Google Adds Games To Google+

derGoldstein writes with this quote from the official Google blog: "Today we're adding games to Google+. ... We want to make playing games online just as fun, and just as meaningful, as playing in real life ... When you're ready to play, the Games page is waiting — click the games button at the top of your stream. You can see the latest game updates from your circles, browse the invites you've received and check out games that people you know have played recently. The Games page is also where your game accomplishments will appear. So you can comfortably share your latest high score — your circles will only see the updates when they're interested in playing games too."

Comments

Google+

[zget]

At least Google isn't dumb enough to forget that people want to play games and spend times on social networking sites. It's also interesting to see that Zynga is there.. There goes two usual slashdot arguments straight out of the window, one being that Zynga is somehow completely relies on Facebook and that Google+ is in some way different social network than Facebook. It is currently, but only because they're lagging behind in development. And to be honest, the place is completely dead without casual people, games and pages. The latter one they still need to add too.

Google+ is so direct copy of Facebook that it isn't even funny. The whole thing even looks almost exactly the same, just that it has different colors and is lacking features that Facebook has. What exactly is Google trying to archieve here? They aren't innovating, they're just copying. I rather don't have everything about me known by a single company, so I like to use Facebook much more than let Google know all my personal details, my friends, my web searches, my YouTube views, my emails and every site I visit on the internet (via Google Analytics). Putting that much information to a single company is just plain stupid, especially when they just a few days ago revealed they're been secretly handing European citizens information to US agencies, even when it's illegal to do so in the EU.

Re:Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

Nic

Re:Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

Circles, privacy options, hangouts, and keeping games/apps out of the normal social areas.

How is Google+ an exact copy of Facebook with less features again?

Re:Google+

[iamhassi]

Mod parent up. Wish I hadn't wasted all my mod points earlier today

Re:Google+

[MrMatto]

I hope I don't get spammed every time someone in one of my circles plays a Zynga game. That to me is the worst part of the whole platform; all the ads it forces on other people.

Re:Google+

[Permutation Citizen]

Well, if they add games to Google+, but avoid the annoying thing that Facebook does, it's a great move.

With Facebook, game request permission to post on your wall, and all your contact knows which games you play, when and how often. It's annoying for them and for you.

Re:Google+

[zget]

You know, you can just not allow it to post. Google+ has the exact same thing, they described how you can post "your high scores" and everything else for others to see.

For the other end it's also not that complicated to block those updates. The first time you get them, click the x and select hide updates. There's also the dropdown box next to latest updates link which allows you to select which kind of updates and from who you like to see. They're improved it a lot since a some years ago.

Re:Google+

[derGoldstein]

No, no, this is new:
"But sharing is about more than just conversations. The experiences we have together are just as important to our relationships. We want to make playing games online just as fun, and just as meaningful, as playing in real life."

See? This was their idea. It's new, it's innovative. They came to this realization through trial and error, through experience. They employed a crack team of behavioral psychologists that independently came to the conclusion that "people want to play games online". Up until now, games online weren't fun. But they're going to change that. Look at this list of games they're going to launch right off the bat: Angry Birds, Bejeweled, Sudoku! Oh man, Google's gonna make games FUN again. I can't wait.

Re:Google+

[mwvdlee]

This.
Google+ == Facebook minus a lot of feature.
All comments beyond parent (including this) are redundant.

Re:Google+

[mwvdlee]

Look at this list of games they're going to launch right off the bat.

No FarmVille? Surely there is an error in that list.

Re:Google+

[Pieroxy]

For the other end it's also not that complicated to block those updates.

No it's not simple. I mostly access my social networks from my phone, and the mobile app doesn't have an X. So I get constantly annoyed by this crap and it forces me to go and log in on my PC to disable it. Then another game takes over. It's a never ending battle to keep facebook usable.

Re:Google+

[gbjbaanb]

You know, XKCD said it first.

What is Google+?
-- Its NOT Facebook
What's it like?
-- Facebook!

Re:Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

so I like to use Facebook much more than let Google know all my personal details, my friends, my web searches, my YouTube views, my emails and every site I visit on the internet (via Google Analytics). Putting that much information to a single company is just plain stupid, especially when they just a few days ago revealed they're been secretly handing European citizens information to US agencies, even when it's illegal to do so in the EU.

Do you know that your ISP (Internet Service Provider) are privat and very FOR-PROFIT companies what has excluded rights even in law book? They know _everything_ what you do on Internet. They can track you anyway how they want. Even your position trough mobile phones more accurate than you believe (accuracy of few meters in cities because multiple cells and in countryland they can track your position in few dozen of meters if three cell in range or hundreds of meters if just 1-2).

And ISP's _share_ all the data (email addresses, website addresses, called numbers, SMS's etc) to security agencies. In EU it is not illegal if you have at all followed the passed laws in EU. In EU, it is not illegal to phonetab normal citizens by police even that they dont have high level cirme done. That law was passed at 1993 and is valid for every EU country. Media was very silent of that. And at least you know that EU passes all traffic data to databases what you buy with your name? They all end up to US as well, at least on the point when someone asks them. The law gives the same permits to police to phonetab, follow people or get access to their bank accounts and other information as similar laws gave to KGB and STASI. Even FBI needed to get a public congress hearing to get rights to that, while in EU it was passes silently.

You are afraid of single international company only because it is famous. But you are not afraid of EU, USA and so on, because they are invisible and media eats from their hands telling people only what needs to be told. You know more data of politicians life and tastes, than their work and tasks what they do.

So what you really should have written is:

so I like to use Facebook much more than let Government know all my personal details, my friends, my web searches, my YouTube views, my emails and every site I visit on the internet (via ISP). Putting that much information to a single agency is just plain stupid, especially when they just a few days ago revealed they're been secretly handing citizens information to security agencies, because it isn't illegal to do so in the EU.

Do you trust your ISP more than Google? Do you trust more to EU than Google? I dont trust either ones... but I can not avoid EU and ISP, while I can avoid much more Google.

Re:Google+

[derGoldstein]

Zynga's already on board. Maybe they thought that placing the FarmVille icon will make them seem too much like Facebook? I mean they really are creating carbon copies of the features they're adding. If you added Zynga to the announcement post it'd just read "Step 17 of the 'Google+ == Facebook' project".

They should just give up the pretense, though. I'd respect them a lot more if they said -- "Look, Facebook is popular and they're making a ton of money. We didn't invent the search engine, and we didn't invent online advertising. We just made them better, and that's what we're going to do with the social network".

Re:Google+

[tibman]

From the look of it, all games stuff goes into a separate games stream. You can completely ignore all game spam and it will never show up in your normal stream.

Re:Google+

[Darinbob]

You don't understand. It's NOT Facebook. That's the whole feature! I know this doesn't make any sense to Facebook users...

Re:Google+

[zget]

That article says they can't bring FarmVille and CityVille to Google+ because of deals with Facebook, but it does link to another interesting article - Google investing $100-200 million to Zynga. So much for the another usual slashdot argument about Google just providing neutral platform for others to use - it's a highly strategic game, such that every other huge company in the industry plays as well.

Re:Google+

[funkatron]

The trick is to block gamers, not individual games. There's usually a small group of people who play these things and let them spam indiscriminately.

Re:Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

From the look of it, all games stuff goes into a separate games stream. You can completely ignore all game spam and it will never show up in your normal stream.

As you easily can on Facebook too (something there you don't want to see anymore? Click on x, hide all by..). The difference might be what is default.

Re:Google+

[MrMatto]

I know, but every time a new game came out I had to 'hide all' for it. I ended up just turning off all platform apps entirely.

Re:Google+

[JohnnyBGod]

Really? Because when I block them on the website, all the other apps stop getting them, too.

Re:Google+

[Requiem18th]

He's not saying it is an exact copy right now but it's in the process of becoming one.

I for one hardly believe that you will be able to protect your personal info from these games for too long. I'm pretty sure a "what transformer are you?" app that scraps your friends' "friends-only" data is just waiting to happen. The functionality must be there for the really interesting (and way creepier) apps that do actually make use of your friends' private data.

The circles thing is sorta of a scam*, trying to give you the feeling that you are going to be able to keep the different aspects of your life separate, but its very purpose is preventing you from doing what really could help you manage your identity online --keeping multiple profiles--

G+'s privacy options are not something to write home about, they are not much different from facebook's. But I admit they will most probably do respect them, unlike facebook.

To rip from XKCD, G+ is a facebook that is not facebook.

* Oh golly, I said scam in relation to Google, I'm not going to see the end of it, am I?

Re:Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not his complaint, it does that. But he can't block them from anywhere but the website, which is an absolute pain when you're nowhere near a computer and the mobile version of the Facebook page doesn't have the option.

Re:Google+

[razvan784]

I don't trust anyone, that's why I use encryption when transferring data over the Internet that I don't want others to look at. The ISPs only know that there's been a connection from A to B at time T and nothing more. And that's why I don't have any sensitive data on third party servers, Google-owned or otherwise. Chill out.

Re:Google+

[mcvos]

It does to me.

Re:Google+

[mcvos]

Keep in mind that Facebook didn't invent social networks either. I just checked, and apparently Orkut is actually a month older than Facebook.

Re:Google+

[polle404]

I rather don't have everything about me known by a single company, so I like to use Facebook much more than let Google know all my personal details, my friends, my web searches, my YouTube views, my emails and every site I visit on the internet

Oh believe me, Zuckerberg's no slouch when it comes to tracking facebook users.

http://www.thinq.co.uk/2010/11/30/facebooks-button-tracking-you/

Re:Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

Separate profiles? I don't think you understand how relationships work. The status of my various contacts is _not_ static: co-workers became friends, friendships get broken, etc. Separate profiles are totally unable to cope with that seamlessly and most importantly invisibly to the contact in question. My contacts do not need to know how much information I'm giving them / keeping from them.

Re:Google+

[Enderandrew]

Google bought 10% of Zynga last year.

Re:Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

You say:

He's not saying it is an exact copy right now but it's in the process of becoming one.

And talk about this opinion as if it has merit. Then you change your mind:

G+'s privacy options are not something to write home about, they are not much different from facebook's. But I admit they will most probably do respect them, unlike facebook.

The biggest problem with Facebook is Facebook's history of selling out its users by changing who can see what without telling anyone. If Google+ is Facebook without Facebook's biggest problem, how are they not a huge improvement?

Re:Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

"Google+ is so direct copy of Facebook that it isn't even funny." ~ zget

Re:Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

You say:

how are they not a huge improvement?

And he said:

in the process of becoming one.

They're a huge improvement at the moment. Give them a few years.

  For the record though, the interface on G+ is a lot easier to use at the moment, and that's always been my biggest irritation with Facebook, who are still an improvement over MySpace.

Re:Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark? is that you? Steal any new ideas or code lately?

Re:Google+

[nschubach]

Yes Mom, I blocked you because you kept spamming me with Farmville crap so I didn't get your post that Grandma died.

Re:Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

If your mom is relying on facebook to tell immediate family about a death in the family, she needs to put the computer away for a few months.

Re:Google+

[elashish14]

let Google know all my personal details, my friends, my web searches, my YouTube views, my emails and every site I visit on the internet (via Google Analytics)

So install NoScript and block analytics?

Re:Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

If the only way to find out that your grandma died is on facebook, and it's an actual issue for your mom that you didn't get a post from facebook, then I'd say your family have worse social problems than that of facebook.

Re:Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but that doesn't change the fact that muting people on a social website is a terrible workaround.

Re:Google+

[Riceballsan]

But there is a key difference to how google allows the high scores etc to be posted. Google posts it to an entirely different feed, and still allows you to limit what circles can see it within that feed. To put it in comparison the way Facebook handles games is like a water balloon fight at a picnic, where the rule is, if someone hits you with a water balloon, you can ask him/her not to hit you again, a new kid shows up you need to ask that one too. G+ on the other hand is more like, "We have an area for water balloon fighting over there, go on over if you want to join in.

Re:Google+

[bkaul01]

Circles, privacy options, hangouts, and keeping games/apps out of the normal social areas.

How is Google+ an exact copy of Facebook with less features again?

Circles are just Facebook Friend Lists by a different name ... Privacy options I've found to be more useful (if less discoverable) on Facebook (e.g. you can blacklist Lists, where you can only whitelist Circles) ... Facebook has group chat and Skype integration, so there's essentially parity there ... you had a point on the absence of games, though Google looks to be moving towards Facebook on that one.

There are a few differences with the G+ news feed - essentially it's a hybrid of Facebook and Twitter, since adding someone to a Circle is a one-way transaction, not requiring the mutual confirmation of adding someone as a Friend on Facebook. But it's still just copying off existing services that most of the market is already happily using.

Re:Google+

[Dishevel]

At least they are keeping all that fucking game shit on the "I am a fucking tool" page and not inflicting me with shitloads of "I need a shovel you bastards!" all over my communications area.

Re:Google+

[geekoid]

Innovation is in the implementation.
It's like saying Audi is copying Ford, so what are the trying to accomplish?

". I rather don't have everything about me known by a single company, so I like to use Facebook much more than let Google know all my personal details, my friends, my web searches, my YouTube views, my emails and every site I visit on the internet (via Google Analytics). "

Google has all your facebook information already.
I'm not sure what could happen that would destroy all your data.

AS for your borderline paranoia. Do you think 'they' can only access one place? 'They' can get info from Facebook, Google, and your ISP.

Re:Google+

[geekoid]

It depends on google policy.

Circle is a good implementation of a digital representation of physical privacy and security.

maybe you should stop letting XKCD do all your thinking?

Re:Google+

[geekoid]

different name, better implementation, easier to use, and the core of the App.

That's the paradigm change.

Re:Google+

[geekoid]

except it's wrong.

It's like saying Porche = VW.

And before some dull witted knuckle dragging nerd wanna be responds, yes I KNOW Porsche comes from the VW design, and that's the point.

Re:Google+

[geekoid]

Playing games is not being a 'tool', and yes the separation is a critical change.

Re:Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

Not as bad as your humor issues.

Re:Google+

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

"They've now baited the trap... with cheese."

It oughtta be called "Crop Circles." You're just another load of round-up ready, for the Google combine.

Harvest away.

Re:Google+

[DerekLyons]

Google+ is so direct copy of Facebook that it isn't even funny.

And in other news, Google Docs has cut-and-paste just like Microsoft Word.
 
Seriously, Facebook has set the bar with regards to what features a social networking site must have, and Google+ needs to meet or exceed that bar. Beyond the "hate everything that isn't Google" crowd, just being "not Facebook" isn't enough.

Re:Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you even read your own writings?

Re:Google+

[nabsltd]

Yes Mom, I blocked you because you kept spamming me with Farmville crap so I didn't get your post that Grandma died.

But, since you didn't block Grandma, you should have gotten the news directly from her last status update...you know, the one that ended with "NO CARRIER".

Re:Google+

[Stupendoussteve]

This is a great comment.

Within a week or two of Google+ being released, people here and elsewhere mentioned that it would not get very far or ever be popular without Apps and Games specifically. Now that they're deploying them (in an intelligent way), it's a horrible idea and shows Google has no innovation and is only copying Facebook. You can't have it both ways.

Re:Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

If I opened up a gas station, no one would be saying "That has already been done, where is the innovation?"

Re:Google+

[AmberBlackCat]

You don't understand. It's NOT Facebook. That's the whole feature! I know this doesn't make any sense to Facebook users...

Just like Obama's not Bush...

Re:Google+

[Requiem18th]

The problem with Circles is that you really can't step away from a Circle without loosing all it's protection. Which I guess it's okay if all you are going to use G+ for is organising gatherings, share photos of those gatherings, family photos, gossip and very, very low profile promotion of interests.

Since my interests lie in debates and participation in online communities, I have a need to be "publicly private". That is, if I'm not interested in having the online drama following me home. Which I don't.

On top of that, personal details don't always contribute to discussion, I don't want to let my ethnicity, (non)religion, or political view be a factor in online interactions. Except when it's relevant, but that's why I keep multiple profiles around.

Now I realise I'm not a standard user of social networks (in fact I have no interest in having "friends" who aren't real friends) but that doesn't mean I don't know what Circles' main drive of implementation is, since facebook users just keep multiple profiles for that purpose alone.

Also, honestly, it's just an accident waiting to happen, the lower the error margin the more likely you are to share stuff with the wrong friends. But I can see Google fans not caring about that one.

Maybe you shouldn't put senseless ad-hominem in your replies?

Re:Google+

[mwvdlee]

Except Google+ isn't trying to be better than Facebook, they're trying to be as much like them as possible.
It's more like Porche-knockoff == Porche.

Re:Google+

[DaVince21]

But if you do that, you can't check those messages easily when you decide you want to, at some point. Now it's an entirely separate stream.

Re:Google+

[DaVince21]

What if the gamers are (actual) friends or family? I know I've unwillingly spammed someone with that crap...

Re:Google+

[Macgrrl]

LJ and others want to have a word to you about prior art.

Farmville+

[qxcv]

Oh dear $DEITY.

Re:Farmville+

[rbrausse]

brausse@auedv23:~$ echo $DEITY

brausse@auedv23:~$

Nietzsche was right :)

Re:Farmville+

[Anonymous Coward]

brausse@auedv23:~$ echo $DEITY

brausse@auedv23:~$

Nietzsche was right :)

Nietzsche never said there isn't a god, he only deleted him/her from the sudoers list...

Re:Farmville+

[derGoldstein]

He also didn't use PHP.
"echo $DEITY"? Please. It's: printf ("%s \n", "DEITY");
Though I think that suggests that god is a string, which I also don't think he said...

Re:Farmville+

[Dhalka226]

If you can't recognize that it was a shell prompt and not PHP, you probably shouldn't be trying to seem too geeky for the language.

Re:Farmville+

[pr0nbot]

I think you've misunderstood what String Theory is all about...

Re:Farmville+

[derGoldstein]

A great example of one of the top 5 posts on Slashdot: "your joke isn't technically correct". Saying "Nietzsche didn't use the shell prompt" wouldn't have worked. The string "echo $DEITY" is valid PHP. Now kindly remove the stick from your ass.

Re:Farmville+

[Anonymous Coward]

But how often does PHP have a PS1 prompt? Nietzsche probably used perl anyway, much more obtuse.

Re:Farmville+

[Anonymous Coward]

PHP statements are semi-colon terminated. Bash shell commands are semi-colon separated. Learn the difference and you will see why "echo $DEITY" is not PHP.

Also, the "brausse@auedv23:~$" prompt should've tipped you off.

Re:Farmville+

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense,
I always have DEITY="$USER" set in my /etc/bash/bashrc.

Re:Farmville+

[mortonda]

Fix your PATH.

Re:Farmville+

[Anonymous Coward]

I laughed hard at this one :)

Re:Farmville+

[sorak]

brausse@auedv23:~$ echo $DEITY

brausse@auedv23:~$

Nietzsche was right :)

brausse@auedv23:~$ sudo echo $DIETY

Trent Reznor

brausse@auedv23:~$

WTF?

Re:Farmville+

[geekoid]

You should be happy. There implementing it in a way where people who want to partake can, and those who don't won't be bothered. THIS is a good thing. Based on the amount of irrational hatred about google plus on /., I suspect it's going to be a big hit.

Re:Farmville+

[TheSpoom]

It's valid PHP but only if it's inside PHP tags (or being executed directly by the CLI parser). SEMANTICS AHOY!

How's that news?

[Opportunist]

Let's put it that way, it would be news if Google made the statement that they decided to NOT copy one thing of Facebook.

Re:How's that news?

[iamhassi]

Good point. Are we going to have a /. article every time google+ adds something Facebook has? "google+ adds groups", "google+ adds email", "google+ adds advertising", "google+ gives your information away to government"

Re:How's that news?

[derGoldstein]

"google+ gives your information away to government"

I'd actually really want to know when that happens.

Re:How's that news?

[Anonymous Coward]

In realtime. Just like it happens at the AT&T, etc.

Re:How's that news?

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to wait, it already does...

Oh sorry, we were talking about Google and not about ISP.
Well, they do already store every email (even not when using Google services) information and web address where you go when you use your ISP services.

Re:How's that news?

[walternate]

"google+ gives your information away to government"

I'd actually really want to know when that happens.

How about: Google Admits Handing over European User Data to US Intelligence Agencies

Re:How's that news?

[hal2814]

Unfortunately for Google, they can't copy the users.

Re:How's that news?

[geekoid]

Google was legally compelled to. As would be ANY US company.

And yes, I would be saying the exact same thing regardless of what US company handed over the data, Hopefully this will great pressure from other countries for changes to the patriot act.

Re:How's that news?

[swillden]

No need to wait, it already does...

Oh sorry, we were talking about Google and not about ISP. Well, they do already store every email (even not when using Google services) information and web address where you go when you use your ISP services.

What your ISP can store about your use of Google services is pretty limited. Most Google services use HTTPS by default, and many of them use HTTPS exclusively.

With few exceptions, if the government wants information about you from Google services, they'll have to get it from Google. My guess (and it is a guess, based on my knowledge of how the company looks at things, rather than any specific knowledge of what Google does or doesn't do in this area) is that Google will provide the information in response to a subpoena, but won't otherwise, i.e. that Google tries to protect your privacy except where it would be illegal to do so.

Re:How's that news?

[Opportunist]

Don't worry. With the "invitation only" system they made it look exclusive enough to make people WANT to join.

Re:How's that news?

[Ambvai]

The important distinction is HOW did they hand it over: "Hi, we heard people might be up to something; mind giving up all your info on people named Mike?" vs "Here's a court order."

Who cares

[TheInternetGuy]

Who cares what they are adding if no-one can log in?

Re:Who cares

[GooberToo]

Because doing so stresses the artificial scarcity of a Google+ account which makes the majority of the population's desire for an account ever more strong.

This exact same marketing strategy is the exact reason why women fawn all of diamonds today. Contrary to popular myth, outside of heavy industry people largely didn't give a crap about diamonds (they used to be considered almost worthless - as they actually are). The same thing is done for cool night clubs and country clubs.

Never underestimate the stupidity of the general public. That moto has worked extremely well for Fox News and most politicians.

Re:Who cares

[geekoid]

They aren't worthless. It's a multibillion dollar industry. Everything is worth what you can get for it, no more, no less.

The reason women want diamonds is years of advertising. Simple look at Japans adoption of the diamond ring after WWII. All do to a huge marketing push.

FYI: the scarcity comes from the cut, not the lump of rock.

Re:Who cares

[tooyoung]

You do have an interesting point here. A purely anecdotal account from last night while hanging out with a group of non-technical friends:

Friend 1 - what is Google+ again?
Friend 2 - I'm not really sure.
Friend 3 - Yeah, I don't know, but it is almost impossible to get an account
Friend 2 - (smugly) I got an invite from Ray last week.
Friend 1 - Oooh, what can you do?
Friend 2 - I don't know, I logged in and couldn't find anyone else I know.
Friend 2 and 3 - I want an invite! How can I get an invite?

Re:Who cares

[TheInternetGuy]

I've been away for a while, I realize this discussion is kind of stale. But they did the same thing for Google Wave, and once you were able to get an account, you were already tired of it, and ready to move on to the next thing.

Google Apps?

[richy freeway]

How about just getting the hell on with it and adding support for Google Apps users? Once again we're left lagging behind!

Re:Google Apps?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about just getting the hell on with it and adding support for Google Apps users? Once again we're left lagging behind!

+1

Re:Google Apps?

[geekoid]

What are you talking about?

Re:Google Apps?

[richy freeway]

Google Apps users can't use Google+, cos Google Apps doesn't support Google Profiles. Capiche?

If you don't know Google Apps, it's a way of tying your domain name into Googles products. Mainly for the benefit of using Gmail directly with your domain, that's my reason anyway

Go look it up! The benefits of Googles spam filtering, plus everything else they offer, far outweighs the fact that they're not so "do no evil" as they used to be.

Re:Google Apps?

[William Ager]

At least with the update, when we go onto Google+ we are actually allowed to log out of our Google Apps accounts so that we can log into standard Google accounts... for at least a month, I was stuck having to go into Gmail, log out, then go to Google+ and log in with another account.

Re:Google Apps?

[DarkHelmet]

What's worse is what are they going to do for people who are using a secondary gmail account just to be on Google+ for the moment? Are they going to provide a way of migrating your Google+ settings between a regular Google Profile and an Apps for Domains user?

Probably not. So I'm going to be stuck deciding if I want to keep switching logins whenever I go on Google+, or actually try and re-add everyone that I have on my other account (and ask them nicely to share back with me).

Overall, the way they handled this has been piss-poor. They shouldn't be neglecting their Apps for Domains users since those are the people who are going to be the most loyal to what you're trying to do.

Re:Google Apps?

[JanneM]

"Capiche?"

No thanks, I just ate.

Re:Google Apps?

[richy freeway]

All I'm really using G+ for at the moment is a handy automatic backup of any photos I take on my phone, migration would be nice though.

Nope

[razvan784]

There is no Games button at the top of my Stream yet.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

But when i do a "find" for "games" - it takes me to the very top of the stream page ... I can't work it out. Doesn't show up if I click "view source" anyway.

Re:Nope

[Tridus]

The blog says they're "gradually" rolling it out. Might take a few days before everybody can see it.

Re:Nope

[zigurat667]

just try https://plus.google.com/games , but currently it says

We're glad you want to play games on Google+. Don't worry, your turn is coming up! We're currently testing with a small number of Google+ users. Please check back soon..

...what was the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

I went on Google+ to stop imbeciles from spamming me with Zynga shit.

Re:...what was the point?

[delinear]

That tells us more about your lack of predictive skills and less about the benefits/negatives of Google+ - it was pretty obvious games would be coming from day one, the only question is how good a job Google will do of allowing you to filter out gaming spam you're not interested in. I don't really see how they can (even if they block direct channels for spam the game designers will have the option of getting users to spam their contacts directly in return for points/cows/whatever passes as currency).

Re:...what was the point?

[Spellvexit]

To make things worse, in G+ I see ways of muting individual posts and outright blocking a user (which does more than just mute their posts and in my opinion is more of a nuke you'd use on stalkers and during painful breakups.) Typically if a user on Facebook got too spammy I'd just hide their future posts and they could natter on all they like. A quick solution would be to remove them from your general stream, but there seems to be no way to do that without removing them completely from your circles. The only way to retain them in a circle yet filter out their posts is to make a "pariah" circle, drop that user in the circle and only that circle, and then individually browse all non-pariah streams by circle, which is a heck of a lot less convenient than the "hide" drop-down in Facebook. Blocking the user is a bit too harsh, as I may still want them to see my posts, but if they start playing games that update me on the welfare of their pet baby seal every hour or so, removing them from all my circles may be my only recourse!

Google+ learns from Facebook. Forthcoming Troubles

[aglider]

Maybe Facebook filed a patent application for "online games in a social network site". As well as a number of other patents.

My request to Google

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Allow us to save the game on your server, no matter how big our game might be.

Allow us to save player data, up to 1 GB per player.

Have Google Wallet built in, so micro transactions can go through it.

Maybe even give developers some high performance servers to run multiplayer games at the same time instead of requiring us to get our own servers.
I'm writing a Facebook game. And as a startup, we don't have the resources to host our own games. We don't have the resources to keep a multiplayer server up all the time to do action oriented games either. Finally Facebook wants about 50% of every transaction with Facebook currency. I think that is a pretty much a rip off. Could Google maybe go lower?

Re:My request to Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Google App Engine. You would have to pay if you outgrew the quotas, but if you out grow the quotas you have a big game and should be profiting from it.

1GB per player? WTF kind of game needs that?!

Re:My request to Google

[alex67500]

If you have to remember all the names of the pigs and cows that are lost and found on Farmville...

Re:My request to Google

[tepples]

If you have to remember all the names of the pigs and cows that are lost and found on Farmville

1. Huffman coding. 2. I've never played FarmVille; how many of those are there per player? Harvest Moon: Magical Melody for GameCube saves two players' campaigns in one 456 KB file. Animal Crossing for GameCube saves one cooperative campaign for four players in one 456 KB file. And I'm pretty sure those figures include some sort of internal backup in case the machine loses power while writing to the memory card; I know the DS sequel to Animal Crossing does. Why must Zynga's offering be so much less efficient?

Re:My request to Google

[codepunk]

I have worked on some huge facebook games, if you have to store 1G of data per player you are already setup for failure.

Facebook currency 50%? come now

I have enough change in my pocket to run a multiplayer server for a month. If you are writing
a game and it is profitable a little server hosting
is not a big deal.

Re:My request to Google

[codepunk]

Why must Zynga's offering be so much less efficient?

It is not, it's called talking out of ones ass.

Re:My request to Google

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

We're doing a changing/interactive world for each player, our maps are 100x100 and hold 4 different types of data per square, so thats like 10,000x4x13= 520k per map . There will probably be about 20 maps to start with. 20x500=10 Meg. Then we're doing episodic content to update it every 3 months. If we update for a long time(which is our plan), we could out grow our storage allotment.

Alternatively I could code it so I just store changes from the base map instead of storing all the map data.

awesome..

[crossmr]

They're going to turn around and be just like the service everyone claimed to hate, and that's why they went to google+. In the meantime, they can't get around to fixing things like broken, unchangeable "personalization" that breaks services and can only be corrected by not using google+..
Sorry, but being logged in to Facebook has never broken other services/sites for me.

Re:awesome..

[swillden]

What services are broken for you by being logged into Google+?

Re:awesome..

[crossmr]

Google news archive searches.
For some reason Google has decided that because I'm in Korea (despite not being Korean, or fluent in Korean) any google news archive searches will only search Korean language news papers in Korea. It doesn't even want to search the various English language papers that exist here.

I've spent hours searching my account for anything that would indicate I want it to do that, I can find nothing. I even went through and removed every single reference to Korea in my profile, and anywhere I could find it. Never mind that I've had my google account for years, long before I came here.

Logged in, I can get nothing, logged out, the searches work just as they did before I signed up for google+
I've sent a couple of feedback reports, posted in the google support groups, nothing.

I've tried it with proxy and without proxy as well. It seems my account is permanently screwed up because I created it while I was in Korea. Google seems think that it knows best and be damned if wants it to give me anyway to alter it's decision about how it thinks I want to search.

Re:awesome..

[swillden]

Interesting.

I'll submit a bug report on Monday. Have you already sent feedback via the link on the Google+ page and/or brought up the issue in the relevant forum?

Re:awesome..

[crossmr]

I've sent a couple of feedback reports, posted in the google support groups, nothing.

https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/embed/?place=forum%2Fgoogle-plus-discuss&showsearch=true&showtabs=false&hl=en&fragments=true&parenturl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fintl%2Fen%2F%2B%2Flearnmore%2Fforum%2F#!category-topic/google-plus-discuss/settings/2el5SpYP4OQ

I've got very little patience for this forced "personalization". To be fair, Google isn't the only one who does it:

Apple has recently started doing it with Itunes/Quicktime. English OS, but a couple updates ago suddenly the update wizard is now in Korean.

Intel is a giant pain in the ass. I have my unicode fallback language set to Korean, due to some poor font issues in a few Korean programs. Intel ignores the fact that my OS is in English, and assumes because the unicode fallback language code is Korean, that I MUST want to run everything in Korean.
If I want to use things in English, I need to restart the machine 3 times. Nvidia, does the same. E-mails to these companies have basically been ignored/answered with general incompetence.

Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger allows me to pick English, but if I set my location to Korea, it will change all my e-mail updates to Korean. Not my Windows Live Messenger, not my Hotmail interface, but any notification e-mails I get from the service regarding updates, newsletters, or things like. All Korean. They're completely incapable of dealing with people who may travel and move around the world.

Re:awesome..

[swillden]

One other thing: Can you verify your account language settings? Go to google.com/account and click on "language". Note that I think you have to be logged into an account with Google+; I don't see the language option on the non-Google+ account settings. Also keep in mind that this is NOT the stuff I work on in Google and my knowledge about how it works is strictly that of a user. Anyway, I believe your choice there should be reflected across all Google services, and if it isn't somewhere that is clearly a bug (which isn't that unlikely, Google is still in the process of really integrating its various services. Until fairly recently they were all essentially separate and there are still plenty of rough edges on the integration.)

If that doesn't work (and I suspect it won't, since you said you already looked through all of your settings), let me know and I'll file a bug report. In general, picking an appropriate language for a given user is a Really Hard Thing, because you can't necessarily trust geo-location data, because it's basically an informed guess, and you also can't necessarily trust browser settings, because so many users have no clue how to set them and have them wrong. So it's entirely possible that picking Korean for you is working as designed based on data which indicates that trusting the geo data for Korea is less likely to be wrong than trusting the browser.

But there clearly needs to be a simple and obvious way for you to override the auto-selected language choice.

Re:awesome..

[crossmr]

It's set to English - United States

It's not actually "picking" Korean for me. It's not the language it's changing for me. It's that when I do a google news archive search, it's completely limiting my search results to Korean language papers. It just makes absolutely no sense at all. Regular news searches seem to return fine (logged in the search for frogs gives me 1748 results while logged out it's 1742, though it tells me it's still not doing identical searches, but they don't seem to be causing a huge impact, they're also slightly reordered but mostly the same)

This is what I see in a logged in news archive search:
http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/9654/frogsloggedin.png

If you click the "search for English language results only" button..it does nothing.. you see the exact same 28 results in the same layout
"All results" takes me to a web search, not a news search

Re:awesome..

[swillden]

Got it. I'll submit a bug on Monday.

The beginning of the end

[broothal]

Sweet Jebus - that was the reason I LEFT facebook. To get rid of that crap.

Oh well - it was fun while it lasted. IRC is still my favorite social network

Re:The beginning of the end

[Tridus]

On the upside, this time the games spam is in its own tab. If you just read the stream, games don't appear in it.

Re:The beginning of the end

[antdude]

You can still play games in IRC like Rbot's UNO which is addicting!

Re:The beginning of the end

[CTachyon]

From the article:

If you’re not interested in games, it’s easy to ignore them. Your stream will remain focused on conversations with the people you care about.

Oh no, there goes the neighborhood

[Masa]

Why in the hell they want to ruin Google+? I hate Facebook for two reasons:

1) It is annoying as hell to have those game requests. And if you don't block all applications, then you have to "enjoy" the constant stream of shit, when your friends request new tools in Farmville or want to share a pony.

2) Gaming becomes a sole purpose for using social networking site. Most of my friends don't bother to use Facebook for keeping touch or sharing interesting news or stories. They just spend time playing and filling their page with useless game-related crap.

I lost hope with Facebook long ago and recently joined Google+ hoping that it would be different. It seems I was wrong :(

Re:Oh no, there goes the neighborhood

[janek78]

How difficult is it to block the application the first time it spams your wall? Two, three clicks? Maybe it's the choice of friends who I let appear in my Facebook feed, but few mouse clicks every couple weeks/months when a new game appears does not seems to "ruin" anything for me. But then again, I don't have friends who start playing five new games every day and of my 200 contacts, only about 20 are not "hidden" competely from my wall, so my experience may be different.

Re:Oh no, there goes the neighborhood

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually you can just read latest updates. Web version of Facebook seperated these in different category and it looked clean and sleek.

Re:Oh no, there goes the neighborhood

[Asic Eng]

Well their focus seems on having games on a separate tab. So if you don't want to know about games you don't click on that tab and you don't hear about others playing games either.

Don't know if that works perfectly, but that appears to be their goal: "your circles will only see the updates when they're interested in playing games too".

Re:Oh no, there goes the neighborhood

[Syberz]

You do realize that games are segregated to their own section, so you can just choose to ignore them... right?

Re:Oh no, there goes the neighborhood

[TheRaven64]

I don't put my face in the book, but surely this is the wrong way around? If you opt in to things a person says, that shouldn't opt you in to things various programs that they own say. Each game / app should have its own message type, and you should opt in to person / message type pairs, with optional wildcarding (e.g. every stream from this person, every stream of this type from anyone I know). What kind of crazy system does the spam book use?

Re:Oh no, there goes the neighborhood

[slyrat]

Well their focus seems on having games on a separate tab. So if you don't want to know about games you don't click on that tab and you don't hear about others playing games either.

Don't know if that works perfectly, but that appears to be their goal: "your circles will only see the updates when they're interested in playing games too".

This! I like that g+ is trying to make the default behavior for users not involve what a lot of people find to be annoying.

Re:Oh no, there goes the neighborhood

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Friends don't spam friends for farmville tools. If someone you friended does, it reveals an interesting characteristic trait of that person, that he/she is willing to nag friends and family for a very modest personal gain. Better to de-friend them and tell them why.

At any rate, you can not run away from your core problem. You have friends who suck. Suck the life out of you, nag you, who don't care about you. Your fundamental problem is, you mistake them for friends. You can not solve this problem by running away from it. These so called friends will follow you in facebook, google, real life. Stand firm, follow the modified Silver Rule[*], to take your life back.

Rules to live by:

Golden Rule: Treat others as you would like to be treated by them. You will never punish abusers and never give an incentive to treat you nice. Stupid rule.

Silver Rule: Treat others as they treat you. Very good rule, except for endless feud. So forgive once in a while, retaliate nasty behavior with slightly less aggressive way and reward nice behavior by a little bit extra niceness on your part. Very good rule for you and for building a lasting good soceity.

Iron Rule: Be nasty to everyone. Very bad rule. Evolution strongly discourages this kind of selfishness.

Weasel rule: Be nice to people stronger than you, and be nasty to people weaker than you. This is a surprisingly enduring rule. Led to very long periods of stability in history, but with very little economic growth, bad life for most of the population, usually ends in being defeated by a stronger neighbor.

Re:Oh no, there goes the neighborhood

[rasmusbr]

Why in the hell they want to ruin Google+?

The purpose of Google+ is to make more money off of ads. Adding stuff that will make people spend more time on the site and possibly divulge more information to more people is likely to help increase the ad revenue.

So by definition they're not ruining it, they're improving it.

If you want a social network that caters to your wants and needs you are always going to have to pay periodic fees that finance the service and provide profit for the service provider. That's the way the world works...

Of course, there is as of yet no major social network that lets you pay monthly fees to get rid of the ad/spyware/creepware crap. That's not the way the web works...

At least not yet.

Re:Oh no, there goes the neighborhood

[j-beda]

Golden Rule: Treat others as you would like to be treated by them. You will never punish abusers and never give an incentive to treat you nice. Stupid rule.

I can see that if you follow the "Golden Rule" you might never punish abusers (unless you are wise enough to realize that you too would like some feedback for undesirable behaviour when it occurs), but why do you feel that following the "Golden Rule" would make you to "never give an incentive to treat you nice"? Surely you would like incentives for yourself to treat others nice?

Oh, wait a minute, I understand - that was all one idea, not two different problems: "You will (never punish abusers and thus never give an incentive...)" rather than "You will (never punish...) and (never give and incentive...)"

Re:Oh no, there goes the neighborhood

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you need to punish abusers? If someone thinks I'm mistreating them, I'd like them to tell me -- not punish me. I don't go around TRYING to be nasty to people, so this type of thing would be a simple misunderstanding or a mismatch in values. Either way, a little communication instead of knee-jerk "OMG PUNISH!" goes a long way.

I'd also argue that following the Golden Rule creates a strong incentive for people to treat you nicely. Remember, consequences drive behavior -- and if the consequence of interacting with you is that you treat the person nicely, they'll be more likely to interact with you in the future. Actually, this gives you a very simple Golden Protocol:

Meet new person: Be nice.
With neutral-to-nice acquaintance: Be nice. Be extra nice when they're nice, and tell them what you'd rather see when they do something mean.
With mean acquaintances: Don't interact.

Re:Oh no, there goes the neighborhood

[tecnico.hitos]

In case you haven't read, games and game notifications will be placed on it's own, entirely separate, area. But don't let that stop you from being bitter and grumpy, if that's what you want.

Re:Oh no, there goes the neighborhood

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

1. Punish does not mean you have to go ultra nasty on them. Most of the time, simple withdrawal is punishment enough. You treat me bad, I just simply walk away. If you care enough to notice it and ask why, you will know, and that will be the opportunity to correct misunderstandings and cement a strong relationship. You know about the trading systems outside the paper-written-contract world? Jewish diamond merchants who do million dollar trades on just a word of promise? Gujarati traders who swap multi-million dollar properties around the world sitting on the floor of the Swami Narayan temple without any written contract? The Hawala traders who take dollars from you in New York and deliver rupees to your designee in Bangaladesh? All these are very lucrative trades. Simple banishment is a huge punishment. There you see the nicest behavior, keeping the promise even if it means million dollar loss.

2. Golden rule might incentivize a few to treat you nicely. If you treat everyone the same why should anyone be nice to you? Golden rule attracts free loaders. The free-loaders have a very finely developed sense of smell about these saintly people. They come from far and near and leech off the Golden rule following Samaritans. Sounds cynical and exaggerated. But you know there is a kernel of truth there.

3. Don't take my word for it. Read the Chapter 13 of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, titled Nice Guys finish First. Or Carl Sagan's article in Parade magazine circa 1992 about these rules. Start with the phrase "evolution of cooperation" and follow the links dished out by scholar.google.com. Science explains altruism, and why it is good for you and the society to be nice, forgiving and non-jealous.

Anybody really usng g+

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt whether anybody really using g+? I have around 50 friends and I hardly get any update, whereas same is not true in fb.

Re:Anybody really usng g+

[curmi]

Yep. Same here. A couple of nerds using it, and everyone else joined up, kicked the tyres, and logged off never to return.

Google can gloat all they like about millions of users, but it is millions of "active" users, and I mean REALLY active, that are going to make this a success.

Re:Anybody really usng g+

[slyrat]

I use it pretty much exclusively now. I have 170 people in my circles and there are only a few (between 1-10) that don't post in g+. So I still read facebook but I only post there in response to said individuals, oh and events. I really wish they would get good event/calendar hook up for g+.

Re:Anybody really usng g+

[Sedated2000]

I can't consider my group of friends on there "nerds" but there are about 75 people on my circles and they post things constantly. I see videos, comments, pictures and links to interesting sites every few seconds on there. You must simply have 50 Google+ friends who have forgotten they have Google+.

Re:Anybody really usng g+

[Lumpy]

A lot of people I know (I know a lot of the social media big wigs) and all the Industry giants that I have met along with a lot of the tech people that matter are there and posting daily. In fact I muted a couple of them recently for being too damn chatty and having 80,000 replies to everything they post.

Oh and there is Chris Prillio as well. But he's even still on MySpace....

jumped the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

well, google+ isn't cool anymore...

Got blocked? Make a new game

[tepples]

How difficult is it to block the application the first time it spams your wall?

For one thing, it appears not all clients have the block button. For another, a publisher could just introduce its new game, and that won't also be blocked.

Gaming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is Google worried about adding gaming when they didnt even open up google+ to the public yet?

Re:Gaming?

[delinear]

My guess is they're not "adding" anything - the code is probably all there and they're just iteratively testing it in blocks with a fixed number of users to see how well it scales before they open it to the world. If they open everything up on the same day it's much harder to track down bugs than if they say: this month you get basic circles, next month you get gaming, the month after you get... whatever's next... and when that's all working as expected the doors open to the general public.

not fully available yet

[Anonymous Coward]

https://plus.google.com/games/restricted

games tab?

[Ogive17]

Can others see it? I can't find it on my page.

Re:games tab?

[slyrat]

Can others see it? I can't find it on my page.

A friend from google posted in g+ that they are doing a very limited opening of the games at first before letting everyone in the trial. So you'll see it soon enough.

Re:games tab?

[Cant use a slash wtf]

Is this 'infinite invites' very limited or 'we actually mean it this time' very limited?

Re:games tab?

[slyrat]

I think it is the latter. It isn't something you can invite people to, it is just something you can either see or not see (at least at the moment).

Re:games tab?

[geekoid]

You need to go to 'Settings' and then hit ALT-F4

Open

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the same Google that has Android? The only phone OS that's open? the same Google that is now suing Microsoft for disclosing proprietary source code? Wait...how can that be possible if Android is open?

"The confidential source code improperly provided to Dr. Stevenson is highly proprietary source code that Google does not even share with its partners, such as Motorola," Google said.

They don't even share it with Motorola? This open thing, I don't get it.

Well, that sucks.

[Cant use a slash wtf]

There goes one of my reasons for actually using G+. I thought the point was that it was just social networking without all the bullshit.
Then they bring the bullshit.

Flash?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose the games are all in Flash. That's all Flash is good for anyway.

If I need Flash to navigate your website, read your content, read PDFs and watch photos and videos, you failed.

as long as they will rule with an iron hand....

[Lumpy]

And smack down jerk companies like Zenga that like to spam the hell out of everyone. I'm ok with others playing games, but if your game sends me crap all the time.... I'm going to punt you.

Also I want to see the API and the contract that lists ALL The data they hand deliver to the application. IF a game owns my profile and all my friends profiles then it's the Same crap from Facebook just recolored.

Steam?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I wanted to be harassed by game requests and achievement updates I'd log into Steam.

Biggest Difference

[Anonymous Coward]

From in-game transactions, facebook takes a 30% rake. Google+ is only taking 5%.

Should be fun to watch this play out.

Biggest Difference

[Anonymous Coward]

The cut from in-game transactions. facebook takes a 30% rake. Google is only going to take 5%.

I don't use either, but I'll enjoy watching this play out.