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There are already games integrated with hangouts as hangout apps. Why exactly do you say that was a missed opportunity? It seems to me it's more like a work in

There are already games integrated with hangouts as hangout apps. Why exactly do you say that was a missed opportunity? It seems to me it's more like a work in progress. There's nothing stopping a game developer from integrating it's games with hangouts today.

michaelochurch 14y ago
No one associates Google+ Games with excellence. And no one will. Look at this, which is a top hit for "Google Hangout Games": https://plus.google.com/109773091778987430194/posts https://plus.google.com/109773091778987430194/posts I just got Tubgirl'd by stuff that looks like scratch-off lottery tickets. Seriously, Google? Google established its fucking brand by being excellent at something important: web search. They used a mathematical and computational approach (advanced linear algebra, distributed computing) to solve a hard problem. Their brand excellence in Search made them able to capitalize (Ads) on the loyalty they earned by solving Search. Google is supposed to have learned the lesson that when you do something excellent in one area, especially when people are underserved by the lamestreamers (sorry for the Palinism, but it works here) as in web search circa 1998 [ETA: or email circa 2004] or social games circa 2011, it pays off in seemingly unrelated places. Excellence In Gaming could have literally made Google+ a niche winner and an eventual contender instead of the non-player it is now. Google+ needed to do the same damn thing. To say this: we aren't going to pander, we're going to fucking excel. We may not be the biggest and most established social network, but we're going to have the highest average quality. Center of Excellence. Now, for Google to go into Games at all was a huge risk, because Web Search and Games are very different. In Search, you have to be ideologically non-editorial (give the user what he or she wants to find, not what your editors think is of highest quality) and you want people to get in and out of your service as fast as possible. In Games, you have to be editorial, because if you waste peoples' time with shitty games, they lose faith in you. (Zynga dreck was one of the major reasons social network fatigue started in mid-2011.) Also, in Games, people are spending hours in your service, not getting in and out as fast as you can send them along. So these are almost opposite categories of service. What's unnerving is that hundreds of engineers signed a petition agreeing with Excellence In Games, but nothing ever happened except for higher-ups getting pissed off. Google showed it had talent "under its roof" in spades but not the leadership to do anything useful with it.
- vibrunazo 14y ago
  I think you either replied to the wrong person or misread my post :P I asked about hangouts specifically. I agree with you there should be more focus on quality. But I was curious to know why exactly do you think hangouts was a missed opportunity. When it seems it's an ongoing work in progress instead. You seem to know more than I about the details. So why was games on hangouts a missed opportunity when there are games for hangouts already?

michaelochurch 14y ago

No one associates Google+ Games with excellence. And no one will. Look at this, which is a top hit for "Google Hangout Games": https://plus.google.com/109773091778987430194/posts https://plus.google.com/109773091778987430194/posts I just got Tubgirl'd by stuff that looks like scratch-off lottery tickets. Seriously, Google? Google established its fucking brand by being excellent at something important: web search. They used a mathematical and computational approach (advanced linear algebra, distributed computing) to solve a hard problem. Their brand excellence in Search made them able to capitalize (Ads) on the loyalty they earned by solving Search. Google is supposed to have learned the lesson that when you do something excellent in one area, especially when people are underserved by the lamestreamers (sorry for the Palinism, but it works here) as in web search circa 1998 [ETA: or email circa 2004] or social games circa 2011, it pays off in seemingly unrelated places. Excellence In Gaming could have literally made Google+ a niche winner and an eventual contender instead of the non-player it is now. Google+ needed to do the same damn thing. To say this: we aren't going to pander, we're going to fucking excel. We may not be the biggest and most established social network, but we're going to have the highest average quality. Center of Excellence. Now, for Google to go into Games at all was a huge risk, because Web Search and Games are very different. In Search, you have to be ideologically non-editorial (give the user what he or she wants to find, not what your editors think is of highest quality) and you want people to get in and out of your service as fast as possible. In Games, you have to be editorial, because if you waste peoples' time with shitty games, they lose faith in you. (Zynga dreck was one of the major reasons social network fatigue started in mid-2011.) Also, in Games, people are spending hours in your service, not getting in and out as fast as you can send them along. So these are almost opposite categories of service. What's unnerving is that hundreds of engineers signed a petition agreeing with Excellence In Games, but nothing ever happened except for higher-ups getting pissed off. Google showed it had talent "under its roof" in spades but not the leadership to do anything useful with it.

vibrunazo 14y ago
I think you either replied to the wrong person or misread my post :P I asked about hangouts specifically. I agree with you there should be more focus on quality. But I was curious to know why exactly do you think hangouts was a missed opportunity. When it seems it's an ongoing work in progress instead. You seem to know more than I about the details. So why was games on hangouts a missed opportunity when there are games for hangouts already?