Paul Carey

Gamasutra recently reposted a Simple Lifeforms blog post on the different types of social game. It’s great stuff, but the sheer diversity of games listed highlights the fact that a generally accepted definition of what constitutes a social game continues to prove elusive.

The social gaming panel at the 2008 Graphing Social Patterns conference reached a consensus opinion that

if emotions like guilt, pride, reciprocity, gratitude or vengeance get evoked in the gameplay because of the combination of gameplay and player relationship, a game is social.

This sounds reasonable, but by that definition, the team based play of Call of Duty et al. is right on the button. Yet when I hear the phrase social games, Call of Duty doesn’t really spring to mind, even if it is a wonderful example of a game that invokes a desire for revenge. I’m increasingly inclined to agree with Jeremy Liew’s opinion that social gaming is a tactic not a category.

Yet, there’s great scope for exploring games where the combination of gameplay and player relationship doesn’t merely invoke emotions as a side effect, but where the explicit goal of every player action is to evoke an emotional response in other players.

This is exactly what I’m aiming for with Strawberry Diva. When I started developing it, I used to call it a casual MMORPG. But a little piece of me died every time I did that. These days I call Strawberry Diva a social strategy game as this description is much closer to its essence of game mechanics derived from social interactions.

Games that focus on social interactions remain comparatively rare. The Sims 2 was one of the first games to place an emphasis on relationships and emotional goals. But it took until 2005 and the release of Facade for a game to place an exclusive focus on a relationship. Facade tasks the player with saving the marriage of Trip and Grace, a materially successful couple whose dinner party - with the player as the sole guest - may play host to the demise of their relationship. A true interactive drama, it was critically acclaimed on release, but nothing quite like it has appeared in the last four years.

Maybe this shouldn’t surprise us, though. Facade relies on natural language processing, and while it does so well, NLP is going to remain an open problem for quite some time. A game placing real relationships formed by real people at its core has the potential for far greater depth and longevity.

Friends for Sale and Erepulik do just this. Friends for Sale wraps mercenary gameplay in a fun package. Erepublik offers a intriguing blend of social competition and politics. Its Spartan visuals and virtualpolitik setting surely limit the number of potential players, yet it boasts 100k active players.

Ultimately, I see social games evolving to place social interaction at their core, although we might give such games a different name. Games that zero in on our all-too-human nature - our social frailties, our need for validation and our desire for self-actualization - have the potential to elicit powerful responses.