As I was watching the Community panel at PAX that the Arenanet community team gave I noticed something. After noting a bunch of things I’m not very good at, being more social, talking to people, and working together with others, they began to talk a bit about the social features of Guild Wars 2.
An audience member asks a question in the video at 44:18, but I’ll quote.
With the technology that is available with different social media outlets, how much of that is going to be apart, or at least as far as your goals, will that technology be apart of Guild Wars 2?
And of course he goes on to give examples, but the answer is more important.
The thing is I like the idea, I can’t actually tell you if it will be part of the game or not, because I just don’t know. We’re still working on a lot of the social aspects of the game, we’ve talked in the past about our extended experience team. I know other games do it, not just bejeweled but other MMOs out there that actually have Twitter integration and you can share everything, all your achievements on Twitter. I think it’s a good idea if you do it in a non-intrusive way because I’ve seen Twitter streams from people that are just like “I’ve just got this one done in the game and I’ve just got this one done in the game.” And I was just like “that’s great, but I don’t really care.” If you can make the choice as a player to basically share that with your friends then I think it’s actually a nice tool because it gets other people excited as well, but if you do it in a way that is automatically done then that’s not community friendly.
Preaching to the choir.
Obviously community manager Martkin Kerstein doesn’t actually know what will happen with Twitter or Facebook, but he seems to show a clear understanding of one of my biggest pet peeves with Rift and Twitter.
Meaningful interaction is great, but inundating me with your foursquare, Rift achievements, Raptr activity, or which movie and tv shows you’re watching is just spam.
If you only have to take a few seconds to stop, access a menu, and confirm that you want to tweet something, that is so much more meaningful. Tweeting every single thing you do just tells me you don’t give a crap, so why should I? Why should I be following you? Why should I put up with this? Why are you tweeting your achievements if even you don’t really care?
To be frank I’ve tried both the unbelievably subtle approach and the not so polite strategy to try to get people to stop. Sometimes it has worked and sometimes it has not.
Look if I want to know what you’ve been up to, and I haven’t figured that out by reading your blog or seeing you in game, I’ll probably talk to you.
Crazy right?
No, the Arenanet community team probably doesn’t have much control over the social integration of Guild Wars 2 but I wish they did.
