A while back, I noticed that Google added games to their social networking site Google+. My first reaction to this was a negative one, because I remembered how annoying games on Facebook were. However, like just about everything else, I still gave it a try to see if my initial assumptions were wrong.

The three games that I decided to play were Angry Birds, City of Wonder, and Dragons of Atlantis. These games were somewhat similar to what you would see on Facebook, but they were much more advanced and well-made. As we all know from Angry Birds, these games are created by big companies who have intelligent and educated employees dedicated to creating game content, rather than lifeless teenagers trying to make games in their basement.

Apart from the better game content, the way Google integrates games into Google+ is far superior than that of Facebook. If you’re a Facebook user, you probably recall having your news feed and notifications flooded by invitations and updates from your friends’ games. I haven’t taken a close look at Facebook for about a year and a half, so I’m not sure if they changed the methodology of game invitations, but whenever I do sign in to Facebook once in a while, I still see notifications from weird applications that sound like games.

Google+ is completely different and takes the annoying notifications from games out of your main feed. The primary reason we use social networking is to keep up with the lives of our friends. Of course, we can also social network to play games with our friends, but that’s not the main purpose most people use social networking websites.

Unlike Facebook, Google appears to have a solid grasp on this and makes sure games and socialization are kept separate. If you’re playing a game and want to share something in-game with your friends, you can still post a notification. The special part about Google+ is that when you do this, it doesn’t post the update in your main stream, but instead, in a separate games-only stream. That way, the only reason your friends would see this update is if they go to their own Games page and look through the games feed. If you have friends who are not interested in Google+ games, they never see the post and never get annoyed.

This doesn’t mean that socialization is removed from games; the games stream is just like your regular stream, and your other gamer buddies can comment on and +1 the updates that you post.

If you would like to play City of Wonder with me (which is the only game on Google+ that I’m playing with moderate effort), feel free to search for me on Google+ (type in Adam Parkzer in the search bar) and add me as an ally.