

Google+ Wastes No Time: Angry Birds, Bejeweled, Zynga On Board - tilt
http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/11/google-plus-games/

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seagaia
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.

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americandesi333
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?

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cellis
Would real soldiers play Call of Duty?

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cal5k
Yes, they do. My brother served in Afghanistan (Canadian infantry) and they
most definitely played Call of Duty during the lengthy periods between
missions.

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sliverstorm
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
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...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/09/08/AR2010090807219.html)

If I recall, the biggest objection came because one could play as "The
Taliban" instead of unnamed/ambiguous "terrorists."

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mindcrime
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. :-(

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klbarry
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.

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mindcrime
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. :-)

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rjd
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.

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jamesbritt
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. :)

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rjd
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.

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ajross
Wait, that's not "spam" as traditionally understood. What you're describing is
targetted email intended specifically for you. You're saying essentially that
people who wanted to find you, could. That's a bad thing from an anonymity
perspective, I guess, but it's a rather different problem than "spam".

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rjd
I don't think so. If someone is spamming a thread they are over posting, I
view it the same way.

I can remember at one point having 200 Facebook emails in one day. Tell me
that isn't spam.

I often hear people moanign abuot 'Facebook spam' and have heard others moan
about 'Google+ spam' as well. Sure you signed up, and might nto truly
unsolicated, but its the quantity thats the issue.

A daily update similiar to what linkedIn does is what I would prefer.

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tlack
Anyone gotten access to the API yet?

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Hominem
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?

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starwed
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.)

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bauchidgw
well, the google translate api is still scheduled for shutdown dec 2011
[http://code.google.com/apis/language/translate/overview.html...](http://code.google.com/apis/language/translate/overview.htmland)
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

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johnny22
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.

