Social Networks As Gaming Platforms

Gamasutra is running a few articles about this year's Social Gaming Summit, a conference dedicated to how the increasingly popular social media market is influencing the design of games and how they are played. It's a unique market, in which relatively unknown games can attract millions of players over mere weeks, and where the players themselves often become the distributors. When discussing platform support and compatibility, Sebastian de Halleux, COO of developer Playfish, said, "For us, the next-generation platform is Facebook." However, Facebook's own Gareth Davis thinks the future of gaming will rely heavily on compatibility across many different devices, from conventional consoles to devices like the iPhone. Christian Nutt, the Gamasutra writer who attended the Summit, is optimistic about the possibilities this will open up, but is worried that creativity and fun will get bogged down by traffic analysis, marketing, and micro-transactions. He mentions one company who "spent $2 million developing a game called Guild of Heroes, but never launched it because 'it didn't drive the right metrics.' This makes business sense; these kinds of decisions are made everywhere all of the time. The disquieting thing is that the topics of fun or creativity — or any of the virtues most in the game industry like to inject into their commercial products — were rarely if ever addressed."

Comments

Too simple.

[dintech]

Pirates and Ninjas is only very a game for very small values of fun. Call me when there's something more substatial

Re:Too simple.

[Phase Shifter]

Mod parent up as insightful, please.
From what I've seen, most gaming on social websites is not good gaming at all.
Rather, only three ways to advance toward "winning" exist. The first, "using strategy", becomes utterly useless after at most a day or two unless you employ the others. The second, "selling my online identity or shelling out cash to sponsors for game points", goes further, but has a great cost. Still, your progress runs into a brick wall unless you use the third method "spamming alliance invitations to people I've never met and have no interest in outside the game." Ultimately you have no contact with these people other than receiving invitation spam for multiple games, and the spam eventually overwhelms any attempt at communication with nongamer contacts (family, friends, people from work) that were the only incentive for joining the social network in the first place.

TL:DR?
"Games" on social networks have no value as games, and eliminate any possible value of the social networks themselves. Goatse is clearly the winner.

Re:Too simple.

[morghanphoenix]

The "World's End" Facebook App. Can't say it's one of my favorites, but it allows you to send invitations to other players without "friending" them, which is absolutely necessary if you want to keep all but the most shameless of friend-whores occupied for an extended period of time.

Re:Too simple.

[tttonyyy]

You can fix this by starting a new Facebook account just for gaming, thus separating the social stuff from the spammy gaming stuff.

Like Mafia Wars, which requires a large Mafia to make any sensible progress. Separate account => no creepy unknowns looking at your photos. (Well, as much as you can avoid creepy unknowns looking at your photos on a social networking site).

Bullshit from the "industry pundits"

[pandrijeczko]

Why do these overpaid idiots have this strange idea that "social gaming", even in computer terms, is anything new?

In the late 1980s, my friends and I were playing games like "Stunt Car Racer" on Commodore Amigas connected via their serial ports and organising complex but drunken "Speedball 2" leagues after a few beers at the weekend.

Then just go forward a few years and many of us were "secretly" playing networked "Doom" in our offices.

It really annoys me that these people are so shallow in their thinking that they don't see social computer gaming as really nothing more than an extension of simple "board" games with stones and pebbles that have been played for thousands of years.

Either that, or they are just preparing to make themselves very rich by trying to convince the rest of us that it's perfectly normal to be enjoying a few games with friends while being constantly bombarded with marketing and advertising crap.

Please go do some research, folks, instead of reading the utter nonsense in the main article. Most computer games are crap but gaming with others is a great thing, provided everyone is happy to do it just to have a good time, rather than being focused on winning and cheating which just ruins the fun of everyone involved. And there are thousands upon thousands of great games out there, many of which can be had for free, that are great fun to play with a few good friends and won't constantly bombard you with adverts for iPhones or other useless gadgets.

Re:Bullshit from the "industry pundits"

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that they're not talking about you and your buddies with your networked Amigas. By definition, you are computer geeks, which already means you have a very high chance of being a fairly hardcore gamer. They're not targeting you at all. They're going after the Soccer Moms, Stay at Home Housewives, all the non-technical people out there. And guess what. They outnumber the computer geeks by a large margin, and are an enormous untapped market. Yes, it's sad that these people aren't focusing on how fun the game is. Then again, I can almost guarantee that gamers on Slashdot would tell them that some of these runaway hits are no fun at all, and that there's no market for them. Of course, the reality of the situation only proves the Slashdotters wrong (yet again).

Re:Bullshit from the "industry pundits"

[Anonymous Coward]

Social gaming != LAN party, in this context.

Seriously, I didn't RTFA, I barely read TFS, but just from the headline, they're talking about Social Networks, not Being Social. I find that the two often come close to being mutually exclusive, but either way, I fear for you if that simple distinction passed you by.

Imagine Speedball run through $SOCIALNETWORK. A pool of millions of players worldwide, potentially at least, with constant tournaments and friendly matches, league tables, stat charts and records and user comments/ratings for every player and the option to compare your records with 'friends' (Adding a friend on facebook != Having a friend, you might have missed that one too) and other players, for matchmaking purposes and (almost) indisputable bragging rights ("Laaaaaag!").

This is just the stuff that pops into my mind, there's probably more you could do just with Speedball, but even if there wasn't, the issue is that the social network is the platform for delivering the videogame content. In other words, wherever you are, all you need to continue your virtual sports career is Internet access (Barring technical issues/restraints).

I know you enjoyed the earlier days of networked gaming, I did too, but you have missed GS' point imho.

Re:Bullshit from the "industry pundits"

[tehSpork]

The general market is easily entertained and companies will sell to them as much as possible. Why spend big $$$ to please the /. geek living in his mother's basement when you can pay a college dropout next to nothing to develop a series of pointless little web games that will appeal to a much larger (and less discerning) audience.

This is the same logic used in the film industry, though in all fairness the film industry is at least starting to realize that there are more geeks than previously thought and trying to compensate for it (see also: LOTR, Batman, Watchmen).

Re:Bullshit from the "industry pundits"

[pandrijeczko]

I wouldn't call myself a "hardcore" gamer, only that I've been doing it as one of my hobbies for a long time.

Yes, I would consider myself a computer geek but I think you are missing the point. I get sick and tired of "garnish", namely the idea that you make a minor change to something that already exists but sell it as something completely new.

The whole point of a game is it has you wanting to play it again and again, so it really doesn't matter whether or not it's the latest FPS shooter or Solitaire in Windows. But what I do have a problem with is being subliminally bombarded with marketing and advertising (as is the case in just about every movie released today) on some kind of pretence that it's all part of the "social gaming experience" or whatever bullshit name they invent for it this week.

You, your parents, your grandparents, etc. (and mine too) all got told early in life that sometimes you can have the best fun by going out and finding it yourself, rather than just have someone dump some fun in your lap.

So don't just sit there waiting for this new revolution because it exists today - go trawl bargain bins in games shops, go find old games at car boot sales, even download an emulator a few illegal roms on the Internet if you have a mind to.

Re:Bullshit from the "industry pundits"

[stonewallred]

Eh, I do have a facebook account and a myspace account. When I add someone to my friends list, they are actually a person who I interact with two or three times a week away from the computer, or in a couple of cases, people I interact with during two weekends a year when we all gather at the beach or the mountains. Not everyone uses the social sites as a place to see how many names they can get on their "friends" list. I find that facebook is a great place to keep updated, engage in conversation and coordinate events with my friends and exchange ideas. It is not a place I play games at though. Facebook has become that meeting area between phone calls, texts and emails, where communication is deeper than texts, more thought out than phone calls, and actually quicker than emails most times. YMMV

Re:Bullshit from the "industry pundits"

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a confused person. Point by point:

Yes, the term 'social gaming' is 'garnish' but why you're annoyed about that I don't know. Basically every word ever fits your description there. Further, you cannot deny that social network platforms _are_ changing the way games are perceived and how they operate, from both ends, development and final user.

Yes, advertising sucks, and it's something we have to live with/ignore/install adblockers for. There's not really anywhere to go from there, enjoy your dead end.

Yes, making your own fun is very rewarding. Why do you think that makes self-created entertainment the only valid form of entertainment?

Yes, you can buy games at boot sales, no, they won't run on MySpace. I'm no fan of those sorts of sites, but a lot of people are, and a lot more would be enticed to join them with more functionality such as games running through them. You can't tell someone they should prefer finding a few floppy disks in a boot sale over playing poker on MySpace, people like different things. And retro games *are* different to games built on social networks. Evolution rather than revolution, sure, but the difference is obvious to those of us with our heads not jammed somewhere warm dark and squishy.

Re:Bullshit from the "industry pundits"

[Deanalator]

I think you fail at grasping the concept. Social networking games are more than just playing games with friends. This is not even about playing scrabble with some friends over facebook. These new social network games take advantage of a currently deployed social network of friends, and use them to spread. For example, the vampire game. When you bite friends of yours that aren't playing the game, you get a bonus, and they get an invite to join the game. If they do join, you get another bonus, and you have someone to help you complete quests or whatever. This is also different from classical online games, because when you join, you start out with a list of friends that also play the game, as opposed to the chat room environment where there is more of a chance of meeting new people.

In the end, it really is more of a marketing strategy than anything else, but it's a marketing strategy that propels itself, and the users enjoy participating in. Like a pyramid scheme with cooler graphics.

Re:Bullshit from the "industry pundits"

[mikael]

These "social network" games are different from traditional PC or console games, in that you are allocated a fixed number of action points and health points each day, which restrict you to one or two moves. It might be fighting another character or doing a mission. In each case there is an element of chance which rewards you with money and/or experience points. Your AP and HP recharge each day. As you gain experience you get more AP and HP. Some games require you to have a "horde", or allow you to join an "alliance". Others disapprove of this and will punish players for doing so. The linear nature of such games is broken by having loops and forks and portals in the mission paths, which allow different paths to be selected.

Re:Bullshit from the "industry pundits"

[IBBoard]

Those vampire/zombie/etc things are games? I thought they were pain-in-the-arse sig-links with no purpose other than to direct lots of people to an advert-infested site and to make some forum users disguise their links as something interesting.

If those are the "social network games" the article is talking about then screw the economics and the decision making, just kill the things now!

Re:Bullshit from the "industry pundits"

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that it took years for games to spread socially in the past, while these days a Facebook game can get over 1M DAU in less than a week.

Realistically, it's not that different from MLM, but most people enjoy it, and there's no money involved in the initial adoption. Gaming is a social activity, and it turns out that the marketing of games can also be a social activity.

That's backwards

[jamesl]

It is and has been, "Gaming Platforms as Social Networks."

Re:That's backwards

[Antique Geekmeister]

Takek that, you pastamancer! Back at you, you stealer of my accordion!

Check out http://www.kingdomofloathing.com/ it's free to play, fiscal contributions get you some fun ingame widgets, it's popular among smart children with a sense of humor, it's plain web based without fancy Java or flash reuirements, and it keeps my friends able to play on their modest systems so they don't beg me for my hardcore system while I'm playing the latest shooters.

It's what web-based gaming _should_ be.

Re:That's backwards

[orngjce223]

In my world, all sites that make people spend time on them have two main components: the draw component, and the retention component.

Draw = main attraction. Like the fact that it's a gaming platform. Or in the case of (say) Wikipedia, the information.

Retention = what keeps the people there. On single consoles, perhaps it's achievements or replayability. On social game platforms, almost always it's the community. "Gaming platforms as social networks" indeed.

Less griefers

[Culture20]

The one benefit I can see with social networks as a game platform: griefers will be less common since they thrive in anonymity. Although, a friend's wife constantly griefs him when we play Settlers of Catan (her goal is to make him not win)...

5AM!

[Anonymous Coward]

A game story posted at 5AM... w00t!...and good morning.

Re:5AM!

[MichaelSmith]

Its 2009-06-26 19:49 here.

Money for nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, what makes these networks attracting to game developers are:
- massive user bases
- few ressources required, social network users are not necessarily looking for fancy looking games - they just want to spend time online with their friends
- a great potential for attracting new players using these networks invitation system
- easy monetisation through ads, but more importantly through Special Offers platforms (Offerpal, etc..)

Latest Facebook game just launched yesterday and applied these simple steps:
Gangs Unleashed

Let them screw up if they want to

[tygerstripes]

The film industry, pretty much from the start, was plagued by concerns over markets and metrics - targeting their films to capture the largest "typical" audience rather than just trying to make good films. Usually, when someone set out with the noble intention of quite simply making a great film, they would surprise and shake up the industry, and the marketing gurus were left with their cocks in their hands, going "Wow, there's a whole market dollar we didn't think of there," and suddenly the studios are churning out flicks to appeal to that audience instead.

Bill Hicks certainly had a few things to say about the crooked industry of marketing.

So now we have the same problem with the games industry, and it's been documented in all sorts of ways. Who's the saviour? Independent developers, of course. Make something new, fun, addictive - even on a low budget - and suddenly the big boys are less afraid to stick their necks out.

Independent developers are fulfilling the same role as independent film-makers have been doing for years, and they're an inevitable product of the current money-grabbing system. "The topics of fun or creativity were rarely if ever addressed." Well, strike the light...

Re:Let them screw up if they want to

[pandrijeczko]

Bill Hicks certainly had a few things to say about the crooked industry of marketing.

It's a shame that the passing of a man of such talent was not mourned by as many people as are mourning that strange and plasticized record company money-making machine that died last night.

As for games, I'd love to see the indie developers save the gaming industry because ultimately that's where it all started from.

Unfortunately, the sheeple will just go and buy what the adverts tell them to buy because they are all too mesmerized by pretty graphics and screaming brats demanding the latest games consoles and titles. Despite a global recession, many people still have far too much disposable income and therefore don't feel the need to worry too much about how they spend their money - it becomes far more important that they stay in with the in-crowd and not have little Johnny throwing a tantrum at home because everybody in his class has "Totally Derivative Game Sequel Part 5" except him.

Maybe if the recession bites deeper and people really have to start making every penny count, then we'll see a return to talented film-makers, musicians and games creators getting the rewards that they deserve because the general populace has had to become more discerning. But the fact is that at the moment, the big media companies have all of the control and power, and will just stamp on anything that stops them enjoying their vast profits for churning out crap.

Re:Let them screw up if they want to

[tehSpork]

I find it disappointing that the game industry has moved from the model where they kept having to innovate to stay one step ahead of the competition and into a realm where they simply churn out the same game over and over without really adding much or even bothering to differentiate their game from the competition. Unfortunately the game industry has figured out that a large portion of the videogame market is easily entertained, just as is the case with film audiences (Transformers 2 anybody?). If they keep stamping Madden 20xx on the cover of a game odds are they'll continue making money, regardless of the actual quality or content.

Maybe I'm just getting old but I've gone from being an avid gamer to barely touching games at all, mainly from lack of interest. There just aren't many good new games coming out.

Re:Let them screw up if they want to

[stonewallred]

World of Goo. Is one of the better games I have seen in a long time and only $20.00 bucks.

Re:Let them screw up if they want to

[rpillala]

As the recession bites deeper, industry will be less willing to take the risk of making an original film or game. I'm sorry I meant to say "of developing an untested property." I don't think we'll see an increase in quality. But we won't figure out the future sitting here on slashdot.

As for Bill Hicks, I see his name a lot but not many actual quotes or material. Apparently for people who know the work, the mention of his name is sufficient.

Re:Let them screw up if they want to

[thousandinone]

I googled that and all I got was japanese porn sites

Re:Let them screw up if they want to

[tygerstripes]

... and is an independent title! :-)

Re:Let them screw up if they want to

[tygerstripes]

If you haven't heard/seen his work, I strongly recommend you spend a little time acquainting yourself with it. I'm hoping the fact that people do keep mentioning it is reason enough.

He's a difficult guy to quote in most instances, because he was radical to the core and a lot of people tried to imitate him by doing "shock comedy", but his message was more heartfelt and warm than all the vitriol and bile he apparently spilled on stage in getting that message across. It's difficult to portray faithfully. However, for the sake of the thread I don't mind throwing this one in:

By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. Thank you, thank you. Just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day they'll take root. I don't know. You try. You do what you can. Kill yourselves. Seriously though, if you are, do. No really, there's no rationalisation for what you do, and you are Satan's little helpers, OK? Kill yourselves, seriously. You're the ruiner of all things good. Seriously, no, this is not a joke. "There's gonna be a joke coming..." There's no fucking joke coming, you are Satan's spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage, you are fucked and you are fucking us, kill yourselves, it's the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself now. Now, back to the show. "You know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar, that's a big dollar, a lot of people are feeling that indignation, we've done research, huge market. He's doing a good thing." Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scumbags, quit putting a godamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!

I'm currently reading his collected transcripts, and for all that it's sick and funny, it's also a work of optimistic humanist philosophy of the highest order.

I hope I've done a little to convince you to at least google him.

Why can't I just use a social network...

[sherl0k]

for social networking? Is that too much to ask for?

Re:Why can't I just use a social network...

[biocute]

Most if not all social networking services are free, and they have to somehow making a living.

So users are like batteries and they will think of million ways to squeeze the last juice out of us.

Same thing is happening to YouTube and Twitter. Once they have enough users, they will start thinking how to make money off those users.

Re:Why can't I just use a social network...

[FuckTheModerators]

Luddite.

You probably want your phone to just make and receive calls, and your personal music player to just play music.

promises, promises

[wild_quinine]

...spent $2 million developing a game called Guild of Heroes, but never launched it because 'it didn't drive the right metrics.'

Let's look at the likely story there, shall we? Hell, I'm just guessing, but: It completely drove the right metrics. With that title it was almost certainly designed by committee to cash in on the crossover MMO market. When it became obvious what an abortion it was in practice, they killed it.

Then they had to explain that, so they said 'It didn't drive the right metrics'. What they meant was "It was designed with metrics in mind, of course it drove the right ones. It was right on target for demographic. The problem was that it was shit. Just... wow. Fucking awful shit, man".

can someone at slashdot

[nimbius]

check the cron? i think something is set up to generate one of these stories periodically (like monthly it seems) for "testing reader sanity and intelligence" purposes.

self promotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Gamasutra's news director is listed as "Leigh Alexander"
"Alex Le" happens to be listed as a founder of serious business, a company aiming to ... you guessed it, use social networks as gaming platforms.

I won at Facebook.

[Penguin]

The end of level monster is pretty hard.

Re:I won at Facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why ?
It's just a whale.

Re:I won at Facebook.

[lennier]

In Advanced Facebook the final level boss is *yourself*.

Oh smeg is right, matey.

Farm Town

[Is0m0rph]

A pretty addictive little social game that my wife got me playing this week. On a business trip and I have nothing better to do most of the time then farm haha. But the progamming of it is bad, really bad. It's like the developers have no common sense for a lot of the ways they do things in it. Games like that that let you create and socialize with friends and make new ones are the wave of the future for Facebook and Myspace.

Re:Farm Town

[Anonymous Coward]

I love farm town. It is very addictive, but the underlying code leaves something to be desired. Level 27 and growing!

Re:Farm Town

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Farmville.

Re:Farm Town

[Is0m0rph]

I'm playing Farmville too. There's very little social interaction on that one compared to Farm Town though. You can have neighbors but you can't see them or talk to them. There's no marketplace so you do all the harvesting yourself. Granted it's only been running for 5 days now. I'm just stockpiling cash right now for when they put new features in.

Is anyone surprised???

[S77IM]

Remember MUDs? Early MMOs? (Pre-EQ, non-UO -- yes, there were a few.) A lot of those games sucked, as games. Yet they drew crowds, and hardcore players ("addicts") because of the social element. The mantra for MMOs has always been, "people come for the game, and stay for the community."

So it makes a ton of sense that sites that already specialize in building a community would start incorporating games. The game is just a medium for hanging out with your friends, which is how the social networking peeps make money. It's the on-line equivalent of getting together with some people on Tuesday night and playing a board game or card game. Monopoly would suck as a single-player game -- the draw is that it's a fun activity to pass the time with your friends.

I'm always baffled by MMOs with poor community support (Tabula Rasa opened with no forums and no LFG screen and no real reason to join a guild? Really?), and even the idea of game lock-in is strange to me ("We still play EverQuest because all our friends are there."). So the idea of starting with the on-line community and from there hopping from game to game seems like huge progress to me. As the integration requirements become better understood, I think we'll see better brides between social-networking sites and "real" games (not the cheap browser-based stuff that is springing up like weeds). This will free up the social-networking experts to develop the community side of things, and the video-game experts to build excellent games. If this means that the days of the $15-per-month subscription game are over, good.

  -- 77IM

Goodbye

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that's it. I can't take any more of this bullshit. I'm done with the Internet and with computers. It's been fun guys, thanks for the ride.

Avatars United

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.avatarsunited.com ... a social network built just for gamers should be right on spot then?