作者：Paul

之前我们有谈到掌机时代尚未结束，微软Kinect、Playstation 3和Wii将重写游戏规则。今天我们就来谈谈社交游戏，一探其未来1年的发展趋势。

首先是最近出现的社交游戏动态，我将以游戏切入剖析当前该领域的发展态势。以下是3大切入点：

1. 游戏领域将如何进行创新

2. 掌机游戏灵活性不及社交游戏

3. 增强真实感：现实和虚拟世界融为一体

Farmville from innovatrs.com

《Farmville》是再典型不过的例子，其活跃用户将近5000万，是Facebook最受欢迎的应用之一。

《Farmville》最新发展是社交游戏何以称作掌机游戏劲敌的最好说明。游戏增加新等级，融入充满动植物的英国乡村，其中生长于“付费英国土壤”的作物成长更迅速。

开发者为将游戏“英国化”，融入了英国村舍和传统警察岗亭（游戏邦注：不妨想想Tardis）。

这是Zynga首次将游戏本土化。

社交游戏本土化

这令掌机平台望尘莫及。社交游戏开发商推出新版本的速度更快（更具成本效益），能够及时跟进现实变化。

这次调整虽然算不上什么惊天动地的变化，完全能够想象，但人们可以从中一窥未来社交游戏的发展面貌。尤其是手机设备的社交游戏。

在《Farmville》中增加英国乡村等级随还算不上所谓的增强真实感，但通过使用社交定位技术，我们能够在“本土化”游戏当中融入更多相关内容。

就像之前提到的添加新等级的《Paranormal Activity: Sanctuary》，玩家能够使用旧金山真实街道参与虚拟战斗，我们可以看到《Farmville》玩家偏好伦敦郊区地块（游戏邦注：或者是Clapham Common转换成虚拟农场）。

所以将增强真实感游戏融入Foursquare，然后再添加某些类似《Farmville》的典型社交游戏机制，这就是我们的发展方向。还有借助3D技术。

这或许还不足以震慑EA，但其至少有受到些许撼动。

游戏邦注：原文发布于2011年3月18日，文章叙述以当时为背景。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Innovation in gaming: Farmville’s leading the way…

By Paul

It’s been a busy (and insightful, if we don’t say so ourselves…) week here on Innovatrs.

The gaming industry has been examined bottom-up and, starting on Monday, we looked at how social and mobile gaming are heralding true innovation.

This was followed on Tuesday by looking at how consoles aren’t quite dead yet, as Microsoft Kinect, Playstation 3 and the Wii are rewriting the gaming rulebooks. We dipped our toe back in the social gaming sphere on Wednesday with a look at some trends for the year ahead, and on Thursday we looked at how the gaming industry has set a very high-standard for itself in terms of innovation. How can it keep up all this good work? Here’s how.

Today, we thought we’d bring together some of the strands that have emerged this week and we’ll use a specific game to show how the industry is evolving just now. The three strands we’ll bring together are:

1. How the gaming industry will continue to innovate

2.Console games can’t match social gaming in terms of agility

3. Augmented reality: physical and virtual worlds are coming together

And what better game to look at than Farmville which, with almost fifty million active users, is Facebook’s most popular application.

Farmville’s latest development is a good case-in-point of why social gaming is a serious contender to the console’s gaming crown. A whole new level has been created which mimics the English countryside, including plants and animals, with the crops growing quicker due to ‘premium English soil’.

To properly ‘Anglify’ the game, English cottages and traditional police boxes (think ‘Tardis’) are included too.

And this is the very first time that Farmville’s creators – Zynga – has adapted any of its games for a specific country. See for yourself here:

Localised social gaming

This is something we’ll start seeing a lot more of in the months and years ahead. ‘Localised social gaming’, which helps developers target new gamers by making games that are more relevant to their specific regions.

This is something consoles can’t really compete with. It’s far quicker – and more cost-effective – for social gaming developers to launch new versions of games, or update them if any changes happen to real-world locations represented within a game.

Whilst this latest Farmville adaption isn’t Earth-shattering by any stretch of the imagination, it does offer a window into the future of social gaming. In particular, social gaming played via a mobile device.

Adding an English countryside level to Farmville isn’t exactly what you’d call augmented reality, but by using social location technology, we will start seeing much more in the way of ‘localised’ gaming.

Just as we reported on Wednesday, where Paranormal Activity: Sanctuary was ‘layered’ to let gamers use the actual streets of San Francisco to engage in virtual battles, we could see Farmville-players tending to allotments in a London suburb, or Clapham Common transferred into a virtual farm.

So throw augmented reality games into a big melting pot alongside Foursquare, and sprinkle with some typical social gaming mechanics as seen in the likes of Farmville, and that’s likely to be where we’re heading. Oh, and let’s not forget about 3D either.

EA might not be quivering in its boots quite yet, but we’re pretty sure we saw at least a toe twitch. The future’s here…almost（Source：innovatrs）