[Fragments] Jah, I can speak in english about Facebook's viral & social web games !

First shoot :

(...) Here is my own feeling : when I consider a “social game”, my goal is initially to privilege the relations between players, and then enabling them to test themselves on given situations.

As an exemple, on my project about "hubris", someone who would like to confront himself with "leader role" should have tools to try that. I consider that games are also a vector of sharing and discovering things about ourselves.

I think the deployment of "social games" on Facebook (...) is a good start, even if currently we find more "viral interactions" than "social gameplays". But how to buzz a game via social links is a very interesting subject. I guess we still can try, discover and learn much about that.

Same player try again :

Thanks for this very interesting discussion! I think "real time" and "asynchrone" just have each one their advantages and their disadvantages...Can't it be useful to choose one or the other of these tools according to each feature ?

The actions which require some reflection or strategy, for example, could be designed with asynchronous mechanisms. But the immediate and spontaneous sharing between players connected at the same moment can be really pleasant and dynamic, so I wouldn't dismiss this option. I think the challenge is to get a whole design understandable in order to avoid puzzled players... :)


In my mind, social mechanisms depend a lot on a will to give to the players a context (a goal, an universe, a community...?) where players will be able to create and maintain relationships. So I try to give to each player the opportunity to have a role and an impact in his ecosystem.

I would like that each player can try to be a leader, an organizer, a recognized talent and so on... I'm trying to stimulate them to meet, to help or to challenge their friends, and friends of their friends... So while they are playing, they will create a common social history. They may have fun with their friends, and could soon share bonds with their friend's networks too.


But the effort to make a game "viral" is it so bad ? First it's necessary to keep the game alive ... I also think it is a ludic domain where we can still innovate a lot, to make it funny. And some players really love to share their favourite games with their friends. For exemple in order to play together. As I see it, viral games are currently tedious (NdE: they all said that) because all of them use exactly the same viral features - also few social features. And, as you said, most of the viral games are farm / mafia / restaurant / simcity games... ;)

(Edit, same day, 23:55)

A Zynga's junior Game Designer, Mitch Zamara, said :
Honestly, I'm not very fond of Zynga's games. But I have to admit that this response really surprised me, and produced to me some kind of emotion... :) Well, it's a kind remark :

" Overall this is definitely an interesting discussion.I think Ebene's points should be closely paid attention to, as she's on the mark about a lot of things. In my opinion, there is no better choice between asynchronous play and synchronous, it's just a matter of how you plan to design your game. "

(Edit, March 21th, 17:30)

About free-to-play and pay-to-play :
" I highly doubt the players that don't want to pay anything will return to subscription based games.. "

Besides, players who don't want to pay anything aren't necessarily without any "value". In a social based game, they are still part of the global & active community which push the others to play ... and pay. So while they aren't paying, they still create some "value" in free-to-play. In pay-to-play, they don't exist.

I think we could compare them to the lurkers on the participative web platforms : they don't say anything on the forums, but they are audience. As this website ( http://bit.ly/9NzhmS ) said : "ever been to a rock concert with no audience?". They are useful, and in my mind, it's the same thing in the Freemiums.


I won't add arguments about the current discussion, I think each system have their interest, depending on the type of game, type of community, type of period... Depending also on "what costs a playing player", one can determine if it's a loss or a gain to allow free players in a defined game.

Imagine : in this present crisis period, I could prefer to have some players who don't pay but who are retaining the players who can afford to pay... Than to have less players, all paying for play, but all feeling alone in a too small community. On the other hand, I could have designed my pay-to-play game for a small community.. I think it's only a matter of (investment and) choice.

So... Indeed I don't say anything new here, compared to my other articles on "Trames Obscures", but I thought that perhaps a discussion in english about this subject would be interesting. Also feel free to point out my english mistakes, it would help me a lot. "C'est en forgeant qu'on devient forgeron !"