Social Networks As Gaming Platforms 52
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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."
Too simple. (Score:4, Interesting)
Pirates and Ninjas is only very a game for very small values of fun. Call me when there's something more substatial
That's backwards (Score:5, Interesting)
It is and has been, "Gaming Platforms as Social Networks."
Re:Too simple. (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Let them screw up if they want to (Score:4, Interesting)
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:Bullshit from the "industry pundits" (Score:3, Interesting)
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" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bullshit from the "industry pundits" (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
can someone at slashdot (Score:3, Interesting)