Unfortunately the current crop of "social" games preferred social/psychological gimmicks, over having fun. But in the end, the need for fun always wins. Spammi

Unfortunately the current crop of "social" games preferred social/psychological gimmicks, over having fun. But in the end, the need for fun always wins. Spamming your friends, buying FB gold, visiting your friend's stupid farm, these are not fun activities, these are just actives required to advance in a stupid game that involves incrementing counters. When I'm thinking of what social should be, I'm thinking of chess, or strategy games, or Monopoly, or whatever that involves playing against other users, instead of a computer. It doesn't even have to be synchronous multiplayer. Chess doesn't have to be synchronous. You can have turn-based strategies or RPGs (as in Heroes of Might and Magic, which used to be pretty fun). You can have games where the users themselves establish what the game is. But companies like Zynga went the other way around, focusing on the virality aspects, instead of those aspects being a side-effects or an add-on to a fun game. These games are broken by design.