作者：Neil Vidyarthi

“社交游戏”之所以得名，是因为它们具备那些鼓励玩家与好友互动的一系列元素。社交游戏玩家需以多种方式同现实世界中的好友互动，他们希望在游戏中彼此竞争、协作、炫耀或是开玩笑地嘲弄好友。为了让大家更清楚地了解“社交游戏”的“社交”之处，本文将归纳7项任何社交游戏都不可或缺的基本要素。

cityville(from cityville-cash.blogspot.com)

1.现实好友列表

社交游戏的最重要特色在于用户的现实好友列表。当我邀请好友玩游戏，或者查看积分排行榜时，我就可以在社交网络上看到个人好友状态。这也正是今天的社交游戏与过去社交游戏的显著区别之一，后者通常让用户与其他随机出现的用户进行互动，虽然这对一些玩家来说感觉不错，但不可否认的是，我们与现实好友共同竞争或彼此合作时更能获得深度的社交体验。如果玩家是在Facebook平台或者通过Facebook Connect玩游戏，他们就可以邀请现实好友同共参与，从而强化双方的游戏体验。

2.赠礼功能

当今社交游戏的一大核心元素就是支持玩家购买礼物送给好友。无论是在《FarmVille》中提醒好友注意走丢的动物，在《Mafia Wars》的桌上递过一杯酒，还是在《Pet Society》中为他人买一个新沙发，赠送礼物俨然已成为社交游戏中最受欢迎的活动之一。这一功能出现的历史可以追溯到早期的Facebook应用平台，当时的“kisses”和“superpoke”是这一平台头号热门游戏，其功能也主要围绕向对方发送付费礼物而设置。Facebook网站本身也有一个赠礼机制，据统计该网站用户每年要发送1亿份付费礼物（游戏邦注：总价值约1亿美元）。赠送礼物当属社交游戏的一大特产，是所有社交游戏都不会遗漏的功能。

3.积分排行榜

几乎每款社交游戏都有个一直可视的积分排行榜。我是在2008年末的Playfish游戏《Who Has the Biggest Brain》首次见识积分排行榜这一功能。每名用户开始玩游戏时总会先看看积分排行榜，看自己的积分是否超现实好友的排名，通常情况下，这个排行榜总会特别突出前三甲的积分。在《WHTBB》这类IQ比拼游戏中，积分排行榜功能无疑可极大增加玩家的竞争意识：如果你和好友一块玩游戏，就可以看看究竟谁更聪明绝顶。这种Playfish式的积分排行榜在今天的社交游戏中随处可见，它是深化游戏社交体验的重要功能。

4.挑战机制

当我在2008年初玩《Jetman》的时候，挑战元素让我初次感受到了社交游戏的威力。《JetMan》是我所见过的最简单的游戏，其玩法包括摁住一个按钮启动Jetman的喷汽车，让他盘旋飞越一个洞穴。最棒的地方在于游戏的结尾之处，系统会询问我是否将用这个得分挑战好友。所以我马上点击确认，与我的表兄弟正式开战，并将这场竞赛推向白热化的高潮。在我看来，这种挑战元素与玩法设置同样重要：我们都很迷恋与对方斗争的感觉，甚至忽略了游戏的真正趣味所在。挑战机制几乎遍及今天的任何一款社交游戏。

5.信息发送

Facebook已为玩家提供多种沟通和聊天的途径，开发者需根据这些消息系统来设置游戏过程中的信息交流机制。例如在《Pet Society》中，玩家可以相互发送短消息给对方。这种短消息会以一个小信封的形式出现在接收者的门前，这种有型的小物件其实也多少发挥了一点“礼物”的功能，成为社交游戏“赠礼”元素的一种辅助和补充。玩家喜欢通过一些方式与对方互动，即便是只在对方的Facebook粉丝页面创造一个话题，也有助于拉近双方的距离。

6.组队功能

与好友组队当然也是社交游戏的一大招牌特点，虽然它并非所有社交游戏的必具元素，但我们相信它必将扮演更为重要的角色。《Mafia Wars》这种游戏高度依赖“帮派”这种让玩家并肩作战完成任务，共同赢取奖励的组队形式。这种组队功能在社交游戏中发挥的作用仍然极为有限，在你的帮派中拥有一些战友也不过意味着当你需要帮助时，会有一些人自动加入你的行列，但随着“帮派”类游戏的发展，这种机制还会进行演变。希望未来的游戏还会衍生各种“帮派”变体，要求玩家完成特殊使命，这样就可以有效引进各种新玩家。

7.个性化设置

社交游戏的一个重要社交特征就是支持玩家装饰自己的虚拟形象、住宅或房间以向他人展示炫耀一番。这种鼓励玩家展现自我，让他们分享对方创意的功能，有助于增强他们的社交体验。想想看，假如《Pet Society》不允许你自行设计房间，向好友秀出自己的创意，这款游戏还会有趣吗？我在《FarmVille》中构建农场的重要目的之一就是向好友亮出自己的设计和个人风格。总而言之，个性化设置这一元素仍将随着社交游戏的发展而增加其深度，未来的玩家不但将可向好友展现自己的艺术修养，而且还能为他们设计游戏关卡等自创的新鲜玩意。

游戏邦注：原文发稿于2010年7月13日，所涉事件及数据以当时为准。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

7 Features That Should Be In Every Social Game

By Neil Vidyarthi

To be known as a “social game”, games need to have a number of elements that encourage player engagement amongst friends. Players need to be able to interact with their real world friends in many ways: they want to compete, cooperate, show off to and taunt friends. To better understand the ‘social’ in social games, we put together a list of the 7 elements that should be included in every social game.

Real Friends List

The most important feature of a social game is a user’s real-world friends list. So when I invite friends to play, or look at the leaderboard, I should be able to see my personal friends in my social network. This is one of the main aspects that make today’s “social games” different than social games of the past. It’s not like today’s social games are the first to use buddy lists and social features, but it used to be such that I was playing against random people that I had met within the game. That’s fun for certain players, but it’s hard to deny that being able to cooperate or compete with a real-world friend is a stronger social experience. This feature is activated by ensuring your game is a Facebook application or uses Facebook Connect, so players can import their real world friends.

Gifting

One of the key elements of today’s social games is the ability to buy gifts for your friends. Whether it is alerting friends’ to stray animals in Farmville, handing a drink across the table in Mafia Wars or buying someone a new couch in Pet Society, gifting is one of the most popular activities available. This can be traced to the early days of the Facebook application platform as well, when applications like “kisses” and “superpoke” were the top games in the network and pretty much revolved around sending premium gifts to one another. Facebook itself has a gifting element to the site, and estimates have them sending around 100 million paid gifts per year (at a revenue of $100 million!). Gifting is certainly a staple of social games, and should be included in any title.

Leaderboards

Almost any social game you play today will have some sort of always-present leaderboard. I first knew leaderboards had a strong social element when I saw them on Who Has the Biggest Brain by Playfish in late 2008. Every player that would start the game would inevitably look down at the leaderboard and realized where their high score ranked amongst their real friends, and the leaderboard also highlighted the overall top three. In an IQ comparison game like WHTBB, this fostered an extreme sense of competition that was almost inescapable: if you played the game, you were in a competition with your friends to see who was smarter. This type of Playfish leaderboard has now been used across every game, and rightly so, as it makes every game session a social experience.

Challenges

Challenges were the first feature that alerted me to the power of social games, and that was when I played Jetman in early 2008. The game itself was one of the simplest I’d ever played, and gameplay consisted of holding down a button to turn on Jetman’s jets and allow him to hover through a cave. The great thing was, at the end of every game, I was asked whether I wanted to use this score to challenge a friend. So within one click, I was having a head to head competition with my cousin halfway across the world, and the rivalry got heated. It almost seemed like the challenge element was as important as the gameplay: we were so obsessed with beating each other that it wasn’t even important whether the game was any fun. Challenges have been implemented in almost every game available today, and need to be part of any social games experience.

Messaging

Having chat and messaging within the game is a delicate proposition in Facebook. Since players already have many means by which to contact each other, through the Facebook chat and message systems, designers need to ask how they want to control messaging in gameplay. In Pet Society, users have the ability to send small text notes to one another. An incoming messages appears as a small envelope that rests by the door of the recipients’ house. The fact that these are small tangible objects give the messaging a bit of a ‘gift’ feel, and serves to reinforce the gifting element of social games as well. Players need to have some way to contact each other, and even if that means creating a discussion board on your Facebook fan page, it needs to be easy for players to know how they should be reaching out to others.

Teams

Grouping together with friends is certainly a staple of social games, and while it’s not a particularly involved element of many social games at this point, it will likely evolve into a more important feature. Games like Mafia Wars rely strongly on the ideas of “mafias”, which are groups of players that help each other complete missions to gain experience and gold. The teamwork in the game is still minimal, and just having someone in your mafia means that they will automatically join you when you need it, but that dynamic may change as the ‘mafia’ type games evolve. I would like to see something like a mafia relying on the diversity of its mafia to complete special missions, so that actively recruiting new types of players is encouraged.

Customization

In a social game it is an important social feature to be able to customize your avatar, your house or your room to show off to others. The point here being that the expression of individuality is something that adds to the social experience, so that players can enjoy their friends’ creations. What would Pet Society be if you couldn’t design your room to look the way you want it, and show it to your friends? My choices of how I structure my farm in Farmville are sometimes directly related to sharing that design with my friends, and showing off my personal style. This is a social element that increases with time as the games increase in complexity. Players will be customizing more than just aesthetic elements, for instance designing levels for other players.（source:socialtimes）