Playfire blog

We know it's been a little while since our last blog post -- but don't worry we haven't all disappeared to play the latest wave of AAA releases like LittleBigPlanet, COD 5, Mirrors Edge or Valkyria Chronicles.  

Honestly -- between this Pandora’s Box of distractions and having a peculiar rise in sick days the week after Wrath of the Lich King launched I find it hard to believe we’ve managed to do one of our biggest releases ever!

This is the first of a two part post with ‘Part two’ set to follow basically as soon as we can wrench ourselves away from watching the new Lara shimmying down poles, somersaulting through the air and swimming through the clear blue ocean in Tomb Raider Underworld.

1. Forum Platform Filters

If you want to view forum topics that just relate to a particular gaming platform then now you can by clicking on any of the new featured platform links we've put above the forums.

When you start a new thread you can now tag it with a gaming platform which will place your thread in the platform section of your choosing as well as in the most recent section.

If you relate your thread to a game we now also place the thread into the platforms sections that game appears on. For example if your thread is about MGS4; it will appear in the PS3 section whilst multi-platform titles appear in all the sections that game is on unless the thread author specifies it to a particular section.

2. Events Planner

You can now create, schedule and organise events (like gaming sessions with your friends) through the new Playfire events planner. Each time you create an event it will be added to your calender (that's shared with your friends) and you can invite them to join any of the events you have created and vice versa.

You can even add when you are available to play games (like 8pm-10pm Wednesday nights) and this information will be shared with your friends so they know the best time to schedule events with you. 

On your calender we show you how many of your friends are available to play at any particular time (the darker the time cell is the more friends you have available at that time).  You can also chat about the event before and after on the events page wall.  Give this feature a try and let us know how to improve it :)

3. New Clans & Groups Overviews

We've spruced up the interface on the pages making it easier to find clans and groups to join.  We've also added 'featured clans & groups' (hand picked by us each week) and the 'most popular clans/groups of the week' (essentially the fastest growing).  We've also added a quick start clan/group feature and a little explanation pop-down box that gives a description of what clans and groups are in case you are not sure.

4. Xbox Live Avatar on profile

With the release of the new Xbox Live experience comes "Avatars" so if you have an Xbox Live Avatar we've made it so that you can display it on your Playfire profile! To make it happen simply create your Xbox Live avatar and then add your Xbox live ID by going to your 'edit profile' page.

5. Three new Homepage modules

We've added three new modules to the homepage that we hope you will all like. The first is a "My stuff" quick jump style set of links that appear below your avatar that allow you to quickly jump to all your things on the site. The second is a module that shows you which of your friends are currently logged in to Playfire and the third is an events module that shows you your upcoming events.

"My stuff"

"Recently Logged in friends"


We hope you like this first set of November releases and keep checking back for our next update "Part 2" which is set to feature even more cool stuff very soon