Inside Social Games

Are your friends cheap? No, I don’t mean “thrifty.” I mean if they were auctioned off by space aliens, how much would you pay for them? Friends for Sale is a social game that asks essentially that same question.

(And what would you do if you could make your friends your pets? This only further compounds the question of “Who is man’s best friend?” – but I digress.)

Friends For Sale’s friendly interface asks you to buy your friends to make them your pets. All of your friends (and some people you don’t know) are in the marketplace. Friends who have this game and have been bought and sold cost a great deal, and friends who are less popular or don’t use Facebook applications often will be pretty cheap. I invested heavily in the latter type of friends to test this application out.

You earn money when other people buy your pets, whenever someone buys you, and every time you visit (a very good idea). After you’ve bought your friends, you can give them nicknames, gifts, or sell them. There are always new gifts to buy your friends and it’s fun to make your friends, as pets, do your bidding.

The profit on a sale is split 50/50 between the pet and the owner. There are also plenty of partner offers to get you more cash.

Friends For Sale is an addictive social game for people with lots of friends, and it’s easy to become thoroughly “invested” in the application. In this way, the game is pretty deep.

But while it can be addictive, the developers need to build more features around the owner/pet relationship. You can buy gifts and poke people in Facebook – if the game only offers the same types of features, it could fall flat pretty quickly.

Gameplay: 5

Development: 7