow...
- 15y ago
- dwc 15y ago"When you’re ready to play, the Games page is waiting—click the games button at the top of your stream." I keep looking, and it keeps not being there.
- Khao 15y agoAs with everything Google does, it's slowly being rolled out. You will eventually see it appear soon!
- dwc 15y agoThanks. Just for kicks I guessed at the URL /games and was rewarded with a page beginning, "We're glad you want to play games on Google+. Don't worry, your turn is coming up!" and then saying basically what you said.
- jasonkostempski 15y agoI had the button for a few minutes and even played a few quick games, then it went away and I haven't seen it since.
- thethimble 15y agohttps://plus.google.com/games/ https://plus.google.com/games/
- dwc 15y ago
- crxpandion 15y agoNow if they only integrate it into hangout. Virtual LAN Parties. Not to be confused with VLAN parties...
- jcapote 15y agoGood night, sweet prince.
- foenix 15y agoAs a games developer still green-around-the-ears I'm really looking forward to trying my hand at making a social media game. I never wanted to make a facebook game because I felt like that ship had sailed.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- ry0ohki 15y agoThat's why I've largely unfollowed "famous people" on Google Plus... until they have the ability to view "everyone but X circle". The only people of the 100 or so I follow on Google Plus who post anything are celebrities and they post nonstop (and the hundreds of useless comments keep bumping their stuff to the top of my feed). It works on Twitter for some reason, but not on G+.
- jmspring 15y agoI've actually created a couple of composite circles that include the people from circles I want to pay attention to depending upon how much time/etc I have. My biggest reason for not using G+ more (I prefer twitter) is that a single conversation / thread can take up too much room in the feed. I rarely have the time to wade through / scroll down constantly -- the composite circles tend to help a bit.
- jmspring 15y agoLots of down-voting going on in this thread. Interesting.
- andypants 15y agoProbably because that guy didn't read the article. Games can't post status updates and spam your feed, it all goes in the games page so you'd have to visit the games page specifically if you want to view anything game related.
- int3rnaut 15y agoI'm still in the dark here so I can't check, but will Games for Google+ be using the same business models as most facebook games?
- yuvipanda 15y agoI take it you mean Ads? I'm not sure 'Facebook Credits' got much traction
- andypants 15y agoFB credits must have gotten some traction, because facebook games are only allowed to use facebook credits as premium currency...
- rampr 15y agoFacebook credits is mandatory now and is pretty popular. 95%+ of Zynga's revenues comes virtual goods which are now based on credits and the rest are from ads.
- rampr 15y agoGoogle+ does have in app payments - http://twitter.com/#!/vikasgupta/status/101752809044713472 http://twitter.com/#!/vikasgupta/status/101752809044713472
- andypants 15y agoI can't wait until they open up the g+ api.
- TillE 15y agoI can't wait until they open up Google+. As far as I can tell, they're still in danger of a Wave repeat, where the hype burns out too early. There are tons of people still out there with their noses pressed up against the glass, unable to join in the fun. Games are a big deal, though. They'll keep people on G+ even when there's nothing immediately social to do, and increase interactions between people, this time in a non-spammy way.
- starwed 15y agoReally? It's been ages since I saw anyone on facebook asking for an invite. (Of which I currently have 150...) It was super hard to get in for the first couple of weeks, and then it suddenly became a non-problem.
- mkr-hn 15y agoThe only thing that kept me from gaming on FB was stream pollution. I might actually play a few games on G+. I could even see myself developing one.
- sgt 15y agoI've got like 10 people in my Friends circle on Google+ and my feed is literally flooded. I suppose I could do some filtering (although I doubt that is what a typical user would even attempt doing). It just seems like it's harder to find out "what's going on" than with Facebook.
- felipemnoa 15y agoCould you elaborate a bit more. Maybe we can gain some insights from your experience. i.e. Why is it harder to find out what is going on in Google+ as opposed to Facebook?
- losvedir 15y agoI'm not OP but I'm finding it hard to follow what's going on as well. The primary reason is that my "following" circle is completely overwhelming my friends, family, etc, circles. I'd love to be able to look at all my circles except Following (or rather, to be able to view some subset of my circles at a time). Clicking to view "Family", scrolling down and reading, then back to the top and clicking "Friends", and then "Acquaintances" is tedious. In addition, an option to view more condensed posts would be helpful for viewing my Following deluge. As it is, each post gets a few paragraphs and a handful of comments. This is often nice, but sometimes I'd like to scan it more quickly, and if it could be just the person who posted it and the first few sentences, I'd love it.
- zmmmmm 15y agoI agree with this. I seem to have developed a kind of bimodal distribution of contacts in Google plus that represent the extremes of Twitter and Facebook: a bunch of people I know really well (family), and a bunch of people I don't know at all (Vic Gundotra, etc). The problem is both groups are getting equal billing in the stream. Which means that right now anything my family members post is so far down in the stream I barely see it. Another aspect of the same problem is a need for filtering on hash tags. Eg: I tried following Romain Guy because I'm interested in Android. But 9/10 posts he makes are about photography. I want to follow him but only see things he posts about Android. EDIT: thinking about it, there might be some useful cross pollination between this problem and sparks - it would almost solve my problem if I could just say "only show me things Romain Guy posts that are relevant to my sparks".
- e1ven 15y agoFound this video showing some of the implementation details (Via Tom Anderson on G+) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTYzyIcp0mY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTYzyIcp0mY All in all, it looks well done. I want to be absolutely sure I don't see Puzzle crap if I'm not interested, but their statements so far are in the right direction.
- jhuckestein 15y agoNext up, apps for Google+ and (more interestingly) for hangout.
- ristretto 15y agoHas anyone seen the games? What are they? An iframe, ajax, javascript or sth else?
- latch 15y agoi wish they bought me out and integrated mogade.com into it as a part of the platform for game developers :( If you think games are important to your platform, I really think that having game-specific APIs and features for game developers to target is both useful and simple. I've always thought a Facebook meets xbox live would do well.
- Raphael 15y agoMarissa Mayer is kicking our asses at Bejeweled with 409,950 points.