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All of this thread about whether or not social games are fun is such an oversimplification as to be worthless. First off, there's the semantics. What is a soci

All of this thread about whether or not social games are fun is such an oversimplification as to be worthless. First off, there's the semantics. What is a social game? Is it something running in Facebook? If so, you're not going to see it evolve too much too soon. That's because of the way the platform incentives are structured, the mindset of the average person who is on Facebook at the moment (more often than not at work, multitasking, able to devote only infrequent, short bursts of attention) and the inherent technical limitations of the Flash platform. If you ever saw the traffic graphs of a successful game, you'd understand immediately why casual is winning. It has a high bounce rate and peaks on weekday mornings. If you define "social gaming" more broadly, which I think you should, then World of Warcraft, League of Legends, and many other very innovative games are social games. In that case you're already seeing social games evolve. My little cousins play Call of Duty over Xbox live with each other from their homes 50 miles apart every day. That's social gaming if you ask me, and they at least think it's fun. There's certainly no accounting for taste. It's just plain snobbish to say the games you like are "universally recognized as fun" and the games you don't like aren't. I'd rather jam a ballpoint pen into my eye than play an asynchronous game of Scrabble. You'd sooner catch me playing Farmville.

danilocampos 16y ago
What a nice barrel of straw men you have there. I love the bonfire you've constructed for them! For the purposes of a thread about Zynga, it's reasonable to assume a social game in this context is, indeed, a Facebook-flavored game. Realtime multiplayer has enjoyed a lot of evolution since you had to bind curses and status reports to your F-keys in Quake. Definitely share your enthusiasm for where it is going right now. Asynch casual multiplayer is in a dreadful rut. The big beef I have with it is that so little of it is skill based that you can't enjoy improvement over time, except with more and more swipes of the credit card (edit: or pointless grinding). I don't think the games I like are universally recognized as fun. What I said, if you'll read my post, is that asynch casual games are relying more on ill-concealed compulsion loops than on anything an observer would look at and think "boy, that looks fun to play." Until asynch casual multiplayer, as your semantic nitpicking requires I call it, leverages gameplay that lets players feel themselves grow more skilled, we're just not talking about anything of lasting value. Personal growth is a huge component of enjoyable gameplay and you can't just add a row to a spreadsheet game to simulate that.
- jshen 16y ago
  Bejeweled It's social, casual, skill based, and fun. To answer a likely question, it's social be use I want to beat my friends scores each week
  - mattmaroon 16y ago
    So is Farmville. One of the biggest motivators in those sorts of games is the comparison bar at the bottom that shows your level and that of your friends. Notice that is in every Flash map-based game on Facebook.
    - jshen 16y ago
      but I don't consider farmville gameplay fun which I think the previous commenters were also implying.
- danilocampos 16y ago
  Nice one, jshen. Definitely buy that example. Much more fun than Farmville, too. It could use more depth but match three as a game style has some compelling play.
- mattmaroon 16y ago
  Again, you're applying your definition of fun. Your definition is something that allows you to grow in skill. I certainly enjoy that. Scott Adams wrote a very good article about the illusion of skill this week. Skill is mostly the result of a compulsion loop. I play Scrabble, I improve, so I play more Scrabble. It's not much different than harvest crop, get money, build another crop. If I play Scrabble more than you, I will probably beat you when you and I play Scrabble. If I play Farmville more than you, I will have a bigger and better farm. Both of those are generalities (it is of course quite possible to play both games sub-optimally, though easier with the former). Also that's not the only thing anyone considers fun. A lot of people look at a virtual farm full of crops and chickens and barns and think "boy that looks fun to play". Millions. There's more to it than compulsion loops, they don't keep players around for very long.

danilocampos 16y ago

What a nice barrel of straw men you have there. I love the bonfire you've constructed for them! For the purposes of a thread about Zynga, it's reasonable to assume a social game in this context is, indeed, a Facebook-flavored game. Realtime multiplayer has enjoyed a lot of evolution since you had to bind curses and status reports to your F-keys in Quake. Definitely share your enthusiasm for where it is going right now. Asynch casual multiplayer is in a dreadful rut. The big beef I have with it is that so little of it is skill based that you can't enjoy improvement over time, except with more and more swipes of the credit card (edit: or pointless grinding). I don't think the games I like are universally recognized as fun. What I said, if you'll read my post, is that asynch casual games are relying more on ill-concealed compulsion loops than on anything an observer would look at and think "boy, that looks fun to play." Until asynch casual multiplayer, as your semantic nitpicking requires I call it, leverages gameplay that lets players feel themselves grow more skilled, we're just not talking about anything of lasting value. Personal growth is a huge component of enjoyable gameplay and you can't just add a row to a spreadsheet game to simulate that.

jshen 16y ago
Bejeweled It's social, casual, skill based, and fun. To answer a likely question, it's social be use I want to beat my friends scores each week
- mattmaroon 16y ago
  So is Farmville. One of the biggest motivators in those sorts of games is the comparison bar at the bottom that shows your level and that of your friends. Notice that is in every Flash map-based game on Facebook.
  - jshen 16y ago
    but I don't consider farmville gameplay fun which I think the previous commenters were also implying.
danilocampos 16y ago
Nice one, jshen. Definitely buy that example. Much more fun than Farmville, too. It could use more depth but match three as a game style has some compelling play.
mattmaroon 16y ago
Again, you're applying your definition of fun. Your definition is something that allows you to grow in skill. I certainly enjoy that. Scott Adams wrote a very good article about the illusion of skill this week. Skill is mostly the result of a compulsion loop. I play Scrabble, I improve, so I play more Scrabble. It's not much different than harvest crop, get money, build another crop. If I play Scrabble more than you, I will probably beat you when you and I play Scrabble. If I play Farmville more than you, I will have a bigger and better farm. Both of those are generalities (it is of course quite possible to play both games sub-optimally, though easier with the former). Also that's not the only thing anyone considers fun. A lot of people look at a virtual farm full of crops and chickens and barns and think "boy that looks fun to play". Millions. There's more to it than compulsion loops, they don't keep players around for very long.