Blizzard to Integrate Facebook into StarCraft 2 | Hacker News Reader

Blizzard to Integrate Facebook into StarCraft 2

games.venturebeat.com

21 pointscgherb91129 comments

No, no and no again! This is terrible news. Let me play my games in peace.

I know it's kind of hip all of a sudden to act like Facebook is the enemy of the people, but do you even have a reason for saying what you just said? What is it that Facebook is going to do that will interrupt your peaceful Starcraft 2 matches?

Maybe this is being too adherent to the "unix philosophy", but I like when things I use do one thing well and one thing only.

If I want to tell people I'm playing starcraft, I'll do it myself, I don't need it to be automatic.

Offering this as an optional addon would be more to my liking.

This doesn't sound any more obnoxious than Steam's community integration. I'm sure it will be less so without a chat window popping up every two seconds -- while you're playing (ala Steam). It doesn't even suggest that it will tell all your friends and that you have no control over it. You're just making that assumption.

".. will include the ability to tell your Facebook friends when you’re playing the game and what your doing in it."

Sounds exactly like Steam.

Ok, well, I don't play Steam games, so I don't know much about this. I imagine it would annoy me too.

> "what your doing in it"

sigh

Maybe Facebook integration is scary to those who don't have experience with a community integrated into their games. That is understandable. FYI that was a quote from the article.

I know. I winced when I read it there too.

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Say hello to your friends!

Are you suggesting that Facebook integration of any kind, for any game whatsoever, will always end up being what you saw on Farmville? Maybe you're not even trying to make a point of discussion.

Edit: Yeah, obvious troll is obvious.

Sounds like a new law for social networking integration

Jason could really use some help upgrading their Zerglings in StarCraft 2!

Jason noticed their Zerglings are a bit on the puny side because they haven't been upgraded yet...

14 hours ago via StarCraft 2 | Comment | Like | Upgrade their Zerglings

You like this.

Last thing I want to do is further advertise to my friends what kind of gigantic nerd I am.

Or idol, depending on their frame of reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P39gP4QnXxE&feature=playe...

Seriously, I think they know.

This is quite unexpected. I honestly did not think Facebook would move beyond casual gaming.

But videogames are often about escapism: for example, would you really want your real-life profile associated with your MMO account?

Well for some people, MMOing is all ABOUT those real-life friends. I've got one who games with six or seven people in his living room, all in the same dungeon in World of Warcraft.

I'm one of them. There's a huge social impact with games like this.

That doesn't mean, however that I want Facebook involved in it.

And here we were talking about how massive Facebook is getting. This is another pedestal higher than Google, Apple, or Microsoft could never reach.

I wonder how many people will appreciate this. For me, it's a turnoff and kind of disconcerting. I'm not one of those rabidly anti-Facebook people, but as a gamer, I just really don't like the idea of my games being tied into Facebook. I suspect my feelings might not be that unique.

It's not clear what level of integration we're talking about here. The article claims "tell your Facebook friends when you’re playing the game and what your doing in it.", but the actual messages from Blizzard make it sound like the implementation is limited to linking your FB friends to their battle.net accounts.

I'm not a fan of publishing Starcraft notifications to my Facebook feed, but that is opt-in. Being able to find out which of my Facebook friends also have battle.net accounts seems like an incredible feature. It sounds identical to the awesome Xbox Live implementation where I ended up having a ton of friends with Xbox accounts that I would have never discovered otherwise. Really looking forward to this.

Facebook is like a giant sprawling octopus of identity. This I want to keep separate.

As long as it isn't required in any way for any features (other than facebook things) I am actually okay with blizzard doing this, and if all ends up right it will be a flop and won't even matter in the long run.

But as I haven't ever had a facebook account I wouldn't be very happy if it was required for something like online play or in game friends.

All that would wind up resulting in is a lot of fake, one-off Facebook accounts.

My point was I already have a battle.net account I don't want to need a facebook account to access useful features, and as long is that is not the case I am okay with facebook integration.

I understand. I was suggesting that it might not actually be in Facebook's best interest for other unrelated things to require Facebook accounts for authentication -- I think it might lead to more spam accounts than actual users or mindshare.

Interesting. This seems to be toying around with a similar idea that services like Raptr.com offer with this line: "will include the ability to tell your Facebook friends when you’re playing the game"

Does that mean we'll see more games doing this and Facebook becoming basically the defacto for everything you're doing online? Frightening :)

In the future facebook will be integrated with everything. Harshpotatoes just zergling rushed a newb.

Harshpotatoes just refinanced his home.

Harshpotatoes is browsing milfhunter.

What's on your mind?

On a side note. Will voyeurism still be illegal in the future if everything is public?

I think as long as you have an anonymous feature it will be fine. I hope this means that SC 2 is using javascript in place of lua for its front end scripting which could mean all sorts of incredible add-ons. Lua is fine, but javascript just has a broader base.

I don't want my friends to know how much I suck at RTS...

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