Casual gaming, especially when the social aspect is more asynchronous, has a little more connection to these newer forms of social media since you don’t require nearly as much synchronous context as you do with the hard core console and PC games. So seeing everyone’s Farmville updates and Bejeweled Blitz scores as a status update fits more into paradigm of Facebook and Twitter than do hardcore games. But you’re not doing quite as much social interaction there, although the games may (arguably) be more fun to play with other people.

More than that, though, I love MFRANCO’s idea of a game-equivalent to Digsby or Trillian: some place that I can merge all of my game IDs into a single consolidated platform and refer to that for all of my buddy lists, achievements, and even (someday) cross-platform matchmaking.

I’m not sure an all-in-one gaming portal would be a good choice to bring social media further into video games. As you mention, both the technical issues and legal/business strategies would never allow this to happen. Never is a strong word, but I don’t see this happening in the near future or distant future.

This is why I think existing 3rd party social networks should be implemented to avoid these problems, yet still allow social networking to happen with video games.

Xurxo,

Thanks for bring up Raptr. I haven’t used their service yet, but I have heard that it is doing pretty well. It looks to be a capable IM system for gaming, but I think it might stay pretty niche and have a hard time breaking into mainstream gamers.

Matt,

I think you are spot on with your train of thought. I don’t know how they are going to brand the next generation of video game machines, but they certainly will have to do something different. They indeed will become the “centralizing technology,” which is why I think Microsoft has done such a good job with they Xbox strategy. I’ll add you on LIVE.

Justin,

There is a lot that can done with social networking to improve of change current gameplay. I agree about the reputation aspect of helping other gamers. For many gamers, reputation is a HUGE part of the gaming world.

As a former gamer, I don’t know how many games I gave up on or cheated my way through by reading an online guide to make it past a certain level. It took a lot of entertainment out of the experience. If I were able to submit a “help” request to the XBox Live community of online gamers and then have someone ping me with a few tips, it would not only increase my enjoyment level, but would also foster the community as well as provide the helper with additional experience points and an increased status within the community.

I will say that as a non-serious gamer (I prefer to play solo, mainly because I’m not particularly good), I’ll probably turn off my Twitter feed from Uncharted 2 soon. And I have yet to update my PS3 firmware to incorporate Facebook functionality. I don’t see any need to add further noise to my FB feed. But I understand how a community of gamers would find utility in all of this social network functionality.

It looks they have some kind of integration with Xbox 360 (see http://raptr.com/tour#showfriends)

At the same time is a gaming social net, a kind of Last.fm of videogames, in which you can rate games, find all kind of aggregated info on each, know what games use to play other Raptr users, make friends with them and so on.

What I am thinking of is an online hub that acts as a social network for gamers that is compatible with all the major systems. I realize there may be some legal and technical barriers, but the potential for cross-system interaction could be very cool. For instance, a game that is offered on multiple systems could have an even greater potential network. I think some networks may have already been created around specific games, but they are probably limited to the specific game. An all-in-one network would allow friends form one game bridge over to others without having to change their cyber-locale.