How to Find College Friends on Most Major Gaming Services
When I was in college, “playing” with friends meant chasing the only PlayStation 2 in the common area until Madden’s players gave it up, befriending the guy who dragged his Xbox (and hefty dukes ) to his dorm. room, or join the team that hooked up the Ethernet four Xbox together for the weekly Halo Deathmatch.
Now, if you and your new campus buddies want to play together, you can simply go back to your dorm room, flipon the blacklights in party mode, and search for them online. If you want to chat with them while playing the game, start a voice or video chat. If you want to plan the next guild raid, don’t write their dorm rooms on the board; just post to Discord (or leave a comment on their Twitch feed).
If you need a refresher on the best ways to meet your new college friends online, here are some ways to add your real-life friends as digital companions to your favorite gaming platforms and services:
Find them on a social network first.
Chances are good that you will digitally connect with different people you meet in college, and it will most likely be a service like Facebook or Twitter – sorry Mastodon . If you hate any social network, great. Anyway, block your account and add your friends because a number of gaming services integrate with platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Build those digital connections first, and it will be much easier to lead a group of gamers down the hallway to let you participate in their weekly Overwatch parties.
If you are playing on your PC …
There are many different services you can use to play games with your dorm room friends – and even your friends from different universities. We’ll cover all the basics, but feel free to let us know anything we’ve missed in the comments.
Steam
If you play on a PC or Mac, chances are good that you have (or have used) Valve’s digital distribution service at some point. To find and add friends, click on your name – in the huge menu list to the right of Community – and select Friends. Click on the “Add Friend” option on the left sidebar. You will now be able to create an invite link that you can email, message, or text message to one of your college buddies. Each invite link only works once, which makes it less useful if you want to give a group of people an easy way to add you as a friend on Steam.
If you’ve already made friends with your college mates on Facebook and want to see if they are on Steam, simply link your accounts together using the option at the bottom of the Add Friend section, Facebook Friends.
It is also possible that someone at your college has already created some kind of themed online community that will bring everyone on campus together. If so, you can try searching for your college name (or mascot, or other identifying characteristics) on the Steam Community Groups page . In the Steam app, you will find that under the menu item this is your Steam profile name> Groups> Find Group (in the bottom left corner)
Battle.net
If you’re looking to add more members to your World of Warcraft college-centered guild, or want to host a Fireside Gathering for Hearthstone in your dorm, you’re in luck. Adding friends to Blizzard’s Battle.net service is easy.
Open the app, click the icon in the upper right corner that looks like two people standing side by side, and click Add Friend. If you know the BattleTag or email address of your college buddy – most likely not his college .edu address if he’s been playing games for a while – you can enter it here to befriend him. Otherwise, go to the Facebook tab, link your account and you should be able to find any Facebook friends who have done the same.
In particular, if you play Hearthstone, you can also find nearby players (if you have the same Wi-Fi) by clicking on the small player-shaped icon in the lower left corner of the game and looking at the Nearby section of the pop-up page side panel. (You can also click on the Nearby section to prevent others from finding you if you’d rather build decks in peace and quiet.)
Epic Games Launcher
If you want to play Fortnite on your Mac or PC, you’ll need the Epic Games Launcher . Once you’ve downloaded this, created an account, and signed in, you can add friends by clicking the tiny icon in the top right corner that looks like three people huddled together for warmth. In the pop-up that appears – your friends list – click the icon in the center of the person and the plus sign. You can then link your Steam and Facebook accounts to refer friends from other services, or you can enter their display names or email addresses directly if you are aware of this.
GOG Galaxy
Feeling old school? If you’re looking for friends on this great retro gaming resource (excluding Gwent), download the app , create an account (or sign in) and click the little icon in the upper right corner of the app that looks like one person sneaking after another to hit him. You’ll need to know their GOG Galaxy username or email address, which is a little annoying, but it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out if you’ve become friends with them on other services.
Xbox app
You don’t need an Xbox to use Microsoft’s Xbox app, which lets you find and meet friends (real and virtual), track your gaming habits, and stream to a variety of services right from Windows. (It also comes as an Android and iOS app if you just want the social aspects while you’re on the go.)
If you don’t already have the app installed on Windows, grab it and sign in with your Microsoft account. Click “Settings” in the left sidebar and you will be able to link your Facebook and Twitter accounts to the Microsoft Xbox service. From there, you will see a list of friend suggestions on the right side of the app based on your friends or followers from those other social services. You can also add friends manually if you know their player tags – just type that into the Find People or Clubs line on the right sidebar of the app.
By the way, the “find clubs” part of this query searches only for those clubs – large virtual venues that you have already joined. To find clubs to join, click the Clubs section in the left sidebar and the Find a Club text prompt, which then appears at the top of the Xbox app. (Although you can also see which clubs your friends are in by clicking the View All link in this section, which might be a better option than trying to manually search for clubs.)
If you choose the manual route, you can search for clubs by their names or descriptions, as well as by the games they focus on, or by specific tags that interest you, such as player versus player if you enjoy playing pune, or “Don’t swear” if you don’t swear .
A source
Does anyone still use Electronic Arts’s gaming service – if only to find friends to play games with? If so, it’s easy to add them. When you launch the app, click Friends in the top menu and click Add Friend. You will need to know their Origin ID, real name (!) Or email address in order to establish a connection. There is no way to connect a third party service like Facebook or Twitter to make this whole process easier.
Uplay
Like Electronic Arts’ Origin, Ubisoft’s Uplay doesn’t give you many resources to find friends. Once you’ve created an account and signed in, click on the hamburger icon in the upper left corner and select Settings. Then click on Link Account in the left sidebar and you will be able to link your Steam account – and only your Steam account – to the service.
From there, click on the two-person icon to the left of your username (in the upper-right corner of the app) and click on the person icon with a plus sign on it. You can add other friends through Uplay if you enter their usernames – and only their usernames – or you can click the link to import all Steam friends who also created Uplay accounts and linked the two services together.
For Xbox / PlayStation / Switch Gamers …
Most console players probably know how to add friends to each platform, as this is a core component of how you find others to talk to and play with. If you need a little refreshment, here are links to instructions for Xbox , PlayStation, and Switch .
As before, you can link your Xbox account to your Facebook account on your console to make it easier to find friends you already know (and your Twitter account if you want to share your gaming updates with this service). On PlayStation, you can link your Facebook and Twitter accounts to find other friends to play with. The same is true for the Nintendo Switch, which makes it much easier to find and befriend friends around the dorm room than typing in those horrible friend codes, and is as easy asfinding local users .