Rupture into a new social medium

Found out about Rupture after looking at a design site, and for all intents and purposes, it’s basically a full-out social network for the gamer. And that is just a cool idea (coming from a gamer I suppose).

Basically, the games or gaming networks that it currently supports are World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Steam, Spore, Xbox Live, CEVO, Grid Wars, Guitar Hero III, and Kongregate. There’s a little bit of everything and as you can see, but obviously much of this current implementation is done through some Windows client APIs. This is a cool idea, and allows gamers to keep in touch with all of their friends as long as their game is supported.

My current problem with it is if they can actually break the hold and partner with Sony and Nintendo. Both of those companies are pretty tight when it comes to their user base. It’s one thing to create avatars, but it’s another to link into their user database. So we’ll see if that ever happens. If so, Rupture will have a great way of seeing what your friends are playing not only on one single console, but participate in all of their games. It’ll also allow you to connect with your friends on games that you didn’t know they even played. Even from a PC perspective? I would love to see them integrated with something like GameSpy, where it’s a game launcher and you can keep track of your stats.

“Oh, you play WoW? Me too! Let’s get in on a raid together!”

As you can see, it could be limitless. You could have a widget that brags about what you’re doing right now. Or what level you are, or what achievements you’ve made. Or, neener neener, I beat XYZ game on “Infinitely impossible, so who’s your daddy!?” Mode. Can you just imagine? In fact, there’s a number of even more fun things you could do such as play out stats for clans, break outs of who’s the better sniper, who has more headshots, who dies less, and all sorts of statistics for tournaments, rankings and bragging rights of who’s the biggest baddest bad ass of your “current” game.

The website is a decent clean design, and the client seems to work decently to gain more information about the games you’re playing (if it’s a PC game) but I’m waiting for those much needed partnerships. If they do? You can be sure that my Playstation ID just gained a little bit more weight when I can brag about the few PC games I bother to play.