the problem(s) with G+ games
2011-Aug-17, Wednesday 09:16 pmThe wrong kind of segregation limits the sociability of these games. Most of them are designed to encourage people to join their friends in play. They reward you in various ways for having other people accept an in-game invitation. There are a few problems with this model.
If anyone on G+ plays "City Of Wonder" or "Dragon Age Legends", be sure to throw me a Friend invite in them. ;) If you need help in others, I'll be happy to throw you an invite on games that I don't play, too.
- G+ does not provide public pages of interest that are populated by G+ users. There is no "City Of Wonder" G+ page where people can post various topics such as looking for cohorts to play in game. The G+ Sparks are a step in the right direction, but everything there still has to be hosted outside of google and indexed later. There need to be G+ game pages where people can post topics.
- G+ game feed is a step in the right direction, but it also needs some tweaks. I'd like to see game companies allowed access only to a required Circle named "Games" in G+, rather than giving them access to my whole circle list. There's no point in annoying my circles or teasing me by suggesting that I ask these people to join my game since I already know they're not interested.
- G+ game feed also needs to be publishable (at user's discretion), so people like me can follow their friend's game feeds to better judge what games they play, how frequently they play, and if the people they're connected to (on the Games circle mentioned in #2) might already be playing the same games that I am. These public Games circles would allow people like me to go fishing for like-minded people.
- Game providers are not hosting their own content for G+ games users. Instead, they seem locked in to Facebook, where people have access to game-specific pages mentioned in #1 above. To submit a bug report for "Dragon Age Legends", I had to reactivate my Facebook account just to create a forum account there. They actually required Facebook and did not allow other kinds of logins. Similar problems plague the whole collection of Playdom games.
- I can't find any way at all of deleting a game that I've given permission to read my Circles. Do they keep that right forever?
If anyone on G+ plays "City Of Wonder" or "Dragon Age Legends", be sure to throw me a Friend invite in them. ;) If you need help in others, I'll be happy to throw you an invite on games that I don't play, too.