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Overview of Social features

  • Article

Social features in Xbox services provide a gaming-oriented social network that includes the following information about a user:

  • Profile
  • Friends list
  • Presence (current activity)
  • Gamerscore
  • Achievements
  • Reputation

For gamers to adopt your title and stay engaged, it is crucial for them to play and compete with others. Xbox services offers the best gaming social network with over 50 million active gamers and growing.

We have created a set of tools to bring gamers together and get their eyes on new and exciting games. Integrating the Xbox services Social features in your title provides a huge return on investment whether you are building a single player casual game, a companion app, or a massive multiplayer game.

Concepts in this article

Bringing gamers together

Xbox is committed to building an active community of gamers. That's why we provide a set of tools to help gamers find others to share experiences with and make gaming a social activity. So when they play your game they can't help but share it with their friends.

Profile

Each gamer on Xbox services has a profile. The profile contains the following information:

  • Gamertag: The unique nickname of the gamer. Every user on Xbox services has a gamertag.

  • Real Name: The first and last name of the gamer. This is empty if the user doesn't want to share their real name via their privacy settings.

  • Gamerpic: The picture or icon that the gamer has chosen to represent them.

  • Presence: The current state of the gamer (online, offline, playing a game, etc.)

  • Gamerscore: The single value that represents the total achievement score the user has accumulated across all of the Xbox services games they have played.

Gamerscore and Achievements

Each gamer can earn Gamerscore by unlocking Achievements in your game. Achievements is a very popular feature that keeps your gamers engaged with your title by letting them both boast of their prowess and extend gameplay goals. Players can compare their Achievements with their friends in their profile.

Note

Gamerscore and Achievements are not available to games created under the Xbox Creators Program.

The people system - Your social network on Xbox services

Each Xbox member can maintain a personal friends list of people which could contain real world friends, gamers met on Xbox services, and well known gamers and VIPs such as Major Nelson.

The relationships between people are one way follower relationships, which means you can add someone to your friends list just by following them. This is in contrast to other systems where the person you are trying to follow has to confirm the relationship before you can become friends in the system.

You can add up to 1000 friends in your friends list and have unlimited followers:

  • A friend is a person you have added to your friends list by following them.
  • A follower is someone who has added you to their friends list by following you.

To make it easy to find their favorite gamers in their friends list, each gamer can mark up to 100 friends as a favorite.

When a gamer plays your game, the Xbox services social graph will show only the gamer's friends who have also played your game.

See People System (Friends List).

Getting eyes on games

An important part of the Xbox social system is activity sharing. This lets all your friends on Xbox services know what you've been up to, with the special added benefit of giving your game more exposure for every player getting in the game.

The following features help Xbox players discover your game and keep them engaged after they've become yet another loyal fan. Even better than that, every time they play your game, they'll be enticing all their friends to join your legion.

Clips and screenshots

The easiest way for gamers to share your games content is through clips and screenshots. Players will be able to record gameplay videos and screenshots to share with their friends on Xbox services. These moments of glory will automatically be showcased in the player's activity feed.

The activity feed

When gamers play your title, their Achievement unlocks, clips, screenshots and other activities will become a part of an activity feed that is shared with their friends so they can all see the wonders your game has to offer.

The most popular content published across Xbox services is visible in the Trending section of Xbox services. If a gamer posts an interesting question on your Game Hub or shares a great clip of your game, you can expect your content to trend on Xbox services. This is another great way to raise awareness for your title.

Rich Presence

Presence, the online status of the player, isn't just for checking whether the player is online or not. It also shows what app or game the player is currently engaged with.

Furthermore, Rich Presence strings allow you to advertise what someone is doing within your game, whether they are puttering around the menus, queuing up for a game, or right in the middle of play.

See Rich Presence.

Note

Rich Presence is not available for games created under the Xbox Creators Program.

Game Hubs

By integrating with Xbox services, your game automatically gets a hub page known as the Game Hub. Game Hub is the official destination for your game on Xbox network, and lets players find game-related activity, Achievements, groups, Clubs, tournaments, and more.

You can optionally setup a community manager for your Game Hub to interact with your users via the activity feed. Any gamer who plays your game is automatically subscribed to your Game Hub activity feed, giving you a powerful mechanism to reach gamers. On average, a post on the Game Hub activity feed will get 10x more engagement than a similar post on an external popular social media platform.

Use the Xbox services Social APIs

To keep gamers and their friends engaged with your title through the Xbox services Social APIs, use the SocialManager class; see Social Manager overview.