Social Media Integration in Video Games GameNshare: A Social Overlay for Desktop Games

摘要

The ever increasing popularity of social media makes it a promising source for thepersonalization of gameplay experiences. Furthermore, involving social network friends in agame can greatly enrich the satisfaction of the player and also attract potential novel players toa game.This master thesis describes a social overlay designed for desktop games, called GameNshare. Itallows players to easily capture and share with multiple social networks game-relatedscreenshots, videos and stories. Additionally, it also provides asynchronous multiplayer gamemechanics to directly integrate social network friends in the game. GameNshare was designedto interact with the users in a non-intrusive way allowing them to be in complete control of whatis shared. It prevents unsolicited sharing of messages, a key problem in social media integrationtools, by the use of built-in message monitoring and anti-spam measures.GameNshare was specially designed for players aged from 18 to 25 years that are regular usersof Twitter and Facebook. It was tested by a group of 10 individuals from the target age rangethat were surveyed to capture their insights on the use of the social overlay. The implementedGameNshare features were well accepted by the testers that were also useful in highlightingfeatures for future development. GameNshare ultimate goal is to make players look and ask forsocial integration and allow them to take full advantage of their social communities to improvegaming experiences.