Wednesday 29 June 2011

What Google Plus means for roleplaying

Yesterday Google announced its new social network, Google Plus. Working in the digital marketing industry my office has been abuzz with conversation about what the site will mean for current social networks and the future of online interaction. But being an utter nerd the first thing that crossed my mind was "Can I play RPGs on it?"

Whereas there are similarities between other social media, Google Plus does have a utility that caught my eye: Hangouts. Essentially this is Google's answer to Skype except it encourages multiple friends to interact simultaneously. I think you can see where I'm going with this.

Read more after the jump...

From what I've seen a group of people can meet up and chat over webcam while viewing the same videos and engaging in the same searches. Presumably this means that all members of the party would be able to view and interact with an online tabletop for gaming.

Now, this is a pretty nifty tool in itself, but there could be more. Google Plus obviously puts all of your friends in one place, so it saves you time trying to text or phone people to get involved in a game. Being able to categorise your friends and colleagues into Circles would also mean you could put people who like certain games in their own Circles to make it quicker when it comes to deciding who to invite when running a certain ruleset.

This is something that we as gamers should keep abreast of. You never know, Plus could be the best online gaming tool yet.

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