This will make Audiosurf an MMOG. It enables a persistent record of the players path in the game. It does lack the scores next to the play counts however. For me though each play through a song is an achievement in it’s own right. To track that journey is something I crave. Perhaps that’s what makes things like last.fm and twitter so popular anyway, in a way they are social games, to be able to share and display progress is a requirement.

There really is a convergence between social networking sites and gaming like mechanics. This new patch is really a leveraging of emerging experiences that enhances the user experience of both, all through the power of web 2.0. How’s that for some buzzwords?

Lets say last.fm is a game and our profile is our character. I find it interesting that initially when playing audiosurf it I felt like I wasn’t able to ‘improve’ my last.fm character. This is the same experience I have when I use my mp3 player (which doesn’t track my song play count), which frustratingly is most of my music time these days.