"twitter integration" do's and dont's: extension vs. rehash

I saw this headline show up in my feed reader the other day, from PSFK:

Video Game To Feature Twitter Integration

Which got me excited immediately, until I clicked through to find the following image:

Imagine my disappointment when I found that the game Uncharted:2's idea of 'Twitter Integration' is essentially just 'cramming as many publicity-seeking updates into the tweet pool as possible." While investigating some more thoughts, I ran into a Flavorwire post on 5 Appliances That Desperately Need Twitter Integration. It's humorous, and describes notification services that some appliances really could use (read: in the future, will use), but I don't think Twitter is the right medium in any of the above cases; text and iphone push notifications go over much better. Think of the difference this way: Twitter is a collective medium, one that thrives off of thoughts and messages that benefit the community. Imagine what the tweet pool would look like updated every time someone's coffee was done or notified that their laundry was ready to turn over.

 

"Twitter Integration' can and should mean so much more. My initial excitement conjured thoughts of Twitter acting as a medium to extend the game experience, not just rehash it. We haven't seen any truly great executions along these lines but I think we're on the verge of seeing some. These extensions will fit into the natural flow of how we use Twitter; some thoughts might be around the idea of extending the game experience with in-game NPC's personified out-of-game with their own Twitter accounts, providing critical game information.

In fact: consider this. What if a console game relied on Twitter extensions of in-game characters, such that in order to truly follow and progress through the game you had to actively engage with these out-of-game Twitter characters? This might only work if the game is orchestrated as a limited-time window of opportunity for playing, so the replay value of the game would be limited as well, but it'd be one heck of an experience for everyone who was on board.

Thoughts?? Would you play?? Have you seen examples of truly excellent Twitter integration?

online co-operative games, engagement, and Resistance 2018

I'm a big fan of online games, and there are loads of creative ones out there. But I've been thinking on it for some time now,  and I haven't quite yet run into what I'm picturing in my head as an engaging, multiplayer co-operative online game. Two players, I'm imagining, working together at some goal, each using resources the other lacks access to. Not sure what that would look like just yet, but it's floating around in my mind.

One path I started thinking down at one point is what that would look like on Twitter. The relevant question is: "how could two people interact to reach some shared goal, via Twitter?"

I don't have an answer for that yet, but evidently I'm not the only one thinking on it.

 

One thing that caught my interest is the Resistance 2018 project, engaging fans of the upcoming Terminator movie. By following @Resistance2018 you'll get connected to Terminator backstory tweets and engaged in extra plot, as well instructions on how to participate in the twitter-based game.

The setup is simple, but shows some promise as a foundation for future projects to build off of. Essentially the way it works is this:

@Resistance2018 tweets one of various types of prompt to all of it's followers, coded with acronyms like RA:PT, SW, TSU, etc.

Depending on the type of prompt, followers either complete a fill in the blank, word scramble, answer a trivia question, or they are updated on part of the Terminator backstory. Properly coded responses (using the correct hashtags) are submitted via @ reply, and added to a profile scoreboard if correct. Leaderboards are of course involved as well.

Full instructions here. As I see it this is a basic but stellar start - great setup, would love to see something more inventive than word scrambles. Looking forward to seeing more great ideas to follow.

Have you guys run into any other engaging Twitter-based games?

arcades, digital archives, and nostalgia 2K30

Today I ran into Classic Arcade Sounds over on coinopvideogames.com. Apparently one day back in 1982 a couple of guys got the simple idea, "Hey. Let's carry around a cassette recorder every time we go to the arcade, and just record the sounds onto a series of tapes as we're playing.  We'll do it over an 8 year period. Future generations will thank us."

27 years later it's a hit with me and countless others.

I've been doing a lot of thinking on nostalgia lately because it's such a fascinating and incredibly pervasive thing. Stronger and more pervasive than we realize, I'm thinking. I've been diving around doing some analysis that'll certainly share soon.

But on the tapes, what caught my attention is this:

Is there a 2K9 equivalent? Things like Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and the rest of the cloud have certainly changed the nature of how we collect and save things.

But nostalgia's been around forever and likely isn't going away anytime soon.

What could any of us be archiving now that others will be truly nostalgic for? We're quite proud of our "store anything, anywhere, forever" mentality in this digital world. But as our methods for archiving things change, we're sure to leave behind other intangible things that we'll no doubt be longing for.

What does nostalgia mean to you?

(by the way I've been collecting this and a lot of other stellar things here at yesthisisawesome.com; check it out.)

reshuffling, here, and there

Here's a curious question for you. When it comes to games are you likely to restart if you get a bad deal? This could apply to something as common as solitaire but could also be relevant to pretty much anything. Basically my question is this: is the experience overall more enjoyable to you when you restart and things go the way you want? Or is there something to winning sometimes but losing others? You know, the "no happiness without sorrow" kind of idea.

I got to thinking about the way so much of the circumstances of our lives is entirely out of our control, from the very beginning of our lives. Would you enjoy it all more if you could have one big do-over reshuffling of the deck and things turned out more the way you'd like it?

I suspect that no matter where we are in life we'll feel the same about it in a lot of important ways. I remember reading when I was little: "'There' is no better a place than 'here.' When your 'there' becomes a 'here,' you'll simply find another 'there' that's ever more appealing."

Or something like that.

wargames, puzzles, and collaboration

I've been hooked on the Chess With Friends app lately. I've also been thinking a lot about turn-based games and other ways that people can play games with each other/solve puzzles together online. The first is fairly common, the latter a bit more tricky. Turn-based is a simple way to approach things, but as Chess With Friends and Scrabulous (which, by the way - Hasbro has recently dropped the lawsuit against) have taught me, some games are naturally more inclined to catch on than others. Look at it like this: with Scrabble you're pretty much only contributing to the existing board by adding a few pieces on a turn-by-turn basis. Each turn, it's you vs the board; your challenge is to add the biggest word you can that turn. You can play a handful of games against several people, and over an extended period of time. In chess, you're developing strategies and looking ahead 3-4 moves, your decisions each turn are much more connected to the development of the entire game over time. I can see extended-turn-based Monopoly, but not extended-turn-based wargames.

The real question I've been digging at lately is one of how people can solve puzzles together online. The first step is asking something of the nature, "how do people use social media together"? To this end, I've found a lot of great examples, and would like to share them sometime in the near future. Think of games you've enjoyed or services that were well put together. I've been trying to nail down the key ideas behind these things. I keep wanting to use the word "collaboration," but I think at this point we've lost a bit of what that really means, having tied it so closely to things like Google Docs and the like.

What are some of the most simple web apps/games you've found really useful? Any favorite games? How do you solve puzzles with others online?