We also need to recognize that the fact that a game is integrated on a social network, doesn’t mean it’s a social game.

Interesting piece, but I think in essence wrong, and here’s why:

“It’s like creating a role-playing game where you spend all your time messing with your character sheet instead of actually fighting the battle.”

All roleplaying games are like that. The basis of the gameplay in Final Fantasy, D+D and sundry other roleplaying games is basically character customisation. It’s a drive for efficiency above all else.

Social games are no different to any other game in one important respect: They are driven by gameplay because that is where the fun is at. Fun is not really a question of production values or good controls or even clever design. It’s a product of intellectual engagement through testing.

In whatever battlefield the player is interested in, be it a football match or a chess board, horse racing or even flirting in a social situation (the ultimate game some would say), the player is invariably competing with other players or a ruleset (or both) to test themselves and their skills.

Games on social networks are no different. X-Wars games especially are no different. On our blog recently (I’m the CCO of Simple Lifeforms – a new social games company in the UK – and also a games industry vet) I wrote about “social gameplay” being an exciting are in social games. By offering easy means of communication through a network, the player is opened up to the possibility of a new social kind of test, a new kind of intellectual engagement. Social networks facilitate this sort of contact, which is what makes them different.

But a game is still a game. Let’s not fool ourselves that we’ve somehow strayed from the fundamentals as game theorists are wont to do when they start getting excited by a new arena. It is a new arena but many of the original rules still apply.

Here’s the source article of what I wrote by the way:

http://www.simplelifeforms.com/2009/01/19/what-is-a-social-game/

Tadhg

But there is something compelling about both of these experiences.

I’d love to get some hard numbers and see exactly how many times and over how many days the average player comes back to their X-Wars experience and compare that with similar numbers on retention for Casual and Hardcore user experiences. Obviously there’s a lot more riding on being “sticky” in the social space, but it would be good to have a baseline.

I also think it’s hard to clearly define what success means in the social space. One thing that makes it confusing is that there isn’t a clear line between what the user is doing and how the experience is monetized. On Facebook that’s compounded by the fact that a small change in the TOS can wipe out your profit model overnight.

As for “Marketing == Success”, I think that at the end of the day the product has to rise to a certain level of quality in order for it to really succeed over the long term, although what quality is in any given case may not always be where we first expect it be.

You state both that “good gameplay remains just as important as it ever was” and also that user actions in Mob Wars are “press the ‘Do Job’ button” and “buying stuff”. These seem to contradict each other. It seems to me that The Oregon Trail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oregon_Trail_(computer_game)) had more gameplay than most ‘social games.’ Better graphics and plot to boot. You might be correct that social gaming is the “fastest growing sector of the gaming industry” but “gaming industry” often doesn’t mean games (http://www.americangaming.org/).

I’ll be happy when I’m proven wrong. When makers of ‘social games’ start including gameplay that is more than pressing buttons and sending invites, I’ll use them for entertainment purposes. In the meantime, they fill a very different role than games do, offering entertainment more akin to randomly surfing the web than the entertainment offered by games.

You’re also spot on with these statements. “when you’re reaching out to a mainstream audience, you’ll often discover that the tastes of the masses are shockingly different than” and “they often won’t care at all about what you think they should think is important.” The game industry caters to the ‘hardcore’ establish customer market for valid business reasons. Nintendo’s Wii is proving popular because they targeted non-mainstream game customers, but N’s success has not translated to third party studio success (yet?).

Xwars style games probably represent our first blush attempts to figure out a format for interactive entertainment which can be played for a few minutes a day and involves a bunch of other people doing the same thing. I think games like PARKING WARS start to move the genre forward, no doubt we’ll see a bunch of failed experiments, and will all learn a lot from what works well within the few successes.

Xwars is clearly a “success” though … and is worth deconstructing … the seemingly empty play mechanic hooks people at first, but doesn’t keep them long enough. Such is why the people behind these games put so much muscle behind urging players to bring in other players … because they know the math better than anybody … and have found that very few people stick with these games long enough to become paying customers. They reach far and wide, but fail pretty miserably at retaining. At least so far

I’ll ignore the superior gameplay bit, but.

level of polish and content?

When has that ever translated into sales/success?

Marketing == Success

It did in the past and it does now, in social games it is just a slightly different type of marketing. “I play because my friends are playing and they spammed me till I joined in.”

Yeah the content helps and in a free/chaotic market place it can even get you to the top. However it gets you to the top by generating free marketing…

The only way content has ever helped is by generating free marketing.

The content in social games still does the same job, its just a different type of content (other people) and a different type of marketing that it generates for free.