作者：David Rohrl

在休闲游戏社群中，社交游戏令许多人感到兴奋，而且都有着充分的理由。社交游戏可以很快设计出来，玩起来通常很有趣，也会迅速成长并产生真实的效益。许多休闲游戏制作者和设计师正从可下载休闲游戏转向社交游戏领域，期待该类别能够有所发展。毕竟，社交游戏的用户基础还很坚实。网络这个巨大市场的用户热衷休闲游戏而且慷慨大方，他们喜欢这种简短的游戏进程和简单且稳步进展的成功。餐厅和农场类游戏实现了上述两种目标。

但这种转变通常比想象中更具挑战性。该类别游戏本身正迅速发生改变，许多设计和制作过程与那些曾经致力于传统游戏（游戏邦注：或可下载休闲游戏）开发的设计师的直觉并不相符。我从事社交游戏开发已有两年多时间，本篇文章阐述某些最重要和有趣的经验。

减少用户流失率

与传统游戏设计不同的是，几乎所有社交游戏元素的设计都带有商业目的。在各个种类的游戏中，一旦你理解用户的消费心态并确保遵从某些市场需求（游戏邦注：比如让玩家花60分钟时间通过障碍物），你就可以将所有专注点制成有趣的游戏。

在社交游戏中，情况有所不同。你的游戏需要带动用户产生各种行为，这对商业运营很重要。这需要在设计时慎重考虑，高层次的平台整合和反复的校正。任何社交游戏运营需要关注的三个最重要度量值是用户的流失率、增长率和活跃度。当然，盈利也是个很重要的目标，但重点在于对用户流失率、增长率和活跃度的关注会产生“双重效益”，即在扩大用户基础的同时确保每位玩家帮游戏招募更多的用户。如果这方面做得好，会让游戏呈指数化增长，直至开始在其市场中风行。而盈利的增加只能给予你线性化的报酬，让每个用户付更多钱并不会每天为游戏带来更多玩家。

作为社交游戏设计师，你的首要工作在于减少用户流失率。这个部分看起来很像传统游戏设计。当然，让用户回头的关键方法之一是制作出有趣的游戏。如果你的游戏不好玩，那么让用户回头就会变得极具挑战性。而且，让社交游戏变得有趣比可下载休闲游戏要难。因为你的游戏需要较小的容量，这会减少用户对产品价值的关注度。

目前有许多成熟的技术用以提高用户留存率，把他们从试玩者变成玩家，并最终转化为付费玩家（游戏邦注：这也是开发商希望看到的结局）。这些设计原则的重点如下：使用定时再参与机制；限制游戏行为；让事物萎靡不振。

使用定时再参与机制

众多社交游戏用来让用户定期回到游戏中通常采用的方法是所谓的“约定游戏”或“收获”。这个机制最初在许多农场主题游戏中看到，包括Slashkey的《Farm Town》，这款游戏是Facebook上农场题材的先驱者。随着时间的推移，这个机制融入各种游戏中，包括城市建设、宠物饲养游戏和其他游戏。

在此机制中，用户付费种植的作物需要特定的时间方能成熟。在成熟时间到来前，用户不会获得任何收成。成熟时间过后，用户可以在某段时间内获得收成。在许多游戏（游戏邦注：并非所有游戏都是如此）中，作物会在成熟后枯萎，用户便无法收获。

这已经成为强游戏的工具，鼓励用户投入时间并且不断回到游戏中。他们为成功收获作物感到兴奋，为未定时收获而遭受的损失感到担忧。这种方法也可以运用到其他题材游戏上，比如在Playdom的游戏《Social City》中，玩家选择让他们的工厂生产某种货物便属于做了个约定。

需要注意的是，通过游戏经济平衡方法，这个机制带来的影响可能被显著地放大或减少。在游戏中，用户成功收获便能取得丰厚的回报，失败会受到惩罚，因而用户就会积极地及时回到游戏中收获作物。当然，对于那些未达成约定的玩家，农场死气沉沉的体验和空空如也的银行账户可能也会让他们离开游戏。

限制游戏行为

让用户再次参与到社交游戏中的某个老方法是限制用户玩游戏的时间。这种方法此前在RPG游戏中较为流行，如Playdom的游戏《Sorority Life》。此项机制给予玩家一定数量的“能量”和其他类似的资源，他们可以每天花费这些资源。玩家在游戏中做出的每次行动都会耗费资源，而这些资源将随时间缓慢得到补充。当玩家用完能量后，他们别无选择，只能停止游戏进程或花钱重新填充他们的能量值。随后当他们回到游戏中（游戏邦注：12或24小时后），能量值就会回满。

从某种程度上来说，这很像可下载游戏设计师熟悉的手法。60分钟的体验足够让玩家对游戏感到兴奋，但还不足以彻底满足用户的渴求心态。当然，在典型的可下载游戏中，设计师只需要用一次这种方法，确保用户能在60分钟间发现游戏的价值所在。社交游戏设计师需要确保他们的游戏能够不断实现这个目标。目的在于让用户每天的游戏体验足以让他们回忆起享受的快乐，但不会让人在游戏中觉得疲劳或厌倦。游戏需要让用户带着极具吸引力的目标完成每天的任务，而且这个目标不能实现。

能量的存在还有其他有趣的目的。首先，因为其限制了核心的游戏操作（游戏邦注：这些恰恰是用户最想要的），如果让玩家可以互相输送能量（游戏邦注：或者向他们的好友索取能量），这就成了有效的病毒性行为。而且，当玩家用于核心游戏操作的能量花光时，他们可能转向游戏其他更具病毒性或社交性的内容，比如与其他玩家对战等。

让事物萎靡不振

让东西消散的设计策略是定时再参与机制的变体，但有许多显著的差异。首先，决定用户何时回到游戏中的是游戏而不是用户。其实，用户的主要驱动力通常不是在作物成熟时获得收成，而是为了防止游戏陷入混乱。第三，如果用户回到游戏中的间隔时间过长，他们不会看到东西死亡，而会看到他们所关心的东西感觉很不舒心。

这项机制始于宠物游戏，甚至可以追溯到《Tamagochi》。在这款游戏中，用户必须喂养、训练和照顾宠物，确保它快乐活泼并能够参加许多活动。游戏本身决定了宠物健康值和快乐值衰减的速度。及时回到游戏中的用户会发现他们的宠物快乐、健康并为活动做好准备。等待时间过长的玩家不仅会发现他们的朋友已经在排行榜上领先，还会看到他们的宠物沮丧、浑身发臭和饥饿，让这些玩家产生内疚感。

为使这项技术发挥作用，重点在于为玩家所忽视的实体需要让人情感上反响强烈。角色、模型或属地的荒废必须能激起强烈的情感响应。这也是此项机制最通常被用于宠物或其他动物上的原因所在，如Playfish游戏《Pet Society》中的宠物。我们也能看到各种游戏中应用这种方式来呈现出玩家的状态，但这种情况不甚常见且对情感的运用也较差。

在下面内容中，我们将发掘那些赋予游戏社交性的元素，让玩家觉得他们是在和朋友一起玩游戏（游戏邦注：即便有时他们的朋友并不在游戏中）并通过游戏构建他们之间的联系。

在2010年的Casual Connect大会上，我提到了如何塑造一款游戏以减少它的玩家损耗率的方法，游戏开发者如果能够利用一些特别的技巧，将有助于拉近玩家与游戏间的联系，并使玩家愿意成为该款游戏的回头客，甚至是常客。

我们将在这篇文章中谈论社交游戏设计的一个有趣的方面，即利用社交图形数据将能使玩家感受到社交游戏的独特魅力。毕竟，社交性仍然是社交游戏的独到之处。游戏开发者通过获取玩家的社交图形数据，制造出有趣的社交游戏供玩家和亲友交流，游戏。

社交性是社交游戏的独到之处。游戏开发者通过获取玩家的社交图形数据，制造出有趣的社交游戏供玩家和亲友交流，游戏。

但是令人惊讶的是，早前，在Facebook平台上的很多游戏开发者都是通过使用社交图形数据制造游戏的。虽然不知道原因，但是我希望，当一个游戏开发者在Facebook的游戏领域越来越有经验时，他将能够更加娴熟地使用社交图形数据制造出更有质量的游戏。尽管事实往往并非如此。当然了，也许是因为很多社交游戏开发者投入了太多时间和精力于研究制造有趣的单人游戏，而慢慢脱离了社交游戏的社会关联性。或许是因为他们所制造的社交游戏比起现在的病毒式传播渠道，更适合早前Facebook上的病毒式传播渠道（游戏邦注：如今已经不复存在了），而开发者也仍未找出相应的解决方法。

创造友好的竞争关系

《Sorority Life》的排行榜是面向所有游戏玩家而不只是玩家朋友的。每一个社交游戏玩家都希望能够赢得游戏，并向他人炫耀自己的成绩。而游戏开发者更需要深入了解玩家的这些小情绪。从很早之前开始，人类一直都是一个好竞争的族群，没有一个人不想知道最优秀的赢家是谁。

像很多网页游戏一样，如今很多社交游戏也提供给玩家一个这样的平台，让他们能够与全世界的玩家进行游戏较量。Playdom的角色扮演游戏《Sorority Life》就是一个典型的例子。这种类型的竞争更是深得硬核游戏玩家的喜爱，他们会投入大量的时间和金钱于游戏中，并努力争取取得游戏的胜利。但是这种类型的游戏并不能使其凸显于所有的社交游戏中。

相反的，社交游戏开发者为那些休闲游戏玩家创造了一种新型高分榜单——好友积分排行榜，这个新榜单可以说是社交网站中所独有的功能。

Plyfish的排行榜使他们早期的游戏具有了更多的社交性，同时也帮助他们吸引到了更多的游戏玩家，提高了游戏的用户粘性。这个排行榜只显示了玩家朋友们的分数，并未展示出所有玩家的分数。这种排行榜虽然不能激励玩家朝着世界最强游戏玩家目标前进，但是比起传统的游戏榜单，它具有2个独特的优点。首先，比起只成就一名玩家成为世界上最强的游戏玩家，这种游戏能让更多的游戏玩家在自己的朋友圈中享有这种荣誉。其次，在这种朋友排行榜中，当玩家的排名超过朋友时，他们将感受到一种更为强烈的个人情感。在Playfish的排行榜中设有一些经过高度抛光的“胜利动画”，每当玩家在榜单中超越朋友的排名时，这些动画就会跳出页面。Playfish的这种做法使他们早期的社交游戏（诸如《Geo Challenge》）更加具有社交游戏的特性。通过朋友排行榜，玩家能够在朋友圈中炫耀自己的成绩，并因此提高了他们对该款游戏的粘附性。朋友排行榜在整个社交游戏内非常盛行。

Serious Business旗下的《好友买卖》是早期Facebook上最火爆的一款游戏。这款游戏非常简单。正如名字所述，在游戏中，玩家必须通过出售或买进好友以换取游戏币进行游戏。如果你拥有属于自己的好友，你便能得到他们所创造的“收益”，即越昂贵的好友能够为你创造越多的利益。每次好友被买入时收益就会增加，而当他被卖出时，收益也会相应减少。

在这款游戏中，每一位玩家都能浏览好友的资料设置，了解他们当前的花费、昵称、所有者、追随者和个人宠物等资料，这种设置使玩家能够深深感受到社交游戏的社交性。该款游戏还允许玩家能够在游戏中与好友“打情骂俏”甚至是对好友表述“我拥有你了”等言论。游戏的设置能够帮助玩家进一步了解好友在游戏中的社会地位，包括人气和吸引力等，而这些对于玩家出售好友换取利益来说是非常重要的。

游戏开发者很聪明，他们知道只靠游戏中的交互性并不能完全打败其他竞争者，他们利用在各种各样的社交游戏功能上多添加一些核心元素，使他们的社交游戏更具有市场竞争力。

其他社交游戏功能

在游戏《好友买卖》中，玩家能够赠送虚拟礼物给好友，并通过一些社交姿态与好友进行沟通。

除了最基本的好友市场外，《好友买卖》还有3个额外的社交游戏功能，即给好友取绰号，送礼物和支配好友。取绰号功能使玩家们能够给自己所拥有的好友取一个特别的名称。送礼物功能使玩家能够使用游戏币购买虚拟礼物送给所拥有的好友。而支配好友功能则使玩家能够随意挑选2个所拥有的好友，通过使用一些虚拟动作创造出一个好友为另一个好友服务的场景。通过这些功能，玩家能够真真切切体验与好友间的交流，不仅包括打情骂俏，还包括由衷而发的钦佩感。这种功能使玩家们对于这种简单却能帮助他们更好的表达自己想法的游戏心生好感。

《好友买卖》的各种功能同时也激发了Facebook平台上沉默已久的“通知”功能，推动了这款游戏在该平台上的病毒式传播。当玩家被好友购买时，他将会收到通知报告，这个报告窗口有可能会吸引玩家点开页面以了解好友对他的估价。可以说，这是Facebook平台上最好也是最有效的建立于好奇心基础上的病毒式传播方法。

迫使好友与之互动

在《Parking Wars》这款抢车位游戏中，每一个玩家的行动都具有社交性。

Area/Code旗下的《Parking Wars》在Facebook上取得了非凡的成绩。这个游戏并未出现病毒式传播，也未有持续发展的走向，开发者并未采取任何市场营销策略，也不曾企图从它身上捞到任何利益。这款游戏是由一家小型独立游戏开发公司所制造的，他们最初的目的是制造一款帮助大型传统媒体公司做宣传的广告游戏，而且这家开发公司也从未在Facebook上发行过任何一款游戏。但是，这种种的障碍并未阻碍这款游戏的走红。持续几个月时间里，这款游戏一直保持着稳定的增长趋势，并成为了早期Facebook平台上用户留存率最高的游戏。

这款游戏很简单。在游戏中，每位玩家在每条街道上都拥有5个停车位和两辆车。玩家可以把车子停在朋友街道上的空位。游戏中，停车位不限制任何款式的车和任何型号的车，但是当玩家在停车时却有可能出现违法停车现象。游戏中的标记会随时更新，所以当玩家在停车时有可能因为不注意而违反了规定。如果玩家能在游戏开始的12个小时内就找到车位，那么他的车子就会升值。玩家可以随时取回自己拥有的车子，并用其赚取利益。但是如果玩家非法停车，其他玩家可以向其开罚单，并获取他所拥有的车子的价值。对于很多玩家来说，能像真正的车主那样收到罚单是很有趣的，同时玩家还能够在在罚单信息上添加一些个人信息（游戏邦注：这种方法是Facebook现在所使用的新闻对话框的启示之一）。

这款游戏的不可思议之处就在于，尽管玩家参与游戏的时间不同（即玩家不需要为了相互交流而同时在线游戏），但是它却却可以称得上是一款大型多人游戏。在游戏中，玩家能够继续进行游戏的唯一方法就是把车子停在朋友的街道上，并让朋友把他们的车子停在自己的街道上。当玩家在朋友的街道上驰骋着找空停车位时，他能趁机观看朋友页面的布置，并短暂思考一下他们的朋友关系。而给朋友开罚单也会让玩家体会到一种胜利感，而如果能够扯掉朋友在对你开出的罚单上所做的评述，对于玩家来说也是一个很诱人的游戏目标。如果想赢得这个游戏，玩家就必须仔细思考朋友是如何进行游戏的，且哪一个朋友最有可能突然出现给他下罚单。

总结

似乎，比起现在的社交游戏，早期的社交游戏具备有更多的社交性，但是我希望以后的社交游戏能够同时具备现在社交游戏的个人游戏玩法以及早期社交游戏的社会关联性。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Fundamentals of Social Game Design. Part One: Reducing Churn

David Rohrl

There is a lot of excitement about social games in the casual gaming community, and for a good reason. Social games are quick to build, often fun to play, growing rapidly, and generating real revenue. Many casual game producers and designers are making the transition from the casual download world into the social gaming space and expecting it to be straightforward. After all, there are a lot of commonalities. The audience is online, mass market, unstintingly casual, and often very pink. They love short play sessions and easy, steady success. Themes like restaurants and farms resonate in both places.

But the transition is often much more challenging than expected. The category itself is emergent and rapidly changing, and much of the design and production process is very counterintuitive for people who have been working in packaged goods (or casual downloadable games). This is the first in a series of articles that will walk you through some of the most interesting and important lessons I’ve learned in my two-plus years in social gaming.

Designing To Reduce Churn

Unlike traditional game design, almost all elements of social-game design should be done with a business objective in mind. In most categories in the game industry, once you’ve understood your audience’s psychographics and made sure you comply with a few core market requirements (like driving your player past the 60-minute trial barrier), you can put all of your focus on making a fun game.

In social games, this just isn’t the case. Your game needs to drive a variety of important user behaviors that are important for the health of your business. Many of these require very carefully thought-out design, high levels of platform integration, and massive iteration to get right. Three of the most critical metrics that any social gaming business needs to watch are churn, growth, and reactivation. Of course, revenue is an important goal as well, but it’s important to realize that positive developments in churn, growth, and reactivation will result in “compound interest”—growing your user base while ensuring that each player helps you acquire more users. If done well, this will cause exponential growth until your game begins to saturate its market. Positive developments in revenue, on the other hand, can only give you linear payoffs. Getting each user to pay more money doesn’t give you any advantage in terms of getting more players into the game every day.

As the game designer on a social game, your first and most comfortable job will be reducing churn. This is the part of the work that looks the most like traditional game design. Of course, one of the key ways of keeping users coming back is to build a fun game. If your game isn’t pleasurable to play, it will be very, very challenging to get users to come back to it. And fun is no easier to build in a social game than in a casual downloadable—harder, perhaps, because your game needs to fit in a much smaller package, reducing the emphasis on production value.

There are a number of well-established techniques that have emerged to get users to return to your game on a regular basis, turning them from samplers into players, and eventually (you hope) into payers. Among the most important of these design tenets are: Using timed re-engagement; Limiting game-play; Letting things decay.

Using Timed Re-Engagement

One of the most popular techniques that a variety of social games employ to bring users back regularly is known as “appointment gaming” or “harvesting.” This mechanic was first seen in a number of farm-themed games, including Slashkey’s Farm Town, the game that started the farming genre on Facebook. Over time, the mechanic has made its way into a variety of games, including city-builders, pet-care games, and many others.

In this mechanic, users pay to plant a crop which will mature at a specific time. Until that time, the user cannot claim the reward. After that time, the user can claim the reward for a period of time. In many but not all games, the crop “withers” after that time and becomes uncollectible.

This has become a potent device for encouraging users to make a commitment to playing the game and to returning over and over. They are excited about the reward of a successful harvest and concerned about the loss they will incur if the miss their appointment. The metaphor is also widely extensible; in Playdom’s Social City game, players make an appointment when they choose a good for their factory to produce.

It is worth noting that the impact of this mechanic can be amplified or lessened very significantly by the way the game’s economy is balanced. In games where the user’s pocketbook is greatly rewarded for a successful harvest and takes a punishing blow on failure, users are highly motivated to return to the game in time to harvest their crops. Of course, for users that fail to keep the appointment, the experience of seeing a dead farm and an empty bank account may be the motivation they need to stop playing.

Limiting Game-play

One of the oldest methods of driving re-engagement with social games is limiting the amount of time the user can spend playing in a given session. This convention has been popular in RPG’s like Playdom’s Sorority Life game. This mechanic gives the player a certain amount of “energy” and other similar resources that they can expend each day. Each action that the player takes in the game expends a certain amount of resources, which slowly replenish over time. When players run out of energy, they have no choice but to stop playing for the day or to spend money to refill their energy. Then when they come back some time (say 12 or 24 hours) later, they will have another full load of energy to expend.

In many ways, this is like the downloadable game designer’s familiar trick of making sure that the 60-minute trial is a strong enough experience to get the player excited about the game but not quite enough to thoroughly satisfy the user’s desire to play. Of course, in a typical downloadable game the designer only needs to pull this trick off once—making sure that there is clear bait for additional value out past the 60-minute mark. Social game designers need to ensure that their games are balanced to deliver on this goal continually. Every day, users should play the game enough to remind themselves of what they enjoy but not enough for the game to feel tired or tedious. They should finish their daily session with a highly appealing goal in sight but not in reach.

Energy serves a couple of other interesting purposes. First, because it limits core game-play (which is what the user most desires), allowing players to send each other energy (or ask their friends for energy) can be a highly viral activity. Also, when players run out of the energy they need for their core game-play, they may be nudged into other aspects of your game that are more viral or social, such as fighting other players.

Letting Things Decay

The design strategy of letting things decay is a variant on the Timed Re-Engagement mechanic, with a couple of key differences. First of all, it is typically the game rather than the user that chooses the time period when the user will next need to come back. Second, the user’s main motivation is generally not to claim a reward when a crop matures, but rather to revive a system that has sunk into chaos. Third, if the user waits too long to return to the game, instead of finding that something has actually died, they will typically see something they care about looking or feeling really haggard on their return.

This mechanic originated in pet games—even as far back as Tamagochi, in which the user must typically feed, groom, and otherwise care for a pet in order to make it look happy and playful and able to engage in a full range of activities. The game itself determined at what speed the pets’ levels of health and happiness would deteriorate. Users who came back in time would find their pets happy, health, and ready for action. Players who stayed away too long would find not only that their friends had passed them on the leader board, but also that their pets were sad, smelly, and hungry, playing hard to their sense of guilt.

For this technique to work at all, it’s very important that the neglected entity resonate very strongly with the player’s emotions. There must be a strong emotional reaction to seeing the avatar/homunculus/possession in distress. This is one of the reasons that this mechanic has been applied most often to pets or other animals, like the pets in Playfish’s Pet Society. We have seen some applications used in various games to represent the state of a player’s business, but this is a less common and less emotional application of this technique.

Next Installment

In our next installment, we’ll take a look at design elements that help make games socially relevant—the things that you can do to make players feel like they’re playing with their friends (even when they’re not) and building their relationships by playing your game. (Source: Casual Connect)

Fundamentals of Social Game Design. Part Two: Social Relevance | By David Rohrl

by Yulia Vakhrusheva

In the previous issue of Casual Connect (see Summer 2010 issue), I wrote about ways of shaping your game to reduce churn—particularly techniques that build a closer bond between your user and your game by requiring the user to come back to the game day after day.

In this installment, we’ll look at one of the most interesting aspects of social game design: using social graph data to make your game feel socially relevant to players. After all, the really unique aspect of social games is that they are social—they have access to their players’ social graph data and can use it in interesting ways to create games that are fundamentally about playing with friends.

The really unique aspect of social games is that they are social—they have access to their players’ social graph data and can use it in interesting ways to create games that are fundamentally about playing with friends.

Surprisingly, some of the games that made the most interesting use of social graph data were among the very earliest games on Facebook. I’m not sure why this is – you would expect that as developers got more experienced at making Facebook games, their ability to use social data in really interesting ways would mature as well, but it just hasn’t been the case. Of course, this might be because social-game-makers have been spending a lot of time and energy learning to make fun, solid single-player games and have focused less on making them social.  Or maybe it’s because these types of social game-play worked incredibly well with some older Facebook viral channels that no longer exist and developers haven’t yet figured out how to make them as effective in the current viral channels.

Creating Friendly Rivalry

Sorority Life’s leaderboard shows all players, not just your friends.
One of social game players’ most significant social emotions is a desire to be dominant and show off their prowess. This has been a fundamental part of the game maker’s tool-kit since well before the creation of games on social networks. Ever since humans started competing, people have wanted to know who the best players are.

Of course, many social games let players see how they stack up against all the players in the world, just like the many non-social web games. This is particularly common in text RPG’s like Playdom’s Sorority Life. This mode of competition is particularly relevant to very hardcore players who are willing to spend large amounts of time and/or money to become elite players. But there is nothing about this type of feature that makes it unique to social games.

On the other hand, social game developers have created a new style of high score list that is much more relevant to casual players and is much more unique to social networks—the friend leader-board.

PlayFish’s leaderboard animations gave their early games a more social feel and made them stickier than competitive products.
It shows only the scores of the player’s friends, not the scores of all players. Climbing this type of high score list may not give a player the same intense feelings of accomplishment that becoming the world’s top player does, but it has two huge advantages over traditional leader-boards. First, instead of letting only one player in the world enjoy being in first place, it lets many players get excited about being tops in their own personal worlds. Second, a friend leader-board lets players feel a strong and personal emotion each time they pass one of their friends on the board. Playfish used a friend leader-board supported by highly polished victory animations when players passed their friends’ scores and it turned their early social games like Geo Challenge into social gaming phenomena. Players’ drive to gain bragging rights over their friends made these games hugely sticky, and friend leader-boards have since become nearly universal among social games.

Using Friends as Game Tokens

Serious Business’ Friends for Sale was one of the monster hits of the early days of Facebook. The game was extremely simple. As the title would suggest, you could buy

Friends for Sale requires you to buy and sell your friends to advance in the game.

your Facebook friends (or at least representations of your friends) for in-game currency. Friends produced income for you as long as you owned them; the more expensive the friend, the more income he or she produced. Each time a person was purchased, the price would go up, giving a nice profit to the player he or she was “stolen” from and providing a cash bonus to the person being purchased.

This core game-play gave the game an amazingly social feel; every interaction in the game involved looking at the profile of a friend. The most basic activities in the game allowed the players to express a wide range of relationships and social emotions through the game, from flirting to a (fairly literal) “I own you” statement. The game’s mechanics also encouraged you to think deeply about your friends’ social status—each friend’s popularity, activity (and attractiveness) was critical to your ability to sell them for a profit.

And the game’s developers were smart enough to make sure they didn’t just stop at the basic interactions. They used this brilliant core of social game-play to add a variety of powerfully expressive social features and killer virals.

Additional Social Features

Friends for Sale allows you to give virtual gifts and make other social gestures to your purchased friends.

Friends for Sale had three main additional social features beyond the basic friend marketplace: nicknames, gifting, and puppeting. Nicknames allowed you to set a tagline for any friends you owned. Gifting allowed you to spend game currency on virtual gifts for the friends you owned. Puppeting allowed you to pick two owned friends and a variety of verbs to create a viral suggesting that one friend had taken action on another (example: “Dave Rohrl shook hands with Jessica Tams”). Players used these features to express a variety of socially relevant feelings—everything from taunting to flirting to admiration. These features greatly enhanced players’ enjoyment of a very simple game by allowing them to further express themselves.

Friends for Sale also featured some of the most intriguing virals in the business—especially in the era of the silent Facebook notification. Whenever you were purchased, you received a notification reporting who had purchased you and encouraging you to click into the game to see how much your friend thought you were worth. It was one of the best and most potent curiosity-based virals in the history of the platform.

Forcing Friend Interactions

Every player action in Parking Wars involves a social interaction.

Area/Code’s Parking Wars was a highly unusual success story on Facebook. It was a game with virtually no virals, little or no ongoing development, virtually no marketing, and no attempt at a revenue stream. It was built by a small independent developer as an advergame for a large traditional media company, and neither company had meaningful experience on Facebook. Despite all of these handicaps, it showed steady, consistent growth for many months and was a huge early leader in player retention.

The core game was very simple. Each player had a street with five parking spots on it and two cars. (Players unlocked more cars as they leveled up.) Players could park their cars in empty parking spots on their friends’ streets. Parking spaces could be legal for any car, legal for certain types of car, or off limits to all cars, and players could park their cars legally or illegally. Signs would also update randomly from time to time, so that cars could become legal or illegal while they sat. Cars would increase in value over time for the first 12 hours they were parked. The car owner could retrieve the car at any time and earn some cash. But if the car was parked illegally, the lot owner could also ticket it and steal the car’s value from the car owner. Handing out tickets as a lot owner was fun and satisfying (as was silently slipping out of a space in a friend’s lot before being ticketed), and players were able to add a personal message to the ticket message. (This may have been one of the inspirations for Facebook’s current newsfeed dialog.)

A big part of the game’s magic was that it managed to be heavily multiplayer even while being completely asynchronous (players did not need to be online at the same time in order to interact). The only ways to advance in the game were to park on your friends’ streets and get them to park on yours. Surfing a friend’s street to find a place to park got you to look at your friend’s profile picture and muse briefly on the friend and your relationship. Ticketing your friend felt like a personal victory, and it was hugely tempting to tear off a juicy taunt in the ticket’s comment field. And to be really dominant in the game, you had to think carefully about how your friends were playing the game and who was least likely to come around in time to ticket you.

Parting Thoughts

Although it seems like many early social games did a better job of creating highly socially relevant game-play than the games that came after them, I’m hopeful that the next generation of social games will combine the great single-player game-play that we’re seeing in on the platform today with some of the great social relevance we saw in the early days of social gaming. And in the next article we’ll take a look at something that social games have gotten much, much better at over the last couple of years: allowing players to collaborate asynchronously.（source:casualconnect）