Inside Social Games

Not too long ago we talked about the Raptr platform and its capabilities as a central community hub across many gaming platforms. This week, Raptr just integrated support for one of the newest and most talked about games of the year, Spore.

For those that may have been in a cave for the past few months, Spore is the latest master piece from renowned designer Will Wright and EA Games. Will Wright is also the same guy that was lead designer for other huge EA titles such as The Sims and SimCity. Spore is a massively scoped game in which you determine the evolution of a race of creatures from single celled organisms to a space faring people. However, one of the key draws to this game comes from the tag attached to it that describes Spore as a “massively single-player online game.”

Spore allows players to download content from each other through EA. You can download other player created races to inhabit the planets in your galaxy as well as can upload your own creations and track how they do in what has been described as “parallel universes” (other player’s game worlds). In addition to this, EA has created a “Spore YouTube Channel” that allows people to seamlessly showcase their galaxy to other users, and even share the evolution of their creatures using a game feature dubbed “Sporecast.”

This is where everything gets enhanced by Raptr. While Spore does not support simultaneous multiplayer, Raptr does allow tracking of your friends in real-time as they play the game. Moreover, with the massive number of people in the Spore galaxy, there is a near infinite number of possible creatures that people could create. As such, Raptr allows players to broadcast and share all of their creations, activity, and achievements through major social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. There’s even a “Spore Module” added to your Raptr profile page that contains everything you’ve created. You can even share screenshots of your creatures and allow users to watch them evolve and grow over time.

Considering the vast number of players that will be playing Spore, this is a important game addition for Raptr. Originally, the social content of Spore was planned to revolve around just the official site. Now, with Raptr, that network is expanding, and will continue to expand, to social networks all over the web.