{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Dead Internet Almanac","title":"July 24: A Game Hub Haunted by Circles","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":481,"description":"Google Play Games arrived in 2013 with a neat little dream: turn every Android game into something connected, persistent, and social. Achievements, cloud saves, leaderboards, multiplayer, challenges, and a standalone app promised to make mobile gaming feel less like a pile of isolated time-killers and more like a real platform. For players, it meant progress could survive a reinstall and scores could follow them across devices. For developers, it meant Google handled the identity layer they would otherwise have to build themselves.\n\nBut the strangest part was where that identity came from. Google wired Play Games into Google Plus Circles, letting a simple leaderboard pull in friends from the social network Google wanted everywhere. A phone game score screen became another recruiting surface for Google Plus, and Google Plus became harder to ignore because pieces of Android quietly leaned on it. The app remains, but the social engine behind its original promise is gone, leaving behind a ghost of the moment when Google thought your mobile games, your friends, and its doomed social network could all become the same thing.\n\nRead the original article: https://medium.com/@dia_91230/july-24-a-game-hub-haunted-by-circles-d5a32f430f41\n\nSubscribe to The Dead Internet Almanac: https://buttondown.com/dead-internet-almanac","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/0T0Z9X69zNfYqQ8Z8xV4SB06Vk-a5Z4I4iH6CPQMsiQ/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8yYmJj/OTNlYmM2M2UxYmZl/MDBjZTRiMDlhZTRm/MjI4NC5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}