Google+ Finally Gets Its First Batch of Games; Angry Birds, Zynga Poker and More

The social media industry just got more interesting as Google announces their new social network called Google+ just a little more than a month ago. The search engine behemoth's new social platform offers a lot of features for your everyday social media aficionado but there's one aspect of social entertainment that hasn't been addressed yet, games. One could argue that one key element of Facebook's success is the huge plethora of games it supports. If you are a Google+ fan and is feeling left out due to the lack of games, you don't have to feel that way anymore. Google is now bringing its first wave of games into Google+.
So what games will Google+ for its first batch? Probably the most notable one is the highly ubiquitous Angry Birds along with other familiar ones that are also found in Facebook like Bejeweled Blitz, Sudoku, Zynga Poker, Dragon Age Legends and many more. All in all for its first wave, Google+ will be getting 16 games in total. According to Vic Gundotra, Google's Senior Vice President of Engineering, rollout of games will be gradual so expect more games to be available soon.
In Google+, you can play games in such an unobtrusive way. You will find the "Games" button at the top of the screen just next to the "Circles" icon. Clicking on the "Games" button will take you to the Games page where you can see all the games available for you to play along with other statistics. This particular feature is not yet available for everyone but Google promises that they working on it.

When you’re ready to play, the Games page is waiting—click the games button at the top of your stream. You can see the latest game updates from your circles, browse the invites you’ve received and check out games that people you know have played recently. The Games page is also where your game accomplishments will appear. So you can comfortably share your latest high score—your circles will only see the updates when they’re interested in playing games too.

If you have been a longtime Facebook user, then you know that one of the annoyances of the social network are the endless wall posts of your friends who loves their games too much. And the only way to make it stop is to manually block each application. In Google+, you  are provided means where you can easily ignore the games if you don't like them. This is because games won't extend their reach beyond the previously mentioned Games page. So you can easily ignore these games without manually blocking them.

For its first step of populating Google+ with games, Google partnered with Zynga, developers of the insanely popular FarmVille and all other Ville-esque games. For now Google is limiting its partners rather than open the platform for everyone. This is one way that Google will be able to ensure that all the games that hits the platform are all high quality. Although they are also encouraging other developers to build games for Google+, just go to the Google+ developer blog.

It still remains to be seen if this particular feature will alienate current users of Google+. But since they are provided with a way to completely ignore the feature, then this should be a non-issue. This is however a good news for those who have been craving to play games on Google+. So will the addition of games in Google+ help maintain the interest of its users? [via OfficialGoogleBlog]