作者：Giordano Bruno

纵观社交游戏的突发性发展及行业、新闻媒体随后投以的关注，可以说游戏兜了个圈又回到原点。多年来，游戏本身都具有社交性，通常都是和朋友共同体验。随后电脑开始诞生，通过它们，玩家20多年来大多是独自在昏暗的卧室里玩游戏，直到网络被广泛采用才改变这一趋势。网络令游戏开发者能够向玩家提供同匿名真人对手对抗的机会，虽然同好友共同体验依然需要复杂的操作，例如输入Xbox Live游戏标签，或任天堂的专门Friend Code。最后，社交网络给予游戏融入“社交图谱”的机会，这再现真实熟识玩家，以此突出基于合作和互惠的游戏机制，而非进行直接竞争。

monster galaxy from edge-online.com

下述看法清楚说明单独体验游戏及和陌生人共同玩游戏只是游戏发展过程的一个阶段，技术最终将把游戏带回其所属领域：社交活动同好友共同体验效果最佳。但现实情况更为复杂，手机游戏在此表现得最为明显。

手机游戏已变成最活跃，发展最迅速的行业分支，这主要归功于iOS和 Android操作系统，其拥有5亿左右的潜在用户，多数用户是这一休闲活动的新手玩家。但虽然手机游戏早期以单人游戏为主，但智能手机的“触手可及”性质令游戏开始转向社交连网模式。综合各种因素（游戏邦注：再来就是Facebook变成玩家社交图谱的主要选择，尤其是在西方国家），我们会发现手机社交游戏最天然的模式是搭载Facebook。

虽然Facebook是这一领域的重要元素，但这并非全部情况，因为事实证明很多玩家选择不透露自己的真实身份，选择不同真实朋友共同体验游戏。他们会担心自己的隐私，或者他们不希望好友知道自己整天都在玩游戏；无论如何这些玩家需要不同的模式，纵观游戏发展史，这个模式就变得显而易见。

早在“社交图谱”出现之前，游戏就存在“兴趣图谱”——大家觉得进行共同合作或竞争非常有趣，这带来共同兴趣，而这是有趣游戏体验的创建基础。总之：玩家1想要体验游戏；玩家2也想要体验同款游戏；玩家1和玩家2并不认识彼此，但存在相同的体验兴趣，而且水平相当。然后你们就变成“天造地设的一对”。或者至少是在在线FPS或其他竞争性游戏中配合很多次的日常伙伴。

我们所看到的及智能手机平台涌现众多游戏作品的实况清楚说明，游戏生态系统正在逐步兼容三种主要游戏形式：单独体验、同好友共同体验及同陌生人共同体验。当然，不同游戏类型和平台适合不同的体验模式，就如硬核网页策略游戏同Facebook游戏间的差异性所示，前种游戏的玩家通常和陌生人共同体验，而后者则通常和朋友共同体验。

但有趣之处在于，社交图谱和兴趣图谱的碰撞带来有趣而富有创新性的游戏体验。例如在Facebook平台，新类型的游戏通常依靠社交图谱推动玩法机制和病毒式传播，但同时引入能够让玩家同陌生用户进行互动的功能。例如，《银河怪兽》包含类似《口袋妖怪》模式的结构，允许玩家在PvP舞台中同其他玩家的怪兽进行对抗。《Idle Worship》最近刚入驻Facebook平台，引入在和好友接触前同陌生玩家进行互动的机制。这些游戏都让玩家在游戏中同陌生人建立关系，玩家通常会将他们添加到“好友列表”中（游戏邦注：这个列表只针对具体游戏，通常同真实社交图谱区分开）。

这一混合模式致使游戏融入所谓的“扩充社交图谱”，这意味着游戏玩法主要依靠玩家同好友进行互动，但同时还提供同陌生人进行互动的机会。反过来，其他游戏则主要围绕“扩充兴趣图谱”，将同陌生人竞争设置成游戏体验的核心，但同时允许玩家引入自己的社交图谱。同陌生人进行体验，向好友请求援助？同好友共同体验游戏，然后结交新朋友？通过游戏体验结交朋友的朋友？所有这些都是或者将变成可行选择，通常会模仿在游戏之外建立关系的模式。

我们依然会单独体验游戏，只是这种情况会越来越少。我们未来将更多地同好友共同体验游戏。但我们会也同陌生人一起玩游戏，某些人会因为游戏而变成我们的朋友。这些体验的共存和交叉传播将促使游戏变得越来越有趣，越多元化，进而更贴近生活。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Opinion: Playing with strangers

Giordano Contestabile charts the way we’ve moved from playing videogames alone to playing together.

Looking at the explosion of social gaming and consequent attention devoted to it by industry and press, it would be easy to say that games have come full circle. For thousands of years, games were inherently social, and played with friends. Then computers came along, and with them two decades of mostly lonesome play in darkened bedrooms, until broad adoption of the Internet reversed this trend. The Internet gave game developers the opportunity to pit players against faceless and unnamed human adversaries, although playing with friends still required complex operations such as inputting Xbox Live gamertags or Nintendo’s ad hoc Friend Codes. Finally, social networks provided games with access to the “social graph”, a representation of real-life acquaintances of players, and used this to champion game mechanics based on co-operation and mutual back-scratching, rather than on direct competition (the fact that those mechanics are often a thinly disguised front for increasing game virality could be the subject of a separate article).

A simplistic view of this evolution, then, could support the notion that playing games solo and with strangers were only phases in the evolution of games, and that technology finally brought gaming back to where it belonged: a social activity best experienced with friends. The reality, however, is more complex, and mobile gaming is where this is most evident.

Mobile gaming has emerged as one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing segments of the industry, thanks primarily to the combined might of iOS and Android, with a userbase of around 500 million potential players, most of whom are new to our favorite pastime. At the same time, while the early years of mobile games were principally singleplayer experiences, the “always-on” nature of smartphones has allowed a transition into social, connected entertainment. This combination of factors – and the predominance of Facebook as the provider of choice for players’ social graph, at least in Western markets – means that the most natural approach for mobile social gaming is that it’s connected to Facebook.

But while Facebook’s surely a very important component of the space, it’s by no means the whole story because it turns out that many players are choosing not to divulge their real identity when playing, and choosing not to connect with friends. They might be worried about their privacy, or they might want to avoid their friends knowing that they are playing games all day; in any case, a different approach is needed for those players, an approach that becomes evident when looking at the history of gaming.

Before the “social graph”, there was the “interest graph” – a fancy way to say that because people find playing games with or against each other fun, that alone constitutes a common interest on which an extremely compelling game experience can be built. In short: Player 1 wants to play a game; Player 2 wants to play the same game; Player 1 and Player 2 don’t know each other personally, but share the same interest in playing and possess roughly equivalent skills. There you are: a match made in Heaven. Or at least a match made daily, millions of times, in online FPS or other competitive games.

What we are witnessing, and what the wealth of games available on smartphone platforms exemplifies, is a gaming ecosystem that’s growing to accommodate the three primary forms of gaming: playing alone, playing with friends, and playing with strangers. Naturally, different game genres and platforms might be better matches for each of those experiences, as demonstrated by the contrast of hardcore web strategy games, which are usually played against strangers, and Facebook social games, which are played with friends.

Where it gets interesting, however, is where the social graph and the interest graph collide, giving birth to interesting and innovative game experiences. On Facebook, for example, a new breed of games are relying on the social graph to drive gameplay and virality, but are introducing features that allow players to interact with users they don’t know personally. Monster Galaxy (pictured) has a Pokémon-like structure and allows players to fight against other players’ monsters in a PvP arena, for instance. And Idle Worship, recently launched on Facebook, introduces interaction with people you don’t know before putting you in touch with your friends. These games have their players developing in-game relationships with strangers, often eventually adding them to a “friend list” which is game-specific and separate from their real-life social graph.

This hybridisation will result in games that implement what can be called an “augmented social graph”, meaning that the game relies primarily on the interaction with friends for gameplay, but complements it with the opportunity to interact with strangers. And vice versa, other games will rely on an “augmented interest graph”, making competition with strangers the core of their game experience, but allowing players to introduce their social graph in the mix. Play against strangers and get friends to help you? Play with friends and make new ones? Meet friends of friends through play? All of those options are and will be available, often mimicking the way in which relationships are formed outside of gaming.

We’ll be still playing alone, but less so. We’ll be playing with friends, increasingly. And we’ll be playing with strangers, some of whom will become friends as a result of the experience. Coexistence and cross-pollination of those experiences, rather than prevalence of one over the others, will make gaming more interesting, varied and, in a sense, much more like real life.（Source：edge-online）