For better or for worse, social gaming has rapidly transformed the video game landscape in a staggeringly short amount of time. And the dominate force in the social gaming space these days is Facebook, thanks in large part to a little phenomenon called Farmville.
To find out more about just how massive social gaming has become and the reasons behind the explosion, I recommend checking out the following “Social Gaming: How Do I Get Me Some Of That?” DICE 2010 presentation by the chief game designer at Farmville-developer Zynga, Brian Reynolds.
For all your DICE 2010 needs, just head over to our official event page, and get informed!
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aduecey
I played Mafia Wars but quickly became disinterested as all my accumulated property and wealth hand little weight in the game. With over 200 casinos owned money was pouring in. Sadly that money was of little use but to put a price on another players head. But in doing so what was I really getting out of the experience? Nothing really as there was no pay off for doing such. The rest of the game was spent just grinding along to raise in level. I guess that's good if your interested in braging rights amongst your social network. But if your not then the game really has little to offer.
swtsvn
good presentation, but it would have been great if the camera gave importance to the slides as well
A-Bittersweet-Life
I guess Ia finally understand why developers today are forced to implement online component on their games even on the ones that doesn't really require it such as Bioshock 2, Uncharted 2,and GTA 4. It's a way for devs to improve on their gameplay formulas based to the feedback their audience give, its their version of metacritics.
Memu
I just don't see the appeal. To me it seems less like gaming than manipulating human psychology to suck money out of them. But I have always been anti-social so that may be why I don't get it.
doctheory
This presentation clearly explains why they're top of social gaming; brilliant planning, execution. I have succumb to their devious plans before & have fallen into the 3-4 percentile who pay before. Worst was about a year or two ago, Evony, (not facebook but similar game), did me dirty & I dropped some dime on that. Traditional gaming is still by far my preferred way, but I can definitely see the appeal, for the customer & the company.
strangeboi63
That's damn funny he had to skip the "how to make money"part. BTW, tell your director to switch cameras more often. Very informative though.
Avearys333
timcago, i think you are referring to co-op games, not social games. if you could plant trees and harvest pumpkins in ME2, and have 8 million people look at your customized, upgraded Normandy, that would be implementing social features. big diff.
Timcago
I believe that AAA game publishers can learn a TON from social games. For example, when i was playing mass effect 2 while talking in private chat to my friend, who was also playing the game, we asked ourselves "why can't i replace one of your AI's and help you beat that mission on insane difficulty and get an achievement for it aswell if I beat all the main missions of the game with you?"
This social implementation would have raised my enjoyment of the game from a 9.3/10 to a 10/10.
Games are always better with friends!
This does not mean all game companies should always put "sociability" before "fun" because WoW is a good example of how it can backfire. They purposely made the game easier and more dumbed down with every expansion and update because it made the game more sociable since easier and dumber games can be digested by more people. This was a great thing for Blizzard financially, but terrible for us gamers who enjoy a challenge .
Displaying 1–8 of 8