Social Networks As Gaming Platforms 52
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the bbs-door-games-got-something-right dept.
from the bbs-door-games-got-something-right dept.
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."
Bullshit from the "industry pundits" (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Less griefers (Score:4, Insightful)
Let them screw up if they want to (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bullshit from the "industry pundits" (Score:3, Insightful)
promises, promises (Score:3, Insightful)
...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".
Re:Bullshit from the "industry pundits" (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Why can't I just use a social network... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Is anyone surprised??? (Score:2, Insightful)
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