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[RinseWashrepeat]

Hi people!

I'm currently developing a fairly simple game and I'm considering how to implement Twitter into the game.

An obvious function would be to have people Tweet out their scores, which is fine but I also though about having people use Twitter to get an 'extra life' of sorts.

It's a runner, and once a day people can continue their run if they Tweet out a message along the lines of ;

'I got to XXX points - this run ain't over though! #whatever'

Is this a cheap use of Twitter? Would this backfire? Have any of you used Twitter in your games? Does it even get more people playing or do people see it as spam and flip out?

[ThemsAllTook]

do people see it as spam and flip out?

I can only speak for myself, but I certainly do. Who would legitimately want to clutter up their Twitter feed with ads for someone else's stuff?

If I like a game and think it's worth sharing, I'll write a tweet about it myself. If I see an auto-composed tweet promoting a game, that game usually goes on a blacklist. Let people want to promote your game out of their own volition. Incentivizing it is dirty and harmful to the ecosystem.

[RinseWashrepeat]

Yeah. I kind of figured this to be the case. The more I thought about it the more 'unnatural' the Tweet would seem. Think I'll scrap it...

[Ammypendent]

For my team's game, we just simply have a link to our twitter account. In that way if people like the game they can give us a follow.

While you can give players in-game incentive to tweet stuff, it doesn't guarantee actual good word-of-mouth. Personally I would rather have people tweet how awesome our game is on their own initiative since it'll create more genuine interest from other people.

[valrus]

I don't much like the second, "incentivized" option.

But in general I think Twitter integration is ok, if done right.  For example, if there's something share-able (like a funny situation you can get into, or a way players express themselves creatively) and players would WANT to share it with their followers, then by all means make it easy for people to share it.

In a simple game like a runner, there might not be much opportunity to have interesting tweets.  But maybe if you have a lot of weird ways to die, you could tell the player "You ran XXX meters before being eaten by a sentient pair of pants.  This is the 23rd time you have been eaten by pants." and then give them the option to tweet this.  Or have a reverse high-score table (all the ways to die ranked by how many time it's killed the player) and make it easy to link to an image of it.  

[Sik]

Race the Sun actually did this, though I'm not sure if it still has that feature (pretty sure it did during beta). The catch is that anybody could continue that run: the tweet contained a link (or a code, don't remember) that when entered into the game would let you continue in the region where it finished. You could extend a run twice this way, I believe (effectively giving you the equivalent to three lives if you kept continuing your own runs).

[TomHunt]

Why not just a clean write-only interface to twitter? If someone feels like tweeting from your game, by all means, let them tweet from your game! (I believe you can have your game's name show up in their tweet as the app they tweeted from)

[valrus]

Race the Sun actually did this, though I'm not sure if it still has that feature (pretty sure it did during beta). The catch is that anybody could continue that run: the tweet contained a link (or a code, don't remember) that when entered into the game would let you continue in the region where it finished. You could extend a run twice this way, I believe (effectively giving you the equivalent to three lives if you kept continuing your own runs).

That's pretty cool.  I might try that out for my puzzle/builder game: "I'm stuck and can't build any further! See if you can get further than me:..."

My new social rule-of-thumb: social integration is good when it provides something of value for the player's *followers*.

[RidiculousJohn]

Miiverse?

[SimplyRivet]

If you've got a visually distinct game, one way of doing this would be to allow the player to tweet a picture of their death spot. Any text that they tweeted would have to be input by the player. That way you can give spread your game imagery around, with out the scummy auto-generated text problem.

[rek]

I was annoyed by the few "click to tweet" pushes in Swords & Sworcery, I'd delete a game I felt required Twitter to keep playing or access everything.

You're also taking a risk with the longevity of your game. Twitter will eventually change something, somehow, and that could break it.