For a little bit more then a year I work at company that makes games for social networks. Before that I never worked with social networks APIs or developed games(except for LudumDare game in 48 hours). Wanted but never did. My main appeal in going for that job was experience and possibility to learn something about this new market and how things work out there. After a year here I want to summarize some thoughts on “social” games.

Bear in mind that I am in no way a game developer, just a programmer with interests in interactive media and games. I consider myself an average gamer usually spending at least few hours per week playing something(but usually more, when I have good games then half an hour a day, more on weekends) I started to play somewhere in 90′s on Sega consoles and later switched to PC. So I have a rich experiences in playing PC games and casual browser games(or so I believe) and also have my “purist” views in what games and play represent for living things(not only humans) and our culture. Also I am male which adjusts my tastes too. All that probably makes my views on current popular games kind of biased and is just my opinions.

There will be few posts. In this one I will speak about social part of “social” games.

Social? Are they social?

So why social? From what I can see all “social” games usually include:

  • Friend list, usually real friends
  • Sometimes relationships between friends like being neighbors
  • Gifts and other activities to help each other with game
  • Means of messaging between friends in various ways(status posts, notifications, messages, emails, etc)
  • Sometimes leaderboards

Usually that’s all. Now that’s usual thing when you look on games in social networks. But what bothers me with this list is that in no way it really distinguishes social games from multiplayer games that existed before. Lets take other big multiplayer game. For example let’s take WoW:

  • You have friends
  • You can communicate with them in various ways
  • You can trade with them, give gifts etc
  • You can get in to guilds and parties as special relationships that have attached game mechanics to them
  • There are various leaderboards

So, does it make WoW a social game in a sense in which Facebook games are called social. Well, not really. What then distinguishes Facebook games from WoW? Here are some more features that are inherent to social games but do not make clear cut aether:

  • Those are games that are embedded in to social networks ,but there are ports of social games to mobile, are they the same then?
  • Use in game purchases,but many other games start to use them too including WoW or Battlefield Heroes
  • Core mechanics of social games seem simple, shallow and casual, but they also may demand much time from players and there are both casual and hardcore players playing them(spending a lot of time and effort)
  • Social games are in constant refreshing cycle with new content added repeatedly, but same goes for WoW and Angry Birds

So they don’t make any real distinction aether. And as we go forward social games will evolve coming closer to desktop and console games in some aspects while desktop and console games will be taking some features from social games too. So things will be becoming even more blurry. But I think there are some aspects that do define and distinguish social games from desktop games:

  • Social games are designed as freemium games with in game purchases
  • As such their main aim is to get as big number of users as possible and keep them playing
  • So they are designed in a way that forces you to invite friends in to the game one way or another(bonuses, easier to play, some things can be done only together)
  • In same time they aim to make friends call each other to return to the game in various ways
  • To make game spread as much as possible those games are designed to be as attractive and as positive as possible
  • That leads to positive game themes and simple and familiar game mechanics that allow users to enter the game and start playing as fast as possible

Conclusions

Many things may sound good in that list but sadly they are not(at least for me). “Social” games are not really that social at the moment in comparison to many other games. For me they even seem to be less social then other games but more about that in next post.