Goozex Game Trading Hits Facebook

Curse you Facebook, you evil, demented, manipulative, utter waste of time I can't stop fiddling with for more than thirty minutes a pop since I discovered 'Zombies' and 'Cities I've Visited' and 'US Politics' and -- just released today -- 'Goozex', a Facebook plugin that lets you share reviews and ratings for over 23,000 PC, Mac, console, and handheld video games.

I'd never heard of Goozex before today, but they've apparently been around for awhile, allowing users to trade in their video games for points, which can then be used to buy other members' games. Macworld actually mentioned these guys earlier this summer regarding a special Mac-based Dashboard widget that lets Goozex users monitor their game requests and library lists. (Now if only they could drop the 'token' that you use to authenticate your account from 49 consecutive characters to something password sized...)

How does the new Goozex - Facebook relationship work? "The Facebook app is run on a separate database and server from Goozex.com," writes Mark Nebesky, co-founder of Goozex.com, in an email. "The reviews and ratings placed on the app are also separate from those that are on Goozex. For the moment, only the Goozex library lists are shown on your personal profile page and link to the games details pages on Facebook."

The separation bit Nebesky refers to is problematic at the moment, as I discovered myself after signing up earlier today. It essentially means anything you do through Facebook, i.e. write reviews, rate games, add them to your library, etc. doesn't update in your Goozex profile (and vice versa), which can be a little confusing and obviously isn't ideal since it leaves a wall between either community. Hopefully that'll change in the near future, as Nebesky adds that his company's already planning upgrades that should better link both databases.

So why bring Goozex to Facebook? "We basically saw two problems with Facebook and video games," says Nebesky. "The first is that there are a ton of gamers there, but they are highly fragmented and isolated into small individual groups. The second is that there isn't a good, high quality general video game application that has a large database and is managed properly. So we built the app that directly solves the second problem and indirectly the first."

You need a Facebook account to view Goozex's new 'Video Game Community', but if you already have one -- and I'm warning you, it's a whole new mad world of time-you-couldn't-spare-anyway gobbling -- you can find the plugin here.

Comments

Post a comment Post a comment

0 / 1000 max characters