Inside Social Games

socialDeck recently yeleased its first game for both Facebook and the iPhone: Social Line Connect. With the release of this app, socialDeck has earned the recognition of being the first company to release a social game on the iPhone with Facebook integration (you can find the iPhone version here).

The game is a simple puzzle game (Connect Four) that most people are already familiar with. Like its analog predecessor, Social Line Connect pits you against another player and the first person to connect four chips either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally wins.

The game also includes various social features that can be seen in most social games: leaderboards, game feeds, chat, who is playing, and so on. Of course, the most social aspect is the fact that two people play in turn. Players can invite and challenge their friends, spend some time in public lobbies to meet new people, or they can jump right into a random match.

The main downside to the asynchronous approach is the game can only progress as fast your opponent makes their move. They are sent a message when it is their turn, but until they receive it, you are stuck waiting. Nonetheless, the real innovation is hardly the game, but rather the dynamics that comes with it.

Social Line Connect allows for players on a mobile iPhone to connect to people on the web via Facebook and vice versa. Players, regardless of platform, can play, chat, and interact with each other despite whether or not they own an iPhone.

The technology is able to leverage a player’s existing social graph from Facebook and thus allows for more compelling social content to migrate to the iPhone and mobile space in general. Furthermore, this release shows that socialDeck has indeed addressed a number of the difficulties in bringing social gaming experiences to the iPhone.

With the technology bridge built, we can expect to see socialDeck begin to launch more games in the coming months as they prepare for what they call, “the next generation in social gaming.”