Inside Social Games

By their very nature, sports are meant to be social outlets for people. The spirit of competition and teamwork brings people together as one unit and through this, social bonds are established.

Such friendships have spread to the virtual world as well. There, people compete with each other in any number of game genres: Be it through cooperative, head-to-head, or tournament based play, this competition creates both rivals and friends alike.

This is the mark of a truly strong game. The social features that bring people together in competition is what makes any game, but especially a social game, worth playing. There have been many games on Facebook in which a social premise seemed lacking, but in the spirit of competition, Tennis Mania serves an ace.

At first glance, Tennis Mania looks like your standard pen and paper Facebook RPG. You start out with limited money and energy, and as you do various tasks, it drains away. You start with level one skills (backhand, forehand, footwork, and serve) and have to spend money to train them to the next level. As one might suspect, each level costs more money than the last to train in.

In order to use up energy, the player has to play tennis matches. The key word here is play. When the player chooses to start a match they can either play against their friends or choose to play against a random player (in which the computer seems to pair you up with similarly skilled people). Once you have your opponent, you have two options: Option “A” is your typical RPG option where you see both player’s stats and can “Simulate a Match.” The match is “played” and you see your result. Option “B” is where you actually play in a Flash powered game against a simulated version of your friends.

The computer plays with all the stats of your friends, and while it takes a while to get used to, quickly becomes a great deal of fun. Granted it is not quite the same as playing your friends themselves, but it is an entertaining representation of them. Of course, if you loose you may feel a bit silly, but if you win you will earn a small some of cash to spend on more training.

As would normally be expected, the game also provides other social features such as the options to issue and accept challenges from other players (you can challenge specific people or leave them open to the public). This incorporates large cash sum bets on each of the matches that can either break you or quickly make you very rich depending on your skill level, thus adding a whole new level of depth to the game that keeps players eager for new challenges.

By all means, if you haven’t given Tennis Mania a try, you certainly should. It has a number of the familiar choices that a typical Facebook RPG has, but beyond that, it offers a greater level of depth to the social and competitive nature of sports style games. The added Flash game that allows you to play virtual versions of your friends provides a tremendous amount of fun that lasts significantly longer than most Facebook RPGs and the challenge system keeps a steady stream of new goals flowing for the veteran players. This is not an app to fault on: Tennis Mania is certainly a game worth noticing.