Rupture is a company that runs a gaming aggregation site. I’ve been beta testing the service since it debuted, mostly because the mash-up of social software and video games makes me giddy.

The company was started by Shawn Fanning of Napster and SnoCap fame. Their first incarnation was simply a Worldof Warcraft social networking site. However, with the advent of the Armory their web 2.0 societal niche was co-opted! Never one to give up on an idea, they revamped the service, made it game agnostic and relaunched the site as less of a social network, and more of a front end for displaying all the gaming data event points in your online life.

Currently, the site is still in heavy beta, but they currently support:

• Steam Accounts
• World of Warcraft Characters
• XBL Accounts
• Halo3 Accounts

If anyone is interested in getting in on the beta, let me know. I have the hookup. I’m people who know people!

So, I’ve been avoiding games like Guitar Hero for a while, mostly because the concept looked annoying and unfun. ( See: Guitar Queer-O and Zero Puntuation: Guitar Hero III ) However, I love me some rhythm games… so I was up for trying them out.

I was out in San Fransisco last week doing the Socialtext Face-to-Face thing, and I got invited by a friend of Jenn’s to head to Sunnyvale and play some Rockband. Unfortunately, I already had plans and couldn’t go, so that was sad times.

However, I had plans to hang out with some folks in the city, and they were talking like us playing Rockband would be a requirement. So, I took some downtime to head up to the city from Palo Alto and hang out with the Rupture folks and play some Rockband, which is a bad-ass, social version of Guitar Hero.

I grabbed the bass, because if I ever had to learn an instrument it would be electric bass, and Pat got us going. I picked it up fairly quick (according to the people in the office, who are not really ones to kiss my ass) and had a lot of fun. In short order Pat conned me out of the guitar/bass and put me on drums. I picked those up pretty quick as well, and managed not to wipe us out even once, which is above par I guess? I don’t really know.

We went out to dinner and came back and played some more. All in all, I had a great time,which arguably probably had far more to do with the Rupture guys being awesome, and less about the awesomeness of Rockband.

I got home and decided that since Rockband for the Wii was only just announced, it will be a while before they release the game for a console that I don’t have to go buy. So, I picked up Guitar Hero III for the Wii, despite sound bugs. I’m having a lot of fun with it, and look forward spreading the fun around. Not that any people in town care. But still!

I’m not very good yet, but I beat it on easy 5 starring most of the songs. I’ve not been able to beat Blood Rain yet, because it’s insane. The Dragonforce song is insane in a fun way, but Blood Rain is hard in a makes-me-want-to-smash-the-controller kind of a way, which is far less ideal.

The UI of Rockband is FAR superior to that of GH3. I can’t count how many times I’ve fumbled a note glancing at the UI off to the side in GH3. Meh.