Social Networks As Gaming Platforms 52
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
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.
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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).
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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).
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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.
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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!
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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 "
That's backwards (Score:5, Interesting)
It is and has been, "Gaming Platforms as Social Networks."
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Takek that, you pastamancer! Back at you, you stealer of my accordion!
Check out http://www.kingdomofloathing.com/ [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.
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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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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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...
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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.
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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. Howe
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Why can't I just use a social network... (Score:3, Insightful)
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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.
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Luddite.
You probably want your phone to just make and receive calls, and your personal music player to just play music.
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".
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I won at Facebook. (Score:5, Funny)
The end of level monster is pretty hard.
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In Advanced Facebook the final level boss is *yourself*.
Oh smeg is right, matey.
Farm Town (Score:2)
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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 peep