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

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"

[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).

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)...

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...

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

[sherl0k]

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