http://cache.kotaku.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/kotaku.com.png http://kotaku.com/tag/social networking http://kotaku.com/tag/social networking Tecmo Koei is going to damn well try. The company's Singapore arm is making Jollywood, reports The Straight Times. Screenshots are visible here. More »
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Why bother going to GameStop.com and having the whole of the video game retailers' inventory at your fingertips when you can visit a severely limited GameStop Facebook store instead? It's got 'Like' buttons! More »
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Two communications today from Xfire, the social networking tool for PC gamers, indicate that the service has been sold off and most of its development team will be leaving as a result. Update: Titan Gaming has acquired Xfire. More »
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"What would it look like if Nintendo built Google Earth?" That's the question used to describe Crackdown and APB developer Realtime World's new project, a mix of social gaming, social networking, and traditional gaming known as MyWorld. More »
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With countless folk horror tales of theme park rides decapitating or removing the limbs of riders, you'd think Six Flags would have shied away from promoting over-the-top, blood-spurting violence in their new Facebook game, Six Flags Mascot Park. More »
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Did you know Kotaku has Facebook and Twitter pages? Neither did I!!! OK, I did, but I bet some of you didn't. More »
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Closet Buzz!: Quiz World fans will be outing themselves all over Facebook this week, as a patch makes the PlayStation 3 trivia game the first console title with true in-game Facebook publishing. More »
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With the NSA's Third Echelon taking the hunt for Sam Fisher to Facebook, the protagonist of Splinter Cell: Conviction turns to the only people he can trust - millions of Twitter users. More »
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Xbox Live users under 18 outside of North America may now use the social networking tools Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm on Xbox Live. Minors in the U.S. get access Dec. 15. More »
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Ubisoft's freebie-dispensing UPlay community will launch alongside Assassin's Creed II, and ultimately will incorporate all games under the Ubisoft banner, the publisher's CEO said on Thursday. More »
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Insomniac Games boss Ted Price recently confessed he'd been ignoring the world of Internet "community" that he'd been proselytizing as the future of gaming. Apology necessary? More »
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Atari jumps on the Facebook bandwagon, carrying a knapsack full of kitschy stickers so you can personalize your photos with Atari Photo Sauce. More »
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Over the next several months, Nexon America is transforming into BlockParty.com, a social networking website where fans can keep track of their games and stalk their friends to their heart's content. More »
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Namco Networks and J2Play announce the launch of Namco All-Stars Pac-Man and Dig Dug, two classic games for your PC with built-in hooks to the Facebook community. More »
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If Facebook and LittleBigPlanet got drunk and had an illegitimate offspring it might be Sackbook, a fan-created community website dedicated to connecting sack people with sack places for sack fun. More »
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Also in Realtime Worlds' newsletter for fans, which went out this week, is word that Facebook will play a large role in building the community for APB, the long-awaited cops-and-robbers MMO. More »
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GamerDNA isn't just another social networking site for gamers. GamerDNA is a site that seeks to help define us as gamers. Using the results of quizzes such as the Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology, which classifies the personalities of MMO players, along with gameplay history drawn from sources like Xbox Live, Xfire, and Steam, GamerDNA establishes your unique fingerprint, which can then be used to match you up with gamers with similar tastes, or suggest games your activity indicates you might like. It's almost like the popular musical discovery service Pandora, only for games. More »
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Typical — you wait years for a social network for gamers, then two roll up at once. More »
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Sometimes Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Orkut and OpenSocial just aren't enough. Too much real world stuff, not enough gamerscore bragging. More »
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With some calling Facebook the new frontier for gaming, it's unsurprising that it keeps making headlines. After all, it's not part of the gaming industry unless someone's complaining about excessive violence. More »
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In China, it's the glitzy cities that get the attention — Shanghai in particular is the city that garners the most attention in scholarship (and frequently in the press). I was somewhat relieved to see that this is not confined merely to China specialists, but game industry watcher types as well — the most recent 'China Angle' column at Gamasutra looks at games outside of the publicized hotspots, where large portions of the user bases are found. Giant Interactive, developer of Zhengtu Online, recently purchased a stake in one of China's largest social networking sites, in an attempt to grow their market. But that's not the only way companies are trying to acquire ever greater number of players, oh no: More »
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BioWare's fan forums have now reached four million user accounts, the company announced today. More »
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Another game industry vet has set his eye into social networking to support indie development. Greg Chudecke, who was lead tools designer at Zipper Interactive (SOCOM) and worked on Atari's Backyard Skateboarding and Black Label Games' Fellowship of the Ring title announced he's struck out on his own, founding an indie game company and social network. More »
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Reports that Electronic Arts was set to acquire Sean "Napster" Fanning's latest venture, a social network, are now official. EA announced last night that it acquired Napster's ThreeSF, owners of a social network called Rupture. More »
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Remember Shawn "Napster" Fanning? TechCrunch is reporting that Electronic Arts is about to plunk down $30 million on Rupture, a social network for gamers that Fanning started up with co-founder Jon Baudanza, who'd both become EA employees in the deal. More »
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There's a fun little piece over at the Escapist on social networks (real ones, not the virtual variety) and gaming. The social aspect of gaming lends itself to the creation of complicated rules and unspoken codes of behavior: More »
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EA has apparently decided to throw some of its best minds (like former Electronic Arts Los Angeles general manager Neil Young and director of artist and repertoire for Electronic Arts Alan Yu) behind a new division called 'EA Blueprint.' The point of the division? To help out smaller developers and get games — both extensions of existing EA franchises as well as new IP — out on various platforms, with a strong emphasis on social networking platforms like Facebook. They've tried something like this before, though not on such a scale: More »
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Do you feel like you don't have enough websites to share digital content? Do you cringe with displeasure at the media circus on YouTube or Flickr? Do you wish you had a game-specific website to facilitate your lack of interest in other kinds of media and experienes? Do you sometimes wonder why you have to sort through television clips, cat videos, flower images, or travel photos when all you want is to see the latest avatar fashions? More »
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There's a number of wildly popular 'games' (online worlds?) that fly under the radar in terms of press (unless, like Club Penguin, they get purchased for a lot of money), and Habbo Hotel is one of those - some of this is a demographic issue, and some of it is that games like this don't fit into our idea of what a 'game' is or should be. Gamasutra has an interesting interview with Habbo's lead designer, Sulka Haro. It's an enlightening look at those virtual worlds that fall into the part virtual networking site, part 'game' (depending on your definition), both in terms of design and actual implementation. And how we should be defining 'games' in the first place: More »
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