5 ms·

Google+ Wastes No Time: Angry Birds, Bejeweled, Zynga On Board

80 points by tilt 15y ago

seagaia 15y ago
For indie developers...well, who knows. There might be a lot of finicky things with handing over you game to Google+. Becoming the new Kongregate? I sort of hope that stays outside of Google. Moreover I feel like this goes against the whole the of Google+, the majority of my friends hardly post substantial things to begin with; I don't think this will change their behavior much.
tlack 15y ago
Anyone gotten access to the API yet?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
americandesi333 15y ago
Google says "we want to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the web" I don't quite understand the richness in playing Angry Birds or Farmville. Real life is not like these games and therefore, people are momentarily attracted by this alternate world. I wonder if real farmers would play farmville?
- cellis 15y ago
  Would real soldiers play Call of Duty?
  - Apocryphon 15y ago
    At the very least, real people do play the Sims.
  - johnrob 15y ago
    The point of these games is to have the farmers play Call of Duty and the soldiers play Farmville.
  - cal5k 15y ago
    Yes, they do. My brother served in Afghanistan (Canadian infantry) and they most definitely played Call of Duty during the lengthy periods between missions.
    - sliverstorm 15y ago
      Yea, I remember when there were sales restrictions on a certain FPS in some country, because it let you play as Terrorists and shoot at US Troops, it was the US soldiers there that were most annoyed because they wanted to play the game! I wish I remembered more about the story, to find a link.
      - MiguelHudnandez 15y ago
        From September of 2010: Sales of new 'Medal of Honor' video game banned on military bases http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/08/AR2010090807219.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09... If I recall, the biggest objection came because one could play as "The Taliban" instead of unnamed/ambiguous "terrorists."
mindcrime 15y ago
Hrrm... I don't know, I feel like there are a lot of things they could have spent time on that would be more important /useful than supporting Angry Birds, etc. Better stream content filtering / control? Shared circles? Nested circles? Better integration with GCal, Google Groups, etc? Improving Sparks? I mean, as much as I like + so far, I wouldn't say there aren't still a lot of things that I hope they're going to address. And Angry Birds was, unfortunately, not at the top of my list. :-(
- klbarry 15y ago
  Be grateful! Thanks to improvements like these, Google + might be able to survive amongst the common folk long enough to make the features you desire.
  - mindcrime 15y ago
    True, and I should have mentioned that point. I certainly do acknowledge that my tastes and needs aren't representative of the rest of the world. :-)
rjd 15y ago
Well I'm thankful I closed my Google+ account now. The wave of mass spamming was completely relentless ... even after I closed my account. I literally disabled emails (to prevent the wave of spam I was hite with), then I decided to leave, and then request no updates after leaving O_o they just kept coming. Somehow I think they are going to take the same approach of mass spamming Facebook did, I guess games are the best way to do this and create stickiness... EDIT: spam = 20-30 unwanted emails a day. And I kept getting them after I left, I had to fill in a second form to get them to stop. I know of atleast one other person this has happened to aswell. Not sure if its fixed now or not.
- jamesbritt 15y ago
  Interesting. I've not had that experience at all. A handful of followers who, as best I could tell, only wanted to alert me to their fantabulus products, but hardly anything momentous. What I wonder now is why this happens to some but not others. "I'm not very cool", of course, is one plausible explanation. :)
  - rjd 15y ago
    Or position. I've been running the online branch of a news organisation, so a lot of the people who are in my direct network are journalists, people trying to get attention from the media, and of course advertising agencies. I used G+ for about 3 weeks from launch and I found it a horrible experience. Basically none of the people I want to keep in touch with use it, everything else was spam. I'm also known under a pseudonym so I didn't see any point of using the service. I found it more of an highly opinionated Tumblr clone (lacking the flare of Tumblr) than a Facebook clone.
    - rwolf 15y ago
      Based on your comments here, it sounds like your circles mainly included professional contacts. Have you used twitter in a similar fashion? How were the spam levels there? Edit: My question sounded sarcastic when I reread it. I don't have any newspaper-industry contacts on twitter or google+, so I'm curious about the extent to which the network influences their sharing habits.
bauchidgw 15y ago
well, the google translate api is still scheduled for shutdown dec 2011 http://code.google.com/apis/language/translate/overview.htmland http://code.google.com/apis/language/translate/overview.html... google wastes its and our time with games from yesterday ... well at least we know now what their priorities are. in a way i pitty google, they were great once, now they are just ... facebook
- johnny22 15y ago
  my understanding was that google was having problems with too many folks using the translate api and pretending it was original content. that would make terrible input for google translate to learn from.
- abraham 15y ago
  Google is supposedly launching a payed version of the translation API: http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/05/spring-cleaning-for-some-of-our-apis.html http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/05/spring-cleaning-for-s...
Hominem 15y ago
Facebook and Zynga are pretty much symbiotic now so Zynga has serious leverage, but any chance Facebook will start locking up smaller developers with exclusive deals?
- starwed 15y ago
  My understanding is that they kind of do -- any game which allows in-game purchases must do so using facebook credits. You can set up a different "instance" of a game, but to allow interaction with the FB players, you have to tie it in to their currency. This means any emerging viral/social type game will be effectively locked in to facebook. (Those with clout, like Zynga, are able to negotiate better terms.)

80 points by tilt 15y ago

For indie developers...well, who knows. There might be a lot of finicky things with handing over you game to Google+. Becoming the new Kongregate? I sort of hope that stays outside of Google. Moreover I feel like this goes against the whole the of Google+, the majority of my friends hardly post substantial things to begin with; I don't think this will change their behavior much.

tlack 15y ago

Anyone gotten access to the API yet?

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

americandesi333 15y ago

Google says "we want to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the web" I don't quite understand the richness in playing Angry Birds or Farmville. Real life is not like these games and therefore, people are momentarily attracted by this alternate world. I wonder if real farmers would play farmville?

cellis 15y ago
Would real soldiers play Call of Duty?
- Apocryphon 15y ago
  At the very least, real people do play the Sims.
- johnrob 15y ago
  The point of these games is to have the farmers play Call of Duty and the soldiers play Farmville.
- cal5k 15y ago
  Yes, they do. My brother served in Afghanistan (Canadian infantry) and they most definitely played Call of Duty during the lengthy periods between missions.
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    Yea, I remember when there were sales restrictions on a certain FPS in some country, because it let you play as Terrorists and shoot at US Troops, it was the US soldiers there that were most annoyed because they wanted to play the game! I wish I remembered more about the story, to find a link.
    - MiguelHudnandez 15y ago
      From September of 2010: Sales of new 'Medal of Honor' video game banned on military bases http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/08/AR2010090807219.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09... If I recall, the biggest objection came because one could play as "The Taliban" instead of unnamed/ambiguous "terrorists."

mindcrime 15y ago

Hrrm... I don't know, I feel like there are a lot of things they could have spent time on that would be more important /useful than supporting Angry Birds, etc. Better stream content filtering / control? Shared circles? Nested circles? Better integration with GCal, Google Groups, etc? Improving Sparks? I mean, as much as I like + so far, I wouldn't say there aren't still a lot of things that I hope they're going to address. And Angry Birds was, unfortunately, not at the top of my list. :-(

klbarry 15y ago
Be grateful! Thanks to improvements like these, Google + might be able to survive amongst the common folk long enough to make the features you desire.
- mindcrime 15y ago
  True, and I should have mentioned that point. I certainly do acknowledge that my tastes and needs aren't representative of the rest of the world. :-)

rjd 15y ago

Well I'm thankful I closed my Google+ account now. The wave of mass spamming was completely relentless ... even after I closed my account. I literally disabled emails (to prevent the wave of spam I was hite with), then I decided to leave, and then request no updates after leaving O_o they just kept coming. Somehow I think they are going to take the same approach of mass spamming Facebook did, I guess games are the best way to do this and create stickiness... EDIT: spam = 20-30 unwanted emails a day. And I kept getting them after I left, I had to fill in a second form to get them to stop. I know of atleast one other person this has happened to aswell. Not sure if its fixed now or not.

jamesbritt 15y ago
Interesting. I've not had that experience at all. A handful of followers who, as best I could tell, only wanted to alert me to their fantabulus products, but hardly anything momentous. What I wonder now is why this happens to some but not others. "I'm not very cool", of course, is one plausible explanation. :)
- rjd 15y ago
  Or position. I've been running the online branch of a news organisation, so a lot of the people who are in my direct network are journalists, people trying to get attention from the media, and of course advertising agencies. I used G+ for about 3 weeks from launch and I found it a horrible experience. Basically none of the people I want to keep in touch with use it, everything else was spam. I'm also known under a pseudonym so I didn't see any point of using the service. I found it more of an highly opinionated Tumblr clone (lacking the flare of Tumblr) than a Facebook clone.
  - rwolf 15y ago
    Based on your comments here, it sounds like your circles mainly included professional contacts. Have you used twitter in a similar fashion? How were the spam levels there? Edit: My question sounded sarcastic when I reread it. I don't have any newspaper-industry contacts on twitter or google+, so I'm curious about the extent to which the network influences their sharing habits.

bauchidgw 15y ago

well, the google translate api is still scheduled for shutdown dec 2011 http://code.google.com/apis/language/translate/overview.htmland http://code.google.com/apis/language/translate/overview.html... google wastes its and our time with games from yesterday ... well at least we know now what their priorities are. in a way i pitty google, they were great once, now they are just ... facebook

johnny22 15y ago
my understanding was that google was having problems with too many folks using the translate api and pretending it was original content. that would make terrible input for google translate to learn from.
abraham 15y ago
Google is supposedly launching a payed version of the translation API: http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/05/spring-cleaning-for-some-of-our-apis.html http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/05/spring-cleaning-for-s...

Hominem 15y ago

Facebook and Zynga are pretty much symbiotic now so Zynga has serious leverage, but any chance Facebook will start locking up smaller developers with exclusive deals?

starwed 15y ago
My understanding is that they kind of do -- any game which allows in-game purchases must do so using facebook credits. You can set up a different "instance" of a game, but to allow interaction with the FB players, you have to tie it in to their currency. This means any emerging viral/social type game will be effectively locked in to facebook. (Those with clout, like Zynga, are able to negotiate better terms.)