Inside Social Games

(Lil) Green Patch is a social gardening game that seeks to better the planet. With over 500,00 daily active users, it’s also one of the most popular games on Facebook.

(Lil) Green Patch waves the banner that the more a player uses the game, the more the advertisers will donate to save the rain forest. In concrete terms, these means that for every ten friends you send a plant to (which also doubles as an invite for those who don’t have the application), they will help save one square foot of rain forest.

The gameplay revolves around gardening your personal patch of land and helping your friends’ maintain theirs. You’ll be asked to help one of your friends deal with a gardening problem like rabbits eating their flowers, and you can buy supplies at “Crazy Al’s Green Store” to help them out. Essentially, in order to individually succeed at the game, you must help other people. It’s a perfect analogy for environmentalism in general - we all must help each other to make a difference.

Very few games could realistically expect friends to help each other out in this way, but in (Lil) Green Patch it seems to work and is a smart adaptation to the social networking platform. You are rewarded for your kindness by gifts of game cash (after you click on butterflies) to help buy more supplies or decorations for your own garden like garden gnomes and flamingos. The artwork is uniformly cartoony, and though not particularly memorable, is pretty cute.

At times I wished I could personalize my garden more with perhaps more realistic looking flowers and maybe some barbed wire (I’m a manly gardener, dammit) but I was able to sell a flower I received from a friend that I found to be too adorable in the marketplace function. So while you’ll be tending to your friends gardens, sending flowers to your friends, and generally being a philanthropist, you can personalize your own stretch of digital earth.

The game has some room for improvement, however. The reward system, in this case epitomized in the form of little butterflies that you click on to get cash; this can be made more obvious so players know what the butterflies are there for. The point of the game, or how to play, could be better expressed in the FAQ section, though the adaptability of the game and the numerous links to earth-friendly websites are nicely integrated.

When you send flowers, it would also be nice to know which friends already have (Lil) Green Patch so you could know which ones would actually like to have more flowers. I understand it’s a subtle way to invite new people, but giving players the option would be helpful. I’ll also be painfully cruel and say that the name “(Lil) Green Patch” is awful and whoever came up with it doesn’t have a future in marketing. It’s a fun game and has a great future in getting people networked to better the planet, but the name doesn’t stick with you and could be branded better.

Gameplay: 5
Developers: 6
Good for World: 10

With over 670,000 Daily Active Users, Scrabulous has become a case study for Facebook application and social game developers around the world. Despite increasing constraints on communication channels inside Facebook, Scrabulous’ user base has slowly risen around the world for the past 9 months. And, surprisingly, without much methodical analytics - the game’s improvements have almost all been driven by user feedback.

The creators of Scrabulous, brothers Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla of Kolkata, India, have faced some legal questions from Hasbro and Mattel - but that’s the subject of another article. Jayant spoke with Inside Facebook about how they’ve been able to built Facebook’s most popular game.

>> Check out the full interview with Jayant here

As games on Facebook get more popular, new strategy blogs are emerging. Check ‘em out!

• Sell Your Friends - by Andrew Mager and Greg Stein, offers strategies on Serious Business’s game Friends For Sale
• The Warbook Times - by Gavin Cameron, tracks SGN’s Warbook, though is now updated sporadically

Super Snake is a good example of a Facebook adapatation that should not have happened. At first glance, the addictive qualities of the original cell phone game seem primed to translate to the Facebook environment. It’s challenging, it requires simple Flash animation, and you can challenge your friends and earn points. All of these qualities have helped other Facebook adaptations of popular games succeed.

Yet, Snake falls short on a number of counts. First, the original format of the game wasn’t a board game or a console video game - it was itself a poorly pixilated distraction on your cell phone. By staying true to the source material, the game comes across as lackluster compared to many other Facebook applications. The same premise of the original game is represented on Facebook- guide your snake to eat the blinking “thingies.” Even a fake low-pixel cell-phone screen serves as the interface.

But why not jazz up the game with better animations, different types of “thingies” for the snake to eat? Heck, why not add color? Though you can earn points by inviting your friends or beating your high score or winning challenges, this is very little incentive for most players. The points only unlock two features: a pause button and a “quickstart” feature on the game. These are not bells and whistles so much as integral features. It’s like selling a book that is only half finished and you have to pay another ten dollars to read the ending.

This is why the game gets surprisingly low gameplay scores in my mind. Though it’s still fun and addictive, I wonder why I’m not just playing this on my cell phone or playing another, better Flash game on Facebook. Sure, you can challenge your friends and see their scores. You can also do that with a hundred other Facebook games. That’s the main problem with “Snake” - it doesn’t differentiate itself from other games or even the original in a meaningful way. For games struggling to find their niche, this game is swallowed by its own tail.

Developer’s score: 5
Gameplay score: 4
Originality & inventiveness: 2

Leading Facebook game developer and game network SGN has announced its Series A financing this morning. The company has closed a $15 million Series A round from Greylock Partners, Founders Fund, Columbia Capital and Novak Biddle Venture Partners. This huge round comes as the company is fiercely battling also-well-funded Zynga and recently-funded Serious Business for early leadership in the “social gaming” market.

“This funding is indicative of how SGN is poised to dramatically impact the future of gaming platforms on the social web. Our focus and drive is to develop a dynamic and flourishing ecosystem for gaming on the web and continue to be the obvious choice for game developers who want to create social games that engage millions of users on the social networks and beyond,” said Shervin Pishevar, CEO of SGN.

With over 50 million installs and 800,000 active users, SGN has established itself as a leading social game developer, and is actively expanding its social game network to help developers share traffic and grow.

The funding marks Founders Fund’s second bet in the social gaming space. FF has also reportedly invested in Facebook game developer Alamofire, makers of the popular game PackRat.

Justin Fishner-Wolfson reportedly led the deal for Founders Fund. “SGN has proven itself as a leading innovator in the social gaming space. Their strong leadership team and unmatched portfolio of games will allow them to continue to build upon the platform they have in place. SGN is uniquely positioned to work with developers who want to create a richer gaming experience for social networks and the social web,” he said in the announcement.

We’ll continue to track every investment in the space - the market is certainly heating up.

(Disclosure: SGN is an advertiser on this blog.)

Super Mario! is a Flash game adaptation of the famous Nintendo icon. It’s not a simple translation of any one Mario game, but rather it takes elements of several and creates new levels and challenges. Think of this as an unofficial Super Mario Bros 4 or Super Mario World 1.5.

But any way you slice it, the game incorporates many of the iconic Mario villains, powerups, and music to create a pretty deep game. In addition to a fixed world where players can try to advance through several levels, there is also a level editor for players interested in creating new levels or uploading their fellow Mario fans’ creations.

Developers can learn a great deal about customization from this game. The level editor makes this game much deeper and more appealing to experienced gamers than many competing Mario adaptations. Having said that, the level editor tab doesn’t do a great job explaining how to load the levels or how to create your own. The vibrant forums that are part of the application are an important feature and really allow players to take control of their gaming experience. But again, they could be better integrated into the system to make the level editor more approachable to casual gamers.

While the game will likely perpetuate on the power of the name “Mario,” the “Collection” tab that is locked is a good incentive to invite friends. The “Collection” tab offers even more levels of gameplay and further expands the Super Mario! universe. So the game does demand you help perpetuate it to get the deepest experience, but invitations do not disrupt gameplay.

Aside from the confusing level editor and the long load times, the big complaint that users will have with this game is that there is no save feature. Mario is traditionally a long game that requires players  to come back across multiple sesssions - rarely do casual gamers play for several hours at a time. A save feature is essential to hook casual gamers and experienced gamers alike. It’s about as important to the Mario world as fireballs, jumping, and mushrooms.

Gameplay: 7/10
Developer’s score: 5/10
True to source material: 7/10

Since the Facebook Platform’s launch one year ago, Blake Commagere has come to be loved and hated by millions of Facebook users. As the creator of Zombies, one of the earliest social games on Facebook, as well as the entire suite of “Monsters” apps (including Vampires, WereWolves, and Slayers), Commagere has pioneered merging concepts of social network virality and traditional game design. I sat down with him to learn more about his process of building the Monsters franchise and future plans for building the business.

Blake, can you tell us about how you’ve gone about designing your games over the last year?

It’s been a learning process. Some things I intuited, some thing I read, and I’ve trusted user feedback on a lot of things.

My guiding principles for building new features into the games has been simple: 1) It has to have a social aspect. 2) It has to be easy and obvious. 3) It has to be fun and/or funny. I’ve noticed I’m a lot more forgiving of games that may lack awesome graphics if they’re fun or funny. For me, that’s the end goal of entertainment. The whole genre of campy horror movies really caters to that.  It’s a little harder to do that in checkers perhaps.

One feature I wish I’d put more thought into in the beginning is the points breakdown. It’s kind of embarrassing to me (especially when I see others copy it), because it’s very subpar - it was a 10 second decision that can’t easily be changed now.  I’m very confident that if I brought in experts, it could be much more optimized and more fun at the same time. However, as it is, it’s apparently good enough.  It’s kind of cool that there’s a margin for error, and you don’t have to be perfect yet.

In the beginning, my only real feature was creating an army. The type of feature users wanted next - a way to fight/compete with friends – was clear, but exactly how it should work wasn’t. It’s hard to do synchronous experiences if you want it to be just between your friends, so it had to be asynchronous.

The next big thing to decide when designing fighting was the points breakdown.  When considering whether to make it turned based, requiring requests and accepts seemed to boring - I wanted immediate gratification. But if you give immediate gratification, you can’t take points away from the other person.  I’m not totally sure if the decision to give points for getting attacked and winning was the right one, because it’s created an incentive to spam, and that’s been an ongoing challenge (though I have done some things to mitigate it).

I’ve also gotten user complaints about the chances of winning. But ultimately, I’ve come to realize that with user feedback, what users want isn’t always equal to what is fun.  Users want to win, but part of gaming is the discomfort of not having won yet, and having to do some work to win. If you make it too easy, it’s not fun. I suspect the Blizzard guys are experts at this.

I’ve also added some new things recently, including the ability to put your friends in a chicken suit. This is a very polarizing feature – users either love it or hate it. It’s a big deal when you change players’ avatars – you have to make that really expensive (all other weapons don’t effect look). I just thought it would be funny and amusing. That has driven many features in my games. In some games you can tell that the designers have added a little personal charm that really shows they love their work.

One last feature I didn’t appreciate the importance of when I initially created it was leader boards.  As soon as I made a global leader board, the competitive landscape changed from being friendly to being very cut-throat, and a lot more people starting trying to cheat and game the system. This is probably very obvious to traditional game developers, but it’s not to many Facebook game developers (I know many Facebook game developers that hate their leader boards and now spend all day dealing with security issues like injection attacks). People will go crazy for points.

Where do you think we are in the evolution of social gaming?

Before a really amazing game is made, either web 2.0 experts need to become experts in game design, or vice versa. I suspect that the latter will happen first, because I think there’s less to learn about what I do than what they do.  Nobody on social networks has the game that WOW does. Their DAU are something like 40%, but if you do 1 million users with 10% active on Facebook right now, people look to you like you’re the expert.

People doing Facebook games know how to get installs, but people like Blizzard know how to get engagement. I look to WOW as the standard for MMORPGs. Those guys have 9-10 million people paying $10 a month (though they also have a huge budget and can do lots of things most people can’t.)

So where do you think you will be in a year?

I like doing games a lot, and I want to continue doing games as long as I can. Because it’s a hot space, we’re likely to see more traditional game design talent moving into the field. I think it’s really fun, and I don’t want to work my way up the ladder in the game industry. However, I do miss the feeling I got working on Causes. The chance to make software that really helps people is rare, and I think that’s really cool.

Here in Silicon Valley, people look at you like you’re not an entrepreneur if you’re not building a billion dollar company. But folks like the Hot Or Not guys made good money, had a decent exit, and had a lot of fun. I think that’s OK. I refuse to believe there’s only 1 type of entrepreneur – there’s a lot of in between.

I’m confident that I’m going to do what’s right for me. People ask me often if they should take investment or join SGN or Zynga, and I ask them, “What do you want to do?”

Finally Blake, have you spent much time working on monetization?

I think great game design and making money should go hand in hand. This has enormous potential, but I don’t think I’m anywhere close to it. With the right people on board, I think I could do a lot more. I’ve just done what’s good enough so far. My approach is that if you can figure out the game mechanics first, take monetization into account as you go along. But getting the game mechanics right first is more important.

I’m secretly hoping that Facebook will help guys like me out and open up their ad targeting functionality to developers. They’re in a better position to do that than anyone else, and they’ve got all the data. Once they crack the nut, they should work with developers. I’m convinced I would still do better with them. It’s only a matter of time.

Scrabulous is an adaptation of the game Scrabble for the Facebook generation. You can play against your friends in Facebook, host an open table, or join a table.

The gameplay itself is basically online Scrabble with several bells and whistles to make it more approachable. You can use the online dictionary (generally frowned upon by purists) and the help section details the rules for those who don’t know it. You can’t play words that aren’t actual words, which makes “challenging” a bit redundant in my opinion. You can also skip turns, trade in scrabble blocks, and other subtleties of the rules. The help tab is very useful.

Hosting a table is easy - just set up what dictionary you want to use, the game speed, and whether the game is suitable for adults or people of all ages. The last decision seems trivial until you try joining a table. I found that I couldn’t find a game that was suitable for all ages, and when I changed my search to “adult” I found many of the games to by people wanting to chat “dirty.” Yes, each scrabble game has a chat feature and yes, it seems that Scrabulous has achieved some unfortunate notoriety… I guess people with big vocabularies are sexy.

It’s nice to be able to be able to play both your friends and random other people online and switch between games quickly. I played three games at once and probably could have handled more. When you’re playing with friends, the social pressure to continue makes the game very addicting. In how many other Facebook applications do friends email and IM you to take your turn?

The search feature could obviously be fixed so it was less buggy. But other than that there is very little criticism to level at this game. Adding bots would be nice, but next to impossible from a technical standpoint. How do you create an AI that generates words from random letters and doesn’t beat you easily?

One final note - the game has drawn a lot of flack recently because of its ongoing legal battle. Without touching on this political minefield, I will say that much of this game’s success is due to the popularity of the initial game of Scrabble. That said, without the hard work of the developers and some very clever features, the game would never have taken off. It’s a solid multiplayer game for people who like vocab words, strategy, and triple-word scores.

Developer’s Score: 7/10
Gameplay Score: 9/10
Odds this game will get shut down due to legal dispute: 5/10

While explaining the idea behind social gaming, many people act a little confused. “Are social games really that different from multi-player games?”

What makes “social games” different from the multi-player games (that are most often played with strangers) is that the game play experience of social games (especially when played with friends and family) is significantly enhanced and affected by the context of playing in a social network environment. The social context created in social networks allows for significantly new kinds of game-play experiences - enough to create a whole swath of new online gamers.

For example, take Scrabulous. What makes playing Scrabble with friends and family different than playing with strangers? Jeremy Liew describes how the social context affects game play within Scrabulous well:

Playing Scrabulous against my wife puts the game into context in a way that playing with a stranger that I met in the Yahoo games lobby simply doesn’t have. If I’m losing against a stranger, I might just abandon the game - not an option against my wife. If I’m taking too long to move, I’ll hear about it from my wife in a way that will cause me to play- not true for a stranger. The bragging rights on the win will be more meaningful and last much longer when I’m playing my wife. And finally, the act of playing itself has the subtext “I’m thinking of you” that is absent when playing against a stranger, where the game is the only concern.

Another example of how game play is significantly affected by the social context is Parking Wars. In Parking Wars, your personal knowledge of your friends’ real-world schedules allows you to surprise your friends and succeed in the game. As Ian Bogost, founder of Persuasive Games, notes on Gamasutra,

Playing Parking Wars is an exercise in predicting friends’ schedules. A colleague in Europe is likely to be sleeping during the evening in the States, and thus his street might offer safe haven at that hour.

And just as some meter-maids don’t get around to patrolling real streets, so some players of Parking Wars don’t get around to patrolling their virtual one. Of course, such players might just be busy, or they might even be baiting their colleagues so that they can later issue a whirlwind of unexpected tickets.

Receiving a ticket in Parking Wars isn’t a prank on the level of spreading dog poo on the underside of a buddy’s car door handle. Rather, the combination of latent, ongoing play and occasional “gotchas” makes plays in Parking Wars feel like pranks.

The game weaves its way into the player’s ordinary use of Facebook, rather than requiring complete immersion. This latency creates a credible context for surprises, just as the flow of the work day sets the stage for switched desk drawers or shoe polish-smeared telephone receivers.

Gotchas come in at least two forms: in giving or receiving a ticket (which pops up as a big, yellow overlay across the screen), and in the silent knowledge of having taken advantage of another player’s inattention.

Many games give players the opportunity to trick, fool, or swindle an opponent out of resources — just recall the pleasure of seeing an opponent land on a particularly valuable property in Monopoly. But in Parking Wars, players aren’t always expecting it. By setting up an ordinary social environment for disruption, Parking Wars becomes a medium for pranks, a kind of video game whoopie cushion.

What do you think distinguishes social games from multi-player games? Are they really that different?

Bubble Town is an arcade puzzle game developed by I-Play, the object of which is to launch little “borbs” that look like smiling people into a cluster above you. By matching up three or more similar borbs, you not only clear them from the board, but also gain points. Clearing the board of borbs will advance you to the next board/level. Try saying that five times fast.

The game has several menus to invite friends, a mobile option, and the ability to see scores on a global scale. However, the game’s selling point, and why it continues to thrive, is completely tied to its gameplay.

On the consumer side, the game is plenty addictive and extremely fun, with strong attention paid to graphics and variety. The game gets more difficult with each level, and players are rewarded with powerup “borbs” and combo points for particularly effective matches.

The interface and instruction menu are some of the best I’ve seen. The developers even created an instruction animation sequence to show how to play the game, making it much easier for beginners. Despite the impressive animations, quirky icons, and challenging gameplay, I can’t give the game a perfect score knowing full well that I’ve seen this game before.

There is room for improvement, however. There are no attempts to build a community around the program, something that many competing applications have begun to do.

Like many other Facebook games, Bubble Town owes much of its success to being a Facebook adaptation of a formerly popular game, Snood. The developers should be commended for their brilliant adaptation, and we can only hope their creativity will lead to new and original projects as well.

Gameplay: 9/10

Developers: 6/10

Feelings of Déjà vu: 8/10