Social gaming site Raptr may have 19 millions members, but a new Vancouver-based operation wants to take the focus away from spamming your friends’ Twitter feeds and bring it back to intelligent conversation.
The new social network, Dpadd, lets users list, rate, and review every title they play. “The simplest way for me to explain Dpadd is that it’s just like Goodreads, but for video games,” Dpadd creator Clayton Correia told GamesBeat. Goodreads is an online database of books and user-reviews.
Raptr, an established social media site based on gaming, offers a similar function, but it’s largely based around integration with Twitter and Facebook.
“Raptr is fine, but because it’s focused on automatically recording everything you play, there’s no reason to come back to the site,” Correia told GamesBeat. “It’s a ‘set it and forget it experience’. I want to build a place (like Goodreads) where people come and discuss what they’re playing and learn about new games. I don’t want Dpadd to be a place that just mindlessly records gamers’ activity.”
Dpadd’s database contains just over 40,000 games, with most of the data coming from GiantBomb API, a collection of gaming resources and information for noncommercial use.
“We’re still in our early days and 100 percent focused on building what our users want,” Correia told GamesBeat. “Anyone who wants to be part of the community has an opportunity to shape how this site will function. We’re open and willing to talk to anyone who takes the time to give us feedback.”