作者：Adrian Chan

或许每款社交游戏都围绕着某个核心社会行动构建而成。社会行动构成用户个人经历的基础，随后产生富有吸引力且为人所熟悉的社会动力。

如果事实正如以上所述，那么我们可能就要想想如何设计社交游戏才能既增加核心体验又使其得以扩展（游戏邦注：与其他体验产生联系）。对《Empire》而言，这或许需要再开发出许多游戏内容方能实现，如内容传输（游戏邦注：有传言称这种内容即将出现，成员间控股将充当传输过滤器）。但是这种行为也可能使成员间通过购买股份建立起的关系纵向化，现在我们先不讨论这方面的内容。

empire_earth(from games.freetodownload.info)

《Empire》构建于基础社会行动之上。这些社会行动优先于资本化市场形成经济和各种文化中社会活动的基础，组织起以社会义务而非等值货币为中心的交易。礼物正属此类，人类学家Marcel Mauss于上世纪初首次将这种经济定义为“礼物经济”。

当然，《Empire》并非此类礼物经济。随着礼物经济逐渐运用于所有社会关系（游戏邦注：尤其是子女关系）中，事实上真正的礼物经济已不复存在。早期的礼物经济带有目的性，是组织人们礼仪性赠予和接收代用币及食物等物品的形式。

礼物经济的精湛之处在于它的本质与字面意思并不相同。赠礼不是慷慨大方的行为，而是种义务。赠礼能够产生债务，通过回赠礼物的形式来偿还。（游戏邦注：Mauss指出，向诸神供奉祭品也不属于慷慨、信仰或忠诚的行为，人们希望诸神能够以带来丰收的形式来偿还这笔债务。）

在《Empire》中，赠礼的形式是购买其他成员的股票。这是种核心社会行动而且非常有效（游戏邦注：这已是社交媒介行业公认的事实），因为这种行动能够说服他人根据互惠互利原则给予回报。也就是说，我买你的股票，然后你也买我的。

购买是种跟从并建立友谊的行为。互惠互利原则显然与游戏目的相契合，因为它能够自我复制并持续发展。这与交流相似，具有开放性而且无穷无尽，除非交流被禁止。

《Empire》中数字或价值对成员的意义使得此类购买股票的行为更加盛行。媒体时刻关注的是数字和取决于数字排名的定量化价值（游戏邦注：数字已不再只是数字，数字值代表的是社会地位）。《Empire》中的股价是“价值”的代名词，而且成为这款社交游戏强大的刺激因素。玩家有着自己的分数，玩游戏的目标在于获得更高的股价，也就是所谓更高的地位。

多数人很快就看透这一切，赠礼、股价和购买之类的行动都是自私自利的行为。这些行动本身并没有价值，因为由此产生的“价值”是不可交易的。你赚到的只是Eave（游戏邦注：《Empire》中所使用的货币）。但事实上那些继续玩游戏的人也很快就意识到上述问题，他们是出于其他原因继续玩游戏。这是将《Empire》造就成为有趣社交游戏的部分原因，值得他人学习。游戏的许多行为存在于游戏之外，Twitter及其他媒介上的聊天和组织等游戏外行为使其得到扩展。

上述结果显示，如果游戏核心行动能够刺激玩家参与，而且社交参与环境足够开放，允许其他相关行为产生，那么玩家会自然帮助扩展游戏。严格地说，关乎于此的是游戏可玩性而并非游戏设计。因为这些行为所包含的互动并非由设计师或游戏发明者设计而成。从本质上来说，所包含的互动与玩游戏的行为有关，而不是游戏规则、组织和资源的设计。多数游戏设计师专注于游戏设计，游戏规则和设计是设计师着眼之处，也是设计师能够掌控的方面。但好的可玩性有时候与游戏设计并无关联。

那么，我们从这款游戏中可以看出，关乎游戏的不仅是设计，玩家围绕游戏展开的互动是能够影响和扩展游戏核心社会行动的方式。注意到这个方面很有价值，因为许多人似乎都认为游戏可玩性源于游戏设计。事实上，社交游戏设计的关键在于核心社会行动及其与其他社会仪式的联系。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Social games, social actions, and gift economics

Adrian Chan

It’s possible that every social game is built around a core social action. A social action that forms the basis of individual user experiences, and which scales to produce a social dynamic that is entertaining, engaging, compelling, and familiar.

If this is the case, then we might ask how social games best iterate on their own design, not only to enhance a core experience, but to extend it also (connect it to other experiences). On empire, this might entail any number of game developments — such as a content feed (rumored to be coming, and to use shares owned in members as a feed filter). But also perhaps activities that might verticalize the many relationships members have enabled by purchasing shares. But I’ll leave speculation aside for now.

Empire is built on a very basic social action. An action so basic it formed the basis of economic and social activity in cultures prior to market capitalism — an action that organizes exchange around social obligation (instead of the equivalence of money). It’s gifting, and the economy first identified by anthropologist Marcel Mauss early last century is the “gift economy.”

Of course, Empire is not a gift economy as such. In fact there are no true gift economies any more, for the gift economy applies to all social relations, especially filial relations. Early gift economies served a purpose — organization of the exchange of people, tokens, food, and more, all by ritual giving and receiving.

The trick to the gift economy is that it’s not as it sounds. Gifts are not acts of generosity. They’re obligations. Gifts create debts, paid back in the form of a return gift. (Mauss noted that “sacrifices” made to gods were not acts of generosity, faith, or devotion either, but in fact attempts to oblige the gods to return the sacrificial gift in the form of plentiful harvests.)

Gifting on Empire takes the form of purchasing shares in another member. This is the core social action. It works so effectively (as anyone in social media knows already), because as an action it solicits return by the law/expectation/norm of reciprocity. I buy you, you buy me.

Purchasing is following, is friending, is re/tweeting. Reciprocity serves the purposes of game play well, obviously, because it’s self-reproducing and ongoing. Like communication (which it is), it is open and unfinished unless rejected. (Players who don’t buy back fail, which also means that game play requires ongoing game play.)

The attribution of a number, or value, to membership in Empire adds purpose to the activity of purchasing shares. Media are quasi-obsessed with numbers and with quantifying value by means of numerical ranking (numbers that are not just numbers, but which are social numbers, for their value signifies something else: status). One’s share price on Empire, then, is a reflection of one’s “value,” and this is as powerful a motivator (for better or worse) in social game as there is. The self is scored, the goal of gameplay is a higher score, which is to say, higher perceived status.

Most people see through this pretty quickly, because, like the action of giving, share price and purchasing are self-serving activities. They are worth nothing in any of themselves, because the value “created” is non-exchangeable. Eaves (Empire’s currency) is non-fungible. But those who continue to play the game recognize this soon enough, and continue for other reasons. Which is in part what makes Empire an interesting social game, and one worth studying. Much of its game play is extrinsic to the game. It involves activities outside the game, or in ways that extend the game – in chats, groups, on twitter, and so on.

All of which demonstrate that when the game’s core actions provide the impetus for participation, but in the context of social participation that is open enough to permit other related activities, players will invent ways to extend the game. This then is game play, not game design, strictly speaking. Because it involves interactions that are not designed by designers, or the game’s inventors. It involves interactions that are fundamentally about playing the game, rather than the design of the game’s rules, organization, and resources. Most game designers focus on game design, for obvious reasons. Game rules and design are the designers purview, and within the designer’s command and control. But good game play occurs around, sometimes even in spite of, game design.

So the lesson learned, then, is that there is a lot more to a game than its design, and that player interactions around a game demonstrate the ways in which the game’s core social action can be leveraged and extended. Worth taking note. Because a lot of people seem to think that a game design results in game play. In fact the key to social game design rests in core social actions — and their tendencies to connect other, latent, social rites, rituals, and pastimes. (Source: Gravity7)