The Daily Grind: Are social media connections in MMOs useless?

by Justin Olivetti on May 18th 2011 8:00AM

Culture, Opinion, The Daily Grind, Miscellaneous

I first started to notice it in Champions Online. Cryptic gave us the ability to broadcast our achievements in the game over Twitter: "CapnCrunch has reached level 10!" At the time, it felt like a silly idea that wouldn't catch on, but for some reason, it has. More and more we're seeing studios working hard to integrate popular social networks into their MMOs, and more and more I'm wondering... why?

RIFT has been big on doing this, implementing the ability not only to set your account to automatically tweet achievements ("Hey guys, I jumped off a bridge and didn't die!") but also to post them in Facebook. The game also allows you to record video and take screenshots to post online, which seems to me to be more useful but still probably not as captivating to a potential personal audience as one might hope.

So my question today concerns these social media connections in MMOs -- are they useless? Are they just a fad that few people use? Do the ones who do use them end up annoying their followers with a stream of spam messages? Or do people actually enjoy the ability to have their games tie in with their social networks and see how their friends are progressing?

Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!

Reader Comments (40)

Personally I enjoy it. I disable most auto-tweeting but it's fun to be able to send a screenshot or video easily in the game. My guild can easily see feeds of this with the use of hashtags and such.

Overall though I don't see a lot of people using this in game and I made the mistake of suggesting in the TOR forums that these features appear there. I was immediately flamed.

By and large MMO players are from a generation that is more use to Siloing and staying anonymous and most of the rest of the tech world has moved past them. I find it ironic that a game genre that is suppose to be so social is so opposed to social media and habits. I think it's more a sign that the genre is "stuck" with the crowd that thinks forums are just great.

@Streamweaver

I'm not opposed to social tools, if they're optional (because not everyone can openly reveal personal details and feel safe). I'm opposed to pointless updates on shit nobody but the person posting it cares about, which is a pretty endemic problem to social media as it is. Auto updates of MMO progress just punches straight through into "everyone stops paying attention to you at all" territory.

@Streamweaver

Social media does not equate to social bonding, and issues of personal privacy are not trivial.

As long as social media tie-ins are (A) optional and (B) provision is made for default erasure of my personal data at the end of the opt-in, I might consider it, but as of yet I have to see any company address point B.

I am not overly fond of social media to begin with. This is such a waste of others' time that I'm anyone who does hook such a thing up will find that no one pays any more attention to their tweets and updates whatsoever.

Since I'm not on facebook, myspace, Twitter, or any of the others listed. They are useless to me.

An official site with an official forum + gaming news sites are all I need to decide if I like or dislike a game I am interested in.

Since I'm not on facebook, myspace, Twitter, or any of the others listed. They are useless to me.

I am keen to see what people think on this as well.
From a companies perspective I get it - SN are a great way to get your name/brand/game known. Some clever hash tag work can be good as well but I also wonder how many people will be caught out by these auto SN messages when 'off sick' or attending a telephone conference call (not that I would do any of those things of course)!

wtb edit feature.

I like THE IDEA of integrating my MMORPG actions with other online social constructs as part of a fluidic whole.

MMORPGS come, at least initially, from the generation that sat around the table with pen-and-paper RPGs and it was a social experience. And I think technology has allowed that experience to grow, albeit change.

I'm from the gamer generation, who grew up on single-player RPGs. But I like to play with other people, and I LOVE MMORPGs because they have the benefit of being a table-top RPG with a DM who never sleeps, and a single-player RPG that doesn't end with me wanting more.

However, I play games to have fun--not form a psuedo-family with other people. This next wave of gamers, from the hand-held apps folks, feel the need to broadcast EVERYTHING to everyone. Between them and the old-guard (who want to recreate that table top experience) it's a smothering phenomenon.

In short, I think OPTIONS = GOOD. Don't force me to do this stuff, but if other people want it, great. And the more customization a game offers, the more the community will tell you where the limits are by what options they use

I personally couldnt care less about Twitter - and i dont like the facebook posting as i'd rather not have the fact i played a game for 12 hours straight told to my friends / family lol!

what i do absolutely love though is Rift's in game recording feature (i never use it to upload to Youtube - prefer to edit my self before uploading it)

but the ability to record a game - for free is amazing - and then the fact it records in good quality and i barely notice any framerate change is amazing!

wish all games had this tbh!

Free Marketing

@starchildren3317
Yep.
They are very useful. For the publisher.

As for me, I won't change social networks just because the game I play prefer a specific one, and I won't let the game automatically broadcast what I'm doing. But being able to publish things with a touch of a button can, sometimes, be quite useful.

Games want to use them because it's free marketing, you advertise the game every time it shows up in your status... I am very conscious of this, and i don't want to be used like that. Social media is great for staying in contact and sharing photos, but the downside is that the status game is about sending and receiving piles useless crap nobody want's or is interested in. That's what social media is to me, and i absolutely can't find purpose for that to be integrated to games i play and how it can enhance games. Yes, it's useless.

Generally means more to the company ( "You can now stream LIVE and interact with players while sittig on the toilet!") than it does to the overall player base.

I doubt most people who use any form of those social media actually use it in relation to the game.

Just another 'feature' to put on their boxes to sell the thing and just about at useful to most people as the Level 1 'bonus' item you get is to you at max level imo.

I think it's fine and dandy as long as it's optional and ignorable for those who don't want anything to do with it (looking at you, Blizzard). Any time I hear something akin to, "Oh, but EVERYBODY has a Facebook/Twitter/smartphone/interblags" as they cheerfully implement features that depend on those things, though, it makes me want to gently drop kick them into space. Features for those things in and of themselves are fine, it's the assumption that everyone wants (or should want) every aspect of their life to be coordinated through social networking platforms that grinds my gears.

While I can see that some people would really enjoy such options, I really feel that each user should have the CHOICE to say yes or no to social networks/media in games. I would really have to think long and hard about playing a game that REQUIRED it. Give me the choice please.

If we lived in a world where gaming prowess was worth any respect outside of it's own participants and their mothers, then maybe.

However we don't. We don't now, we won't tomorrow and frankly, I don't expect we will in the next ten years. Gaming is still a hobby with a stigma attached and MMO gaming more so than any other due to it's time commitment for anything approaching progress in most titles.

As for me, I don't work for an employer with a sympathetic ear for my Internet Dragon slaying escapades anymore and I don't really want everyone on twitter to know about the oh so exciting piece of loot I plucked out of some Orc's backside.

Heck, I get annoyed when people feel compelled to broadcast "Ding!" for anything other than max level. If I started to get it via a twitter feed... well I don't use Twitter, but I believe the command is /unfollow?

The only useful integration of Facebook was made by Blizzard. If you let your Starcraft 2 log in with your fb account, it tells you that which of your friends play the game too.

I really don't see the point of the integration. To the people who actually use it, I ask if it's actually useful (in a game sense) or is it just a novelty, and another way to waste time? I suspect that once the novelty aspects wear off, that no one is going to care about them. But of course, this is coming from a person who is bored by social media in general.

It's useless for players. It's free advertising for the developers, which is why they include it.

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The Daily Grind: Are social media connections in MMOs useless?

Reader Comments (40)

Posted: May 18th 2011 8:14AM Streamweaver said

Posted: May 18th 2011 8:29AM JuliusSeizure said

Posted: May 18th 2011 1:01PM Borick said

Posted: May 18th 2011 8:22AM JuliusSeizure said

Posted: May 18th 2011 8:26AM FrostPaw said

Posted: May 18th 2011 8:26AM FrostPaw said

Posted: May 18th 2011 8:27AM sadsurfer said

Posted: May 18th 2011 8:27AM FrostPaw said

Posted: May 18th 2011 8:30AM Matix said

Posted: May 18th 2011 8:32AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 18th 2011 8:40AM starchildren3317 said

Posted: May 18th 2011 9:32AM DarkWalker said

Posted: May 18th 2011 8:44AM Dumac said

Posted: May 18th 2011 9:00AM real65rcncom said

Posted: May 18th 2011 9:24AM Irem said

Posted: May 18th 2011 9:29AM jlong64 said

Posted: May 18th 2011 9:30AM Budukahn said

Posted: May 18th 2011 9:36AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 18th 2011 9:39AM Haldurson said

Posted: May 18th 2011 9:42AM tmarg said

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