Inside Social Games

In order to mitigate the risk of “bad” user generated content these days, developers must limit the amount of freedom users have and guide them in a specific direction. This subtle control gives the users a feeling of freedom, when they are in fact quite limited (more limitations are not bad, just safer).

Currently in beta is PhotoGrab by Amy Jo Kim’s Shufflebrain. This new Facebook application is an excellent example of a user-generated content tool with well executed limitations and a simple core game mechanic. PhotoGrab plays as a photo recognition game meant to train visual acuteness and mental awareness.

When you play, you are presented with an image and in the bottom left, a detail of that image. The player must then click on the portion of the larger image in which that detail originated from using a circular mouse cursor. The closer you get, the more points you earn, and this continues for three pictures with 24 seconds spent on each of them. Upon completion, your score is compared to your friends that have played the game and the app then compares your visual recognition skills to animals that reflect that level of sight. This is the game play that is used for every game, and the tool couldn’t be simpler.

Whenever you start the application, you have the option to create your own PhotoGrab game and upload three images from their Facebook photo album(s). Once selected, you make your detail selections (these selections are the details that the player will be provided with when they play your game). You do this for each of your pictures, save, and voila, anyone can play your very own PhotoGrab game.

The combination of these simple tools and Facebook’s own album limitations not only allows for low risk UGC, but makes it easy for virtually anyone to create their own game. Furthermore, considering that Facebook is the biggest photo sharing site on the web, an application that allows personal creation of interactive albums compounds the social implications beyond most other games currently in circulation. Bottom line, the application is easy to learn and entertaining to play due to personal investment, and really adds a fun flavor to one of the primary uses of Facebook.

New social gaming community Muzui just launched last week, allowing users to play games both online or via mobile devices.

Users have the option to play the (free) games either by signing up or simply as a guest. There are no game play limitations based on whether or not users log in, but guests are unable to connect with other players via the social platform, thus defeating the overall purpose of the Muzui site.

Once signed up for Muzui, users have the options to not only play or download free games, but also add and challenge friends, receive rewards, and use the site’s various social systems. Muzui even allows you to connect to your existing Facebook or MSN account, allowing you to more easily invite your friends from said networks and even receive awards from the developers.

The site’s rewards are based on a “coin” system. Win or lose, when you play any of the Muzui games you earn coins as a reward. These coins are meant to act as badges that demonstrate your prowess and experience level playing the available games.

Muzui makes it easy for users to submit their own games and create their own levels for existing games for other users to play. You can currently create levels for existing titles like Space Cowboy and The Shadow using a rudimentary level building tool. Furthermore, the tool is quick and easy to pick up and learn, and makes an excellent asset for any would be level designers out there.

While users cannot earn any money for the games and levels they submit, they are eligible for monthly prizes for participating. Perhaps of greater value for most creators, however, is the satisfaction of having levels used in widely played games, thus offering excellent exposure for young designers.

Unfortunately, the number of games currently on Muzui is rather limited - five. Unless Muzui can make it easier for users to create more games, the lack of games will surely create a problem for the service’s growth.

It will be interesting to see how Muzui fares. The company is playing in a crowded market, but the social elements may help Muzui grow faster than the other established players in the space.

Never think that a good game needs to be a complex one. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. If you look at history, some of the greatest games have a set of rules less than a page in length. Games like chess, othello, and Tetris are all exceedingly simple to learn and can provide hours and even years of entertainment. While Pop Answers is not going to be the next “chess,” despite its simplistic nature, it’s rather fun to play.

Pop Answers consists of a simple survey/Family Feud style game mechanic. Every day or couple of days, a new topic is available, such as “Name something you would take with you for an afternoon in the park.” When you click Play Now you have 60 seconds to name the most popular answers based on a survey of 100 people. The objective is to score as close to 100 as you can by guessing what is not necessarily a right answer, but rather a popular one.

The game itself is nothing extravagant. It doesn’t have any shiny new graphics, or amazing sound: In fact, it’s rather drab, but curiously enough it has some quaint charm to the game play that kept me playing through different topics. Maybe it is the challenge to see how smart I am, or maybe I want to rank higher than my competitors, or maybe I’m just curious to see what other people are thinking. For some reason, social or otherwise, I kept playing.

Speaking of social traits, the application is a little different in that regard as well. Yes, it does follow similar trends that other games have. You score, and you have a ranking of you versus your friends. It also adds in a feature that gives you hints towards the popular answers by spending tickets that you receive by inviting friends. At first glance, none of this seems very special right? That’s what I thought at first, but then I was clued in on the intentions of the developer, Mapdev.

If Pop Answers is ever able to reach critical mass, it could use the data to generate results (and potentially new questions) and it would generate a significant amount of data about how people think on Facebook. This would certainly add a powerful aspect to the app and would utilize the social capabilities of Facebook in a truly interesting way.

Pop Answers may not be an extravaganza of graphics and sound, but its simple concept makes it entertaining, if even for a moment. Although I would highly recommend a face lift for Pop Answers, as it would certainly do the game some much needed justice, even with the dull look, you can see some underlying potential. While it lacks in any major social capabilities beyond scoreboards, the possibility of user generated content creates a very powerful opportunity for a more interesting and more social game.

Not too long ago we talked about the Raptr platform and its capabilities as a central community hub across many gaming platforms. This week, Raptr just integrated support for one of the newest and most talked about games of the year, Spore.

For those that may have been in a cave for the past few months, Spore is the latest master piece from renowned designer Will Wright and EA Games. Will Wright is also the same guy that was lead designer for other huge EA titles such as The Sims and SimCity. Spore is a massively scoped game in which you determine the evolution of a race of creatures from single celled organisms to a space faring people. However, one of the key draws to this game comes from the tag attached to it that describes Spore as a “massively single-player online game.”

Spore allows players to download content from each other through EA. You can download other player created races to inhabit the planets in your galaxy as well as can upload your own creations and track how they do in what has been described as “parallel universes” (other player’s game worlds). In addition to this, EA has created a “Spore YouTube Channel” that allows people to seamlessly showcase their galaxy to other users, and even share the evolution of their creatures using a game feature dubbed “Sporecast.”

This is where everything gets enhanced by Raptr. While Spore does not support simultaneous multiplayer, Raptr does allow tracking of your friends in real-time as they play the game. Moreover, with the massive number of people in the Spore galaxy, there is a near infinite number of possible creatures that people could create. As such, Raptr allows players to broadcast and share all of their creations, activity, and achievements through major social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. There’s even a “Spore Module” added to your Raptr profile page that contains everything you’ve created. You can even share screenshots of your creatures and allow users to watch them evolve and grow over time.

Considering the vast number of players that will be playing Spore, this is a important game addition for Raptr. Originally, the social content of Spore was planned to revolve around just the official site. Now, with Raptr, that network is expanding, and will continue to expand, to social networks all over the web.

As one of the most popular “social games” on Facebook, Nicknames by SGN seems pretty straight-forward: The application lets you nickname your friends. The more people you invite to the application, the more likely you are to have those friends nickname you. People love nicknames, and I personally always like hearing what people would think I should be nicknamed.

Unlike many social games, Nicknames makes a valiant effort at depth. You can check out what your friends are nicknamed in the “friends” tab, check out who you’ve nicknamed in the “history” tab, add a “skin” to your profile, and even “style” the font of the nickname. You can also take a quiz to see how well you know your friends’ nicknames. All of these features, combined, should take you about three minutes to peruse and forget about.

While Nicknames is in many ways a logical step forward inside Facebook, by allowing users to share another aspect of their lives, its replay value is questionable. Will users keep inviting their friends to get themselves nicknamed? Will they keep checking back to add new nicknames or see if they’ve been nicknamed? Just how much will “style” and “skins” attract new users or keep old ones?

Nicknames is a popular game and deserves its success because it cleverly taps into everyone’s love of clever nicknames. The brand itself needs to think of more creative ways to keep users coming back, because the quiz game is perhaps the only feature with replayability at this point. The large amounts of ads on the application’s pages and the frequent updates indicates SGN is doing a good job maximizing their earning potential, but right now they have to push the application further to increase those page views.

Game play: 4 (perhaps not really a game, but still an enjoyable distraction)

Development: 7

Virality: 9

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.

Another entry in the “Why didn’t I think of that first?” category of Facebook apps, Pieces of Flair allows you to add customizable buttons called “flair” to your Facebook collection.

When it’s working (the profile page integration isn’t quite always working for me), Pieces of Flair provides another fun way to personalize your profile and send things to friends. While not quite a “game” per se, collecting items is an addictive hobby for many.

With Pieces of Flair, you can buy from a countless selection of button designs (many are user created) or make your own. The game’s economy (which lets you purchase and send pieces of flair) functions by users sending their favorite content to someone else, inviting friends to the application, or logging on once a day.

These are basic steps and good ways of retaining users. With over 400,000 daily active users, Pieces of Flair is growing quickly, and just got acquired by major Facebook application developer RockYou.

I only wish they’d think of a clever way to sell people these buttons in physical form. I’d buy a few of the buttons that say “Save Ferris!”

Gameplay: 6?

Developers: 7

Percent Complete: 60