Social Network for Gamers | Hacker News Reader

Social Network for Gamers

dpadd.com

17 pointscaptn3m041 comments

I don't think this has any chance of competing with Steam. Though it may offer a more polished experience, it requires much more effort to use. Why would a gamer manually type in what they're playing when Steam automatically broadcasts that to their friends?

What about all of the games you aren't playing on Steam?

Xfire[1] also automatically detects the game you are playing.

[1] http://www.xfire.com/

You can add non-steam games to steam.

I'm not sure if it tracks your playtime though (I think it does)

I think it says "playing other games"

No, it says "Playing non-Steam game" with the name of it below.

Which you can overload for your own amusement. When on my Windows machine, Steam friends see me playing Visual Studio 2013.

Ha I did this once with Outlook except I changed the icon and the shortcut name to Half Life 3 Beta. People on my friends list were freak. Ing. OUT

The only game I have played in the last year that wasn't on Steam is Minecraft, which I launch via Steam and get the Steam overlay.

I too don't see the point of this. Gaming has expanded to the point where "a social network for gamers" is called "Facebook" or "Twitter." "A social network for core gamers" is called "Steam", and as it happens they are also printing money and making little money hats with the money they printed because holy shit that's a lot of money.

I don't see minecraft mentioned here often, but sweet jesus the mods that have come out of that game are mindbendingly cool.

You can spend weeks strip mining randomly generated alternate universes and pumping their oceans of lava/oil through liquid tesseracts to power your base while you gather enough uranium and other resources to eventually put together a full scale nuclear reactor.

There are fully featured computers in the game with embedded lua interpreters and wireless networking so you can do stuff like build distributed power station monitoring software. There are also programmable drones called turtles, that can even be built to be self replicating.

There are blocks that mimic quantum properties that you can even use to do quantum teleportation between multiple servers.

So steam is good, right?

Maybe, this is the social network aspect of steam, but for Playstation, Xbox, Wii etc.

I'm getting really tired of all this pessimism on HN. I wish pg would institute the "if you don't have anything nice to say stfu" rule.

This is constructive criticism, not pessimism. If a product posted on HN is totally worthless, should we all just be optimistic about it and praise it anyway? (Not saying DPADD is worthless, just using an analogy.)

You confuse criticism of design for pessimism.

I don't think it's for consoles; if it is intended for them, who's going to let them on their platform? What console manufacturers are going to let them into the hooks that PSN/Xbox Live reserve for themselves? It is in consoles' best interest not to allow cross-anything that they don't have to, and if it isn't in the system they're playing games on, its reason for existence is murky.

Incidentally, the Steam API seems to let you pull that information. (I never really got a handle on the API myself, but I was just using it to find games that everyone in my group owned.)

As someone who has been on gaming forums since 10 years old, a Facebook-style social network would never work for the gaming niche since anonymity is crucial.

See the Real ID fiasco with Blizzard: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29347/InDepth_Why_Was_Bli...

This will greatly diminish the attractiveness to the idea to investors.

FWIW: users on Dpadd only need to set a username. No real names are used even if people sigh up with twitter/Facebook. Gamers are welcome to use their real name as a username if they choose but it's up to the individual.

This idea has been tried many times, but for me, it's still missing a compelling use case.

I think such a service should be centered first and foremost on gaming clans/guilds. Give guilds a nice-looking, easy-to-setup forum + a few apps (a calendar, maybe something to track rankings and currencies such as DKP) and you'll get them by the score.

you mean like enjin?

I think he means like http://guildwork.com/. Enjin is similar, but every feature was copied from Guildwork and significantly slower / worse.

Yeah, the real use case for a site like this is for guilds, and ESPECIALLY teamspeak/voip support.

I imagine if this site offered guild support, websites, and free voip, it'd have an easier time gaining traction.

I founded GuildLaunch.com http://www.guildlaunch.com/, that is exactly what we do and a whole lot more.

I'm not sure I see the difference between this and Playfire [1]?

My cofounders and I had the same idea a few years back when we started Evolve [2]. We just took things a step further and actually provide a client that tracks games independently of the gaming platforms (e.g. Steam, Origin, Uplay). We currently track 9.5 years (!) of playtime every single day. Gamers are crazy... :)

[1] https://www.playfire.com [2] https://evolvehq.com

How is this different from Raptr.com ?

I came here to ask the same thing.

One killer feature which would persuade me to sign up for a gaming website would be a way to set up online games with other people who like rare games. I recently bought "code of princess" on the 3ds and I do not know anyone else who owns it, and whenever I try to join a game, there is never anyone else trying to join a random game at the same time.

Gamers like to chat (and argue) with their friends about games a lot and I can see the value in this sort of service. I love to talk about games, but I don't want to clog my Facebook wall with discussions about it and annoy my non-gamer friends.

Having to manually update what you're playing is a weakness that could be fatal to this social network. There's so much good data about what people are playing on Playstation, Xbox, 3DS, and Wii U locked away and inaccessible. It's unfortunate that there's no easy way to share that.

My own friends and I have in the past attempted to start a sort of "game playing book club" where we'd write emails back and forth about our thoughts while all playing the same game. It was tough to keep going in an unstructured format via email however. Maybe it'd be easier with something like this.

Games = Clans. Yes, there is a ton of players that casually play your latest AAA games, but they would never use this, or any other service.

Me on the other hand would LOVE to have one place where i could have all my team mates on one place, right now when we need to train i send the email to one half of the team and FB messages to other.

Maybe you should try to fix that problem instead of creating FB like wall.

I founded GuildLaunch.com - team support is being overhauled as we speak for the exact reason you describe. Our team used to be very focused on MMO pvp. We are reworking it to support the moba, clan tournament, skirmish and "random get together" style of play that a lot of teams/clans have.

Site creator here.. Always fun when you get off a plane to find out that someone has posted your site to HN and it's been on the front page for a couple hours. My phone had a bit of a twitter/support ticket/feedback email explosion when I turned it back on. Happy to answer any Qs about Dpadd, just reply to this comment.

Is there something like this for German-style board (and card) gamers, as a way for them to meet up for games? That would be really interesting and useful.

I know HN is not the place for this type of comment, but social and gamer in the same sentence, ha ha!

Twitch, Steam, Xbox live, MMORPGs, Minecraft... what makes you think that gamers aren't social?

I am sorry, I have a video game addict in the family and he is not very social when it comes to real life.

Don't assume that all gamers are the same any more than all programmers are.

And I have a drunk in my family. Does that mean that anyone who has a couple beers hates people?

Come on.

One guy that isn't very social and is 'addicted' to video games doesn't mean that all gamers are like this.

You can continue downvoting this comment, but I stick by it because it is an honest expression of my feelings.

That's fine, but consider that perhaps your feelings aren't reflective of reality.

Downvoting doesn't necessarily mean people disagree with you.

Downvoting also means that you're not saying anything. Which you knew perfectly well when you posted.

Yes, you are right. I expected the downvotes. :)

http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/02/10/are-single-player-games...

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