What Google+ Games Needs To Beat Facebook 75
donniebaseball23 writes "Google's new games offering on Google+ has only been around a few weeks, and it's been getting mixed reactions. According to veteran game designer Ed Del Castillo, the potential is there to beat Facebook at its own game, if Google improves in the right areas, which he outlines as evolved content, player discovery and a push for HTML5. 'Overall, the quality of Google+ gaming isn't bad. It's just another Facebook with fewer games and fewer friends. It's a baby step in a time where successful companies, like Apple, are taking huge strides. The good news is that they didn't blow it. They have a good base to build on,' he said."
Is anyone surprised by this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Google launched a service that only a few were allowed to use. People who were curious about it were told to get lost. People who were allowed to sign up got bored because nothing is happening, so they left. The miracle behind Facebook is the ability of people to find friends and relatives they haven't seen in years, even decades, because EVERYONE is welcome to sign up.
My complaint about Google+ Games (Score:5, Insightful)
Every game I tried to play greeted me with a pop-up saying:
[Game] is requesting permission to ... View a list of people from your circles, ordered based on your interactions with them across Google
What are the implications of that (if I click the "More info" link it just gives me an email address for the developer)? Does that give the game developer a way to spam the people in my circles? Admittedly, they do provide a link to a privacy policy (which is different for each game), but if they think I'm going to read all of that to figure out what they plan to do with my list of contacts, well, they're wrong. I just ended up playing none of them.