When most people think of the word social, they think talking to people. They think joining up with people, communicating, getting to know other people. You know, socializing. That’s fairly standard. So when you think of social gaming, this is what it means right? A game where people hang out in a multiplayer space and get to know each other. Well, that’s not actually entirely accurate.
In social games, social is the ‘platform’
Social games as they exist right now (for the most part) exist on social networks. You play them where your friends live. You are already connected with people on this service, and gaming with them is a feature. This is different than AOL Chat, or even Second Life – where you log in and interact with new people you’ve never met, or friends you’ve met on those services. Social gaming takes your pre-existing friendships and gives you something to do with them. How big of a role they play is another story.
This doesn’t mean they’re limited to Facebook games. Ohai’s City of Eternals, is using Facebook Connect on their own site to accomplish this very thing. City of Eternals is very much a social game, whether or not players are actually on it through Facebook or not. And social games don’t have to involve synchronous real-time interaction. A popular iPhone app, Words With Friends, allows you to connect with people you already know by broadcasting on social networks and play a Scrabble clone with them throughout the day – using push notification technology to alert you of your turns. This is a social game, too. It’s built on your platform of friends you already have.
In social games, real-time interaction is not the norm
Throughout Facebook games, you will see a whole lot of inviting friends and recommending to friends – but very little actual real-time conversation going on. Live chat isn’t new technology, people have been doing it for a long time. Why aren’t Facebook game developers using a lot more of it now? Well, they don’t have to. It isn’t an expected feature. This could evolve over time, as games like the aforementioned City of Eternals are heading in that direction. We tried a multiplayer space in our app, and it was a bonus feature to the playerbase. It wasn’t a game changer, and it certainly wasn’t necessary. We have live chat, but if you try to chat with a player on their island, sometimes they’re scared and log off. Interestingly enough, I’ve noticed a lot of casual game players turn off their Facebook IM as well.
While traditional MMO gamers might be real familiar with logging in to their MMO of choice and chatting it up with their guildies and establishing relationships, that’s actually not a driving feature in social games. This is a big difference between social games and MMOs. When MMO developers talk about “putting social game features into their games”, I sigh when it is referring to synchronous features – because that’s missing the point. MMOs already do that well.
In social games, social is a mechanic
So if these games use friends, but players are not hanging out and chatting with them – what good are friends in the first place? Why build upon a social network if people are being “antisocial”? Well, let’s face it. Social gamers are, frankly, a bit selfish. They’re logging in for short spurts throughout the day, perhaps on their lunch break, tending to their farm or zoo, and logging off. Social games are such tight and directed experiences that your play session is mapped out before you log in.
Friends are used for the following purposes: viral growth, engagement, and session length. Virally, you need friends to be a mechanic because you need your players to invite people. Popular apps don’t just reward you for inviting friends, they all but demand it (within Facebook’s Terms of Service, of course). Good social game developers are looking at all the ways that players are selfish and designing their game around that. Examples:
Players love receiving gifts, so a fundamental way to grow games virally is by gifting. Players don’t send gifts because they are sweethearts who want to share with people, they share gifts because they want to receive one back. Gifting, receiving gifts, placing and arranging gifts is a core social game mechanic currently – because it hits on viral efforts hard, and works for engagement as well.
Players invite neighbors to the game to be permanent additions to the bottom of their game client, so they can easily access their neighbor’s farm or zoo or island. This isn’t because they genuinely care about what their friend’s creations look like – it’s because they get leveling and coin bonuses if they visit their neighbors. Try increasing the difficulty of earning this visiting reward, once, you’ll see. Players aren’t visiting for fun, they visit to get something. This is where session length comes in. Visiting neighbors takes a lot of time, but hey, as long as I *get* something…
To sum this section up, you invite your friends to the app because it benefits you. You gift them because it benefits you. You visit their creations because it benefits you. You post to your Facebook wall because it benefits you. These are social mechanics. Seems a bit backward, doesn’t it?
In social games, social is a motivator
Tying in with the previous point about social games being a mechanic, motivation is another strong factor. In a game like Bubble Island, or Bejeweled Blitz – your friends serve one purpose: bragging rights on a leaderboard. Seeing their names there and seeing that they’re beating you – this is a core game mechanic. I’d argue that there is no point in putting a puzzle game on Facebook without this feature. Social proof and comparison is everything in these games. Well, almost…feedback is crucial too.
It doesn’t have to be a puzzle game, either. Having a neighbor bar below Farmville showing me that my friends are level 35 and I’m only 15 makes me want to level up and pass him. It shows me what is possible. It gives me a concrete goal. My life will not be complete unless I pass him. Well, I won’t go that far…
~*~
I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see major changes in this. Even Facebook’s new upcoming changes may affect all this in a big way. That doesn’t change that right now, millions upon millions of players are proving out these above points. Don’t take social too literally – these players aren’t jumping up and down at the chance to interact with their friends in new ways. They’re wanting to have fun playing games, just like every other game. Social is how these games grow and stick around. It’s why people who don’t identify as gamers are playing more games than ever before. Deep down inside, we’re all selfish when it comes to how we spend our time online. Facebook game developers are just getting really good at taking advantage of that.
Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life. She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com. She can be reached on Twitter or by email.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I think you’re missing part of “social is a mechanic”. Take Mafia Wars and, most importantly, Castle Age. You battle with your friends to grow your mafia/army so that you can respectively finish missions/kill big monsters. Castle Age tends to push the level of collaboration a bit further by indicating who’s helping most in the fighting group.
(it’s actually gone to the point where mammoth FB groups exist to get mafia/army members)
Spore also had social mechanics where your race was playing against those of your friends. It’s more like Bejewelled (I also like the recent Battle Punk which is a 3D version of the old labrute.com) where you play AGAINST, not WITH, your friends.
Hey Stephane,
I file that into #2. You’re not adding friend sto your mafia because you want them there. You add them because the game tells you to and rewards you for it. You basically have to do that if you want to progress at a decent speed.
The only issue I have with Facebook games is that I cannot add someone as a friend in [insert game here] without making them a friend on Facebook. It may seem petty, but I may want you as a neighbor to help me get a bigger farm I don’t want you as a friend who has access to see my other friends, my updates, details about my life, etc… Yes, Facebook does offer some containers in their lists to be able to restrict access, but as Facebook Connect and other API-like interfaces become more prevalent, having your friends list follow you everywhere isn’t necessarily a good thing. For example, my Palm Pre puts all my Facebook friends in my contacts (it doesn’t sync them, just shows them), so the 500+ friends I added to play Hero World showed up on my phone (lots of them with phone numbers!) where I don’t need them.
What about the potential for social backlash? You see a leaderboard to be climbed, but an employer or coworker might see a measure of which people waste the most time.
(I understand that many of these apps are only viewable by invitation, which would mean I could simply exclude the people I don’t want to share that with. But as you note, these apps’ viral nature places significant incentives on inviting as many people as possible.)
As social networks expand past our friends and into family and work – and as Facebook tries to push more user data into the open – do you think this will change the dynamics of such reward/competition systems?
I think that’s where people have to be smarter about:
1) Who they add to be their Facebook friends. Probably shouldn’t add your boss and coworkers.
2) Who you choose to display app information to. Facebook has pretty granular group permissions that allow you to hide anything from anyone you want.
Facebook & Twitter are socially dangerous. Much of the world are not educated enough to understand the implications of using them. Even our politicians fall foul of Twitter as a tool.
As Jason says, the fact you have to add so called ‘friends’ to your list to grow your farm or Mafia is a feature that did gripe when I cared about Farm/Mafia.
What concerns me the most is the fact people divulge so much information about themselves.
As an example the Chile earthquake at the weekend threw up a small tidbit about a woman in the USA who was looking for her sister. She used twitter and twitter tags to find someone in the city who may have known her.
When a guy got in touch called Juan Pablo, she gave her sisters name and address & phone number to him via twitter. This guy could have been anyone.
The story was a good story, but it highlighted that her sisters details meant nothing to her, she passed them on via a public network without a care. Sure the circumstances where grave, but the fact that she just dished those details to a stranger in another country made me sit up and think about the whole social aspect.
As an example http://pleaserobme.com/
So when is it too social?
This is a great post. I’ve been thinking a lot about social gaming lately, and I like how you say the social is the mechanic.
Have you played Fallen London? It’s a browser game, run through (or sorta run through) Twitter. http://echobazaar.failbettergames.com/
You’re right in that social is a mechanic. It’s a wrench to turn the screws on people. I think the misconception comes from that fact that Zynga played it pretty close to the line in terms of spammy attitudes and behaviors.
I often go to my family, friends to see what drives them. My girlfriend came out bluntly and said: I gave them my email address for a toga in sorority life. If that’s not turning a bolt on someone, I don’t know what is. It backs up your point. I think people are mixing “social” with “socialization” in terms of these games, and the two couldn’t be farther apart.