Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr are an everyday staple in most of the gaming community’s lives; we talk about the bosses we are attempting to down, the strats we use, and share the screenshots of our victories and failures. So why aren’t they more readily integrated into the games we play?
Rift, A Twitter Spam
One of the only experiences I’ve had with a game that did try this is Rift. Where you could link your Twitter and YouTube account to the game and it would announce your achievements to twitter, and you could upload recorded gameplay straight to YouTube.
I wasn’t as huge a fan of the twitter spam, I think if you’d been able to choose what achievements to announce it would have worked better.
However, the YouTube perk was wonderful, no more having to deal with Fraps, or Xsplit. I just pressed record and when I was done it would upload while I was still in game.
Social Network Integration
If I could pick what I would like to see it would go something like this:
- Linking the in-game calendar to Facebook, and Twitter. Cause I’ll be honest I look at FB and Twitter WAY more often than the in-game calendar.
- Uploading screenshots to Tumblr, and Facebook. Not necessarily publishing them but having them in a private folder incase you do want to publish them. I guess in that vein you could have them linked to a Photobucket account.
- Allowing you to choose to announce achievements to any social media site. You can bet that when I down Heroic-“Insert End Game Boss Here” I want my friends to know.
This is something that is achievable now, and I’m confused as to why we don’t see it more often.
I can imagine that the security risks behind it might be a pain in the ass, but I’m hopeful that we will be seeing it more in games to come, and possibly even in WoW.
/Cheers