Inside Social Games

While players have been building their own levels and worlds for games for years, social networks offer new opportunities for “UGGC” (user generated game content) to create a new class of games which:

• Primarily contain “levels” and “worlds” created by users
• Grow more quickly since users are more likely to invite friends to play a game which they co-created
• Show better retention qualities since users are more likely to accept invitations from friends for games which their friends co-created

SGN’s new Name It is one of the first pure play games to take advantage of this idea (which SGN calls “wiki games”). Name It is a word game in which users play against their friends to think of words in 5 different categories, all starting with a given letter, before time runs out.

Since launching two weeks ago, players have already created thousands of answers and hundreds of categories. About 100,000 people on Facebook have played, and it’s growing quickly (with a 13% DAU rate).

Many other social applications (like various quiz apps) have done well on Facebook by creating a platform for users to create content and share it with their friends in a compelling, interactive way. I expect to see many more “UGGC” games succeed on Facebook in the coming weeks and months.