Inside Social Games

Word Twist on Facebook by Zynga is quite similar to TextTwist on MSN Games: the game play and design are almost identical. The primary difference, of course, is that Word Twist allows you to easily play with friends.

However, while you are able to play against your friends competitively, the game doesn’t really make use of the social network much itself. It takes a single player game, allows two people to play at the same time, and tells you “here are the words you unscrambled” and “here are the words they unscrambled.” “Oh, and by the way, here are your scores. This person wins!” That’s all fine, but all you’re doing is playing a single player game, receiving a score, and seeing who scores higher.

Before the game starts, you have the ability to adjust round time, word length, and dictionaries. This game is simple, and a lot of people play it, but the fact of the matter is there is a tremendous amount of social interaction opportunity that the game misses out on.

Social games like Word Twist are only scratching the surface of the potential of social game design. Designers need to look the capabilities of social networks and find new ways to have people play WITH each other. The games can still be simple, but by allowing more social interaction, people would play for longer periods of time.