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Greg Costikyan点评社交游戏的“社交性”

发布时间:2011-06-01 00:16:35 Tags:,,,,

游戏邦注:本文原作者是资深游戏设计师Greg Costikyan,他称当前不少游戏都被冠以“社交游戏”之名,但它们多数缺乏“社交”之实,并在文中总结了成功社交游戏应具备的要素:团队、外交、商贸、资源竞争、等级系统、表现。

三年前,我的朋友Eric Goldberg问我有没有兴趣为他供职的一个小网络公司开发一款“社交游戏”。

社交游戏?听起来有点意思。我非常喜欢的LARP(游戏邦注:它是live action role-playing game 的简写,指玩家自己扮演游戏角色,在现实场景中玩游戏)就算得上是一种社交游戏(LARP游戏很能促进玩家间的互动,有点像模拟城市游戏,非常适合在纽约一年一度的街头游戏节Come Out & Play上玩)。

社交游戏应该算得上是在线论坛和游戏的结合体,一些还兼有战争游戏的细节特征。

如果能把社交元素组合成一款游戏,那应该会让人颇有成就感吧。真的有人会请我做这样的游戏?

不会吧?我有些怀疑地问Eric,他所谓的“社交游戏”是指什么?

听完一堆废话,我终于明白他的意思。我直奔主题:“呃,我明白你的意思了。是要做一个在社交网络上面玩的游戏。这就是真正的社交游戏了?”

电话那头的人也许对我的问题有些吃惊吧。我要不要这份工作呢?

当然。我要接这个活。

在我13岁时,我就是一个狂热的桌面战争游戏的粉丝了。那时候的SPI和Avalon Hill还是战争游戏领域的佼佼者。我甚至花时间研究战争游戏分类表,那种表的分类项目有拿破仑战争和二战等等。我要找出一种自己想要的游戏风格,然后深入学习,并最终成为专家级人物。最后我决定专攻的游戏模式是:多人游戏。

从数字上看,只要不是单人游戏的就是多人游戏;就战争游戏而言,因为是关于双方对抗,所以多人游戏就意味着“两个以上玩家参与的游戏”。《Diplomacy 》和《Kingmaker》就属于我所选择的“多人游戏”。多人游戏比双人战争游戏更吸引我,是因为它的互动程度的复杂度比单纯的双人游戏更灵活多变。谈判、结盟、贸易和了解变得很重要——这类游戏要关注的不只是系统和操作技术。

我花了很多时间研究谈判、结盟、暗算,还学习如何与他人打交道。

当我14岁时,《龙与地下城》问世了。这款多人合作桌面游戏开启的奇幻世界,就像我喜欢的小说中的世界那样不可思议。我久久地沉浸在游戏世界中,学习如何合作、劝导、在夸张的场景中“即兴表演”。我和其他玩家一起书写属于我们自己的游戏人生。

多亏了《龙与地下城》这款游戏,我终于没有堕落为一个只知勤学苦读却沮丧压抑的木鱼脑袋,而是成长为落落大方的魅力青年。是它教我成为一个社会人——当然不是秉承这个游戏的制作人Gygax 和 Arneson的旨意,却是出于游戏的本质。

多年以来,数字游戏对我而言就是百无一用,一部分是因为这类游戏缺乏智力和讲述的严肃性,但更多地是出于其固有的孤立性。然而,正是《M.U.L.E.》这款游戏,让我意识到数字游戏也可以非常擅长“社交”。

unsocial_mule wide(from gamasutra.com)

unsocial_mule wide(from gamasutra.com)

我很早就进入在线游戏的设计领域,那时网络还没进入寻常百姓家呢。我也很早就开始通过商业在线服务网站玩游戏,因为在线游戏能最大地弥补数字游戏的不足——固有的单人游戏本质。

近年来,我又开始对LARP(实景角色扮演游戏)、独立RPG和剧情游戏着迷了,因为这些游戏一直以社交、即兴和虚拟角色作为游戏的焦点。

社交游戏的正确定义是非常重要的。我认为,社交游戏的重点就在于“社交化”,所以做好这类游戏的方法就是“社交化”。

很遗憾的是,所谓的“社交游戏”并没有那么擅长“社交”。

人类的最根本矛盾之一是,人类是独立个体和社交动物的结合体。在社交中,我们每个人都失去了自我的思想,只是靠有限的表情和语言互相交流。在个体中,我们往往以牺牲他人为代价来满足自己的需要和渴望——我们是自私自利的个体,客观上我们是利己主义者。

然而,没有父母的养育我们无法成长;出于寻找朋友和伴侣的需要,我们合作、交流,共同建造了文明的大厦;我们享受与朋友相伴时的快乐。

我们既是自由的,也作为社会的一员受制于社会;我们是消极的旁观者和积极的参与者;我们是自由的思想者和支持者;我们是有力的竞争者和合作者。

我们崇尚个人自由,也倡导集体主义。我们在世界的大舞台中独唱,也能在合唱队里放歌。即使是极其重视个人自由的美国人,也知道为了完成所有任务,我们每个人都必须同心协力。

尽管我们生、死、孤独都是自己的事,我们的思想也禁锢在自己的躯壳里,我们仍然不能摆脱社会人这个身份。

我们的快乐是他人的馈赠——伴侣和孩子、朋友和其他人的赞赏和认可。就算是在虚拟的游戏世界,我们最快乐最感动的时光也是因为他人的存在而存在的。

曾几何时,在《魔兽世界》里,你和公会的成员一起完成了突袭任务;在RPG的搞笑的游戏过程中,我们一起放声大笑;在jeepform(游戏邦注:一些北欧的RPG玩家和制作人自创的一类游戏风格)或者剧情游戏中,我们因为与他人意外的合作而倍感激动;在欧式游戏中,我们互相开着玩笑;甚至是在最常见的卡片游戏中,和朋友在一起闲谈和研究自己得到的卡片——这些都是值得珍视的经历。

甚至是在单机游戏或者游戏机游戏中,你能回忆起的最感人肺腑的经历,不是辉煌的胜利和熟练的操作,而是体会到他人的心意的瞬间、明白游戏意图的刹那、理解游戏言外之意的时刻。

灵光一现,你最终明白:沉浸于他人的创意之作的感觉;参与文明对话的感觉——这些感觉的重要性至少不亚于游戏中的得分。在这些情境中,玩家并不是直接感觉到游戏的社交性特征,毕竟只是一个人在经历这些体验(但这些经历又不断沟通玩家与制作人)。

如果你是世界上的最后一个幸存者,你会玩游戏吗?如果会,除了让你为失落的文明感到悲伤,游戏还能做什么?(已经不存在社交性了)

一旦失去,方显珍贵。无论是什么形式的艺术,社交性的存在才让它们成为引人注目的艺术。在社交设置上出彩的游戏通常也是所有游戏中最强势的存在。

“社交游戏”就是致力于挖掘玩家之间的社交纽带,才有了无限的潜能。任何形式的艺术都不例外。

然而,很不幸,真正称得上是“社交游戏”的,寥寥无几。

第一个在商业上获得成功的“社交游戏”是SNRPG(社交网络角色扮演类游戏),如以黑手党为主题的《Mafia wars》和其他吸血鬼题材的游戏。与常规的数字RPG游戏类似,玩家在游戏中操作一个角色完成任务,完成任务后可以升级。这类游戏的任务难度已经非常之小了——只要点击一下鼠标就能完成了,升级就可以开启新任务,同时得到一定的“精力”(这是升级的主要制约因素,因为玩家在一个时间段内只能完成一定量的任务,所以“精力”的填满速度比较慢)。

unsocial_mafia wars(from gamasutra.com)

unsocial_mafia wars(from gamasutra.com)

除了完成任务和升级,玩家在SNRPG类游戏里还可以攻击其他玩家。在进攻时,玩家的状态(可以通过等级提升)可以附加到装备上。在战斗中,胜利的一方得到经验和金钱,失败方损失金钱和命值。

对游戏的扩散性特别重要的一点是——你可能邀请朋友加入自己的部落(集团、帮派或者家族之类的)。在战斗中,朋友的价值可以提升你的自身价值,即你所在团队的成员越多,你的势力越大,升级越快,越不容易受到别人攻击。

事实上,SNRPG在本质上完全是孤立的(除了进攻其他玩家和招纳团队成员以外)。所谓“部落”,徒有虚名罢了;每个玩家的“部民”列表和玩家本身没有半点关系。

如果我加入你的“部落”,这并不等同于我与你的其他“部民”就有所交集;我可以同时加入无数个“部落”。与这些“部落”的唯一关联就是增加了团队的战斗力(当然也增加了我自己的战斗力)。“部落”只是图有虚名罢了——没有组织、没有交流和计划机制、没有共同资产。这种“部落”确实“原始”得只剩下一个列表了,和MMO的公会是没法比的。

你在这种游戏中可以发送信息给你的“部民”,有时候却会引发意想不到的“笑”果——聊天语句完全是牛头不对马嘴,因为你的“部民”正在和他的一个不属于你的“部落“的“部民”聊天,而你只能看到一边的对话。

这种“部落”存在的唯一意义就是招揽“部民”的玩家有一个列表排列朋友,所以玩家可以通过交友扩充“部落”人丁。现在我自己就有过三百个社交网络的“朋友”,不过我不认识他们,事实上也没有兴趣认识他们。 我结交这些“朋友”只是为了在SNRPG的战斗中更有战斗力罢了。

你大概可以说,其实这些SNRPG在本质上是反社交的,因为玩家之间真正的互动只有一个——攻击对方。

现在,大多社交网络游戏本质上是轻模拟生活/经营风格的游戏。你可以控制一个地图,在上面建造建筑、摆放装饰、种植庄稼等等。通过这些活动,你可以积累财富(过一阵子就点击一下那些物品,回答对话框)。

有时候,但不总是,你可以操纵一个角色,点击一下物品,让角色完成你的指定任务。时间久了,自然就升级了——你可以使用更多特定物品,玩到更多游戏内容。你通常要积累徽章、收集物品和达成其他任务。

换句话说,这种游戏的核心就是其固有的孤立本质——你以一己之力发家致富、建造城市;而其他人也在自己的小世界里忙得不亦乐乎。

然而,模拟社交经营游戏里却实存在一些玩家互动的把戏。其中一个系统名为“赠礼”——鼓励玩家送免费礼物给其他玩家,收礼的玩家不需要付出任何代价就可以得到可观的好处。

通常在游戏中,玩家可能要集齐一些关键物品,然而这些关键物品本身的获得又要靠收集其他只能通过玩家的赠礼得到的物品,这样,玩家就不得不请求其他玩家赠礼了。当然,如果玩家的朋友不多,或者玩家本身没什么耐心,那么花点真钱也是能解决问题的。

为了通过社交网络社区的通信渠道滥发游戏信息,玩家当然会夸耀自己的成就,这样就能吸引新玩家加入游戏(模拟社交经营游戏仍然鼓动这种方式,不过Facebook对这类信息进行了限制,以免非游戏玩家为其所扰)。

玩家可以“游览”其他玩家的地图,也可以在朋友的地图上做点任务。这样,虽然各个地图实际上是独立的,玩家还是能感觉到其他玩家的存在。

如果你指望模拟社交经营游戏可以促进游戏内部交流,那你还是清醒一下吧——所有可能的交流活动或者玩家试图与他人接触的行动,只不过是为游戏开发者服务。各种交流活动的存在是为了三个目地:吸引新玩家(扩散性)、鼓励玩家回归游戏(留存率)、促进游戏交易(虚拟消费)。

玩家的互动活动对游戏的影响不大(如果有的话)、对游戏结果没有影响、没有或者事实上对玩家的参与也没有影响。

如果SNRPG其实是反社交的,模拟社交经营游戏其实是缺乏社交特征的,这些游戏的互动活动本质上是非社交的,因此,交友结仇和玩家间的互动没有关系,给玩家带来的关系感也很脆弱(如果有的话)。就像MMO中的单机游戏——你知道其他人的存在,但他们的存在和你没有太大关系。

社交游戏开发者的野心很大很清楚:利用社交关系图鼓励玩家的参与、逗留和消费。但据我所知,这些认识从来就不是为了建立玩家间的联系或者增加游戏的可玩性,只是为了钱——和游戏社交化没有任何关联!

社交网络具有的特性,使之事实上比大多在线游戏更适合发展社交特征。这些特性就是,系统中具有发送信息和聊天的功能,且不需要由开发者分别执行;但更重要的是,社交关系图让玩家与真正的朋友得以互动。

大多在线游戏都很难做到这两点。例如,MMO因为其分割式的游戏特征,是不可能让真正的朋友在一起玩的。例如,我知道你是《魔兽世界》的玩家,但我们两个是在不同的服务器上玩,如果我想和你一起玩,我就要换到你所在的服务器,从1级开始重练。

即使我和一大帮朋友决定在同一个服务器从头开始,我们还是面临着现实的困难:不同的游戏时间和不同的游戏强度。所以就算我们一起站在1级这道起跑线上,我们的级别还是会渐渐地拉开距离。因为MMO游戏的内容是靠等级把关,所以如果你是5级,我是20级,我们真的很难在一起玩——在我这个级别所在的地图,你只能被秒杀。

在社交网络上,发现你的朋友在玩什么游戏并不难,安装一个允许玩家一起玩的系统可能也不难——为一群朋友推迟游戏进程,或者设计出一个系统可以兼容不同等级的网友玩家。

即便允许快速带级,在线网站也还是不能达到要求——在Pogo网站或者Days of Wonder公司的网站上随便就能找到人一起玩,但毕竟是陌生人,怎么比得上和朋友一起玩来得有趣吧。而社交网络提供的信息和共享内容的功能,意味着执行一个允许和真正的朋友一起玩的游戏应该比其他在线网站容易得多。

总之,开发者知道怎么利用社交关系图吸金,却不懂得怎么设定一个真正的社交游戏过程。

“真正的社交”游戏设置是什么样的?这不是谜。以下内容虽不详尽,但至少给出了一些参考意见。

团队

在团体运动中,你必须与你的队友配合。如果你本身是一名优秀的运动员,那当然最好了。假如在篮球赛中,你不去搞清楚队友的位置,也不好好准备传球(或者从队友那接球),那么,你对队伍的贡献真的不太可观了。

运动是一种表情指向的交流,极少用到手势,配合得当的队伍往往更容易战胜那些配合不佳的队伍。

任何团队性活动都是这样的。在团体射击游戏,如《反恐精英》,队伍合作的重要性至少相当于FPS游戏的个人技术。在《魔兽世界》里,要战胜BOSS,除了战前协商、语音聊天、内部交流很重要,完美的合作更是必不可少。

在社交游戏中,团队的价值也非常大。团队也能成为一种强大的玩家滞留机制——因为不想让队友失望,玩家会回归游戏。为什么SNRPG中的“部落”执行方式如此无力,如此自私?这真成谜了。

外交

在任何多人游戏里,玩家都会形成同盟关系,所以外交就很重要了。以经典桌面游戏《Diplomacy》为例,所有玩家的力量都是相当的,极少有凭一己之力就战胜对手的现象存在。结盟是关键。另外,没有什么共同胜利这样的东西存在,所以在必要的时刻,你也可能不得不暗算你的盟友。

结果就是,玩家之间滔滔不绝——你必须引诱你的同盟相信你、说服你的同盟站在你一边,虽然那时你明明是在暗中置他于死地;同时,你还要估计同盟背弃你的可能性;你也得试着在敌人的盟友面前中伤敌人。《Diplomacy》这款游戏在策略和战术上还是有相当的深度的。不过关键还是在于谈判,那些雄辩之人往往胜过初学策略的菜鸟。

City-of-Wonder(from friskymongoose.com)

City-of-Wonder(from friskymongoose.com)

为了外交,游戏必须既允许玩家互利互助,也鼓励暗中加害,绝对不能像模拟社交经营游戏那样,居然有个得了“孤立并发症”的系统存在。诚然,一些游戏(如《City of Wonder》)允许玩家“攻击”其他玩家(SNRPG当然也允许)——但这类游戏不允许结盟、战略合作或者联合行动等等。

商贸

因为贸易在游戏中非常重要,所以需要保持一定的不对称性。在Edgar Cayce的经典卡片游戏《Pit》中,因为卡片是随机分配的,所以玩家要努力收集垄断不同类型的卡片。在大多鼓励贸易的游戏里,通常有几种不同的资源,玩家可能只拥有其中几样,所以就必须与其他玩家做贸易,以换取你所缺少的资源。

贸易与外交相似,也是让玩家有了相互交流的理由——决定贸易政策、寻找贸易对象、商谈价格、甚至是建立长期贸易关系。模拟社交经营游戏只能说达到了一点——允许玩家互赠某些物品,即鼓励玩家之间的物品交换。但这只是一种点对点模式,针对的是增加Facebook的交友请求,并不是为了刺激交易行为和玩家间的交流。

资源竞争

在许多游戏里,资源竞争是玩家互动的重要元素。在多人模式下的RTS游戏中,战争的导火线往往是被一种关键资源的采集权点燃的。

但“资源竞争”可能比字面上的意思还要宽泛一些,交非只有资源才会引发“资源竞争”。像《Agricola》或者《Puerto Rico》这类“行动选择”桌面游戏,每一回合可能发生的行动类型是有限的,同时有些行动会略过。

在《Agricola 》中,一个玩家做出了一种行动选择,意味着其他玩家只能做其他选择(所以玩家的“行动选择”也成了实际上的一种“资源竞争”);在《Puerto Rico》中,所有的玩家都要做出最损人利己的选择。在Steam网络对决平台上,因为游戏的平衡是通过竞拍每一回合的最先入场权来实现的,这使玩家很难估计自己投标的代价和收益是否划算,所以只能先下手为强了。

无论何时,资源、机遇或者其他受限物品,如果玩家在最佳等级时不能全部得到,那么玩家在阻碍其他玩家得到关键物品的同时,还不得不与其他玩家互通有无。

等级系统

很少游戏是带有清晰等级系统的,但这个概念非常适用于描述社交关系图。在PBM游戏《Renaissance》中,一开始,新玩家几乎没有什么资源,但如果能发誓效忠于某个强大的领主或者附庸于某个已存在的贸易商行,菜鸟也能进步神速。在《Slobbovia》中,占领一定领地的玩家必须把一部分领地的控制权转交给委任的副指挥官;如果副指挥官不满总指挥官的行动,他有权宣布独立。

等级有助于同化新玩家、长期交流、等级培养、团队合作。因为玩家的等级一直在变动,所以像有权宣布独立这样的额外优势可以使等级分化严重的游戏的“团队”活动更顺畅些。

表现

在非数字RPG中,玩游戏的乐趣主要来自操纵玩家角色:以角色的意志来做决定、体验角色所处的幻想世界、以角色的身份行动发言。

在一些类型的RPG中,如LARP、独立叙述RPG、剧情游戏和jeepform游戏,“游戏”和“电影”的界线模糊到连“角色扮演” 和“行动”都很难分清。

在这种情况下,角色扮演就不只是代偿性体验了,还应该包含自我炫耀、招待好友。玩笑聊天、制造惊喜和即兴合作也很重要。

然而,这种表现性操作却不能像桌面RPG那样随意自由。在老Sierra的商业在线服务网站上,最受欢迎的游戏之一是《Acrophobia》。

这个游戏很简单——每一回合,bot随机生成一串首字母缩略词(由一组词中各主要词的第一个字母或前几个字母缩合而成的词)。玩家要根据这个缩略词自创一个连贯或者幽默的句子(句子中的每个单词的道字母组合起来后就成了这个缩略词)。

所有玩家都造完句后,就把各自的句子公布出来。然后玩家不记名投票选出他们最喜欢的句子(自己的句子除外)。几个回合后,累积得票最多的玩家获胜。

在这个游戏中,玩家获胜的方式是想出被其他玩家认可的最连贯、最幽默的句子。尽管游戏的本质是限制性的、形式性的,但表现性仍是其精华所在。

表现性游戏在本质上绝对是社交性的。这种游戏方式可能只存在于在线多人游戏中,在线游戏非常适合这种玩法。社交关系图的存在使得玩家可以更容易地与真正的好友一起游戏、更有效地激发玩家的表现性游戏。然而,社交游戏不仅不支持这种表现,还戒绝了能促进表现的交流活动(信息和聊天,除预定格式语句外)。

结论

近几个月以来,社交游戏的月活跃用户量有所下降。有些人就开始讨论,社交游戏的已经从盛世走向式微了。所谓事无千般好,花无百日红——毫无疑问,社交游戏的新鲜感也有过时的时候,而且越是新鲜的东西越是容易过时。在我看来,这也是暂时的。毕竟太多游戏存在相似性。一旦一款社交游戏开发出了前所未有的新花样,就足够使这个领域恢复生机勃勃的面貌了。

新花样的来源还处在揣测阶段,但在我看来还是很明显的——加强社交性玩法,这就是硬道理。

作为天生的社交媒体,社交游戏确实要名符其实。真正的社交游戏不只是为了商业目的而开发社交关系图,更是利用社交关系图为玩家创造出独特而有趣的游戏玩法。

社交游戏必须擅长社交之道。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Unsocial ‘Social’ Games

by Greg Costikyan

[Veteran game designer Greg Costikyan unpacks whether social games are truly social or they are not -- and having dissected the form, then leaps in with some suggestions on how to make the games more rewarding for players and developers.]

Three years ago, my friend Eric Goldberg called me up and asked me if I would be interested in working on a “social game” for a little Web 2.0 company in California he was consulting to.

A social game. Hm. That did sound interesting. I had fantasies of limited-duration, closed room live-action role playing, or perhaps multiplayer boardgames that fostered intense player interaction, or maybe something like an urban game, suitable for the Come Out and Play Festival, with players engaging with each other for extended periods of time.

Or perhaps some merger of online forum and gameplay, some elaboration of the competitive wordgames we used to play on Genie and The Well and Echo, showing off for one’s peers and preening in a social environment.

Yes, pushing the social element of gameplay could be very fruitful, an obvious and exciting extension of the capabilities of the ars ludorum. And someone might actually pay me for this?

Well, no. Suspiciously, I asked Eric what he meant by a “social” game.

After quite a bit of blather, I realized what he was talking about, and cut to the essence. “Ah,” I said. “I see what you mean. A game that is played on a social network. Is there anything actually social about it?”

You could hear the shrug on the phone. Would I like the introduction?

Sure. I needed the work.

When I was 13, and an enthusiastic fan of board wargames such as those published by SPI and Avalon Hill, I spent some time looking over a list of wargames divided into different categories — Napoleonic and World War II, and so on — thinking to myself that I wanted to find a style of game to make my one, to study more seriously and become expert on. One category popped out at me, and was what I decided to specialize in: multiplayer games.

In digital, we think of “multiplayer” as meaning anything that isn’t soloplay; in wargaming, however, multiplayer meant “a game for more than two people,” since most wargames are struggles between two opposing sides. I chose the category that encompassed games like Diplomacy and Kingmaker. They struck me as far more interesting than two-player wargames, because the complexity of interplayer dynamics produces far more variability than in head-to-head games. Negotiation, alliances, trades, and simply reading other players became important; it wasn’t all about system and the mastery thereof.

I spent many long hours negotiating, allying, backstabbing, and learning to deal with others.

When I was 14, Dungeons & Dragons appeared, an inherently multiplayer but cooperative game set in a fantasy world not unlike those of the novels I loved to read. Its

appearance spawned many long hours learning how to coordinate, cooperate, persuade, do “improv” in an almost theatrical sense, and work to shape stories cooperatively with others.

Dungeons & Dragons, in all likelihood, saved me from being a studious, depressed loner, ultimately making a somewhat charming adult out of a shy adolescent. It taught me to be a social being — not surely from any intent of Gygax & Arneson’s, but from the nature of its gameplay.

For many years, I dismissed digital games as devoid of merit, partly because of their lack of intellectual and narrative seriousness, but more importantly because of their inherently solitary nature. It was M.U.L.E. — Dani Bunten’s landmark multiplayer game for the Atari 800 — that showed me that digital games, too, could be highly social.

I moved early into designing and playing games online — even before the internet was opened to non-academic users, on the commercial online services — because online games redressed the greatest flaw of digital games: their inherently single-player nature.

And in recent years, I’ve become fascinated with the rise of LARPs, indie RPGs, and story games, because they place socialization among the players, improv, and the assumption of character, front and center in play.

Social games — correctly defined — are important; and games that have hooks for socialization are, I think, our best bet for the creation of true art in this form.

It’s a pity that “social games” are so unsocial.

One of the fundamental contradictions of the human condition is that we are simultaneously individuals and social beings. We are each lost in our own heads, with only the limited bandwidth afforded by expression and language to allow us to understand each other. We typically strive to achieve our own needs and desires, often at the expense of others; we are atomistic individuals, striving for our own benefit in a Randian sense.

And yet we cannot grow without the nurture provided by our parents, are driven by our needs to find sexual and emotional partners, have built civilizations that depend utterly on cooperation and exchange, and are most often happy in the companionship of friends.

We are both free and members of societies, dispassionate observers of our surroundings and passionate members of groups, freethinkers and partisans, competitors and cooperators.

We prize individual freedom, and also community. We solo, and join guilds. Americans, in particular, make much of the importance of individual liberty — and yet to accomplish almost anything, we need to enlist our fellows in a common endeavor.

Though ultimately we live, and die, alone, imprisoned in our individual skulls, we are inherently social beings.

And just as we most often find happiness through others — our partners and children, our friends, and the extended praise and approbation of the many — so too the best and most affecting game experiences we can have are those that involve others.

The fiero of a World of Warcraft raid successfully accomplished with your guildies; the laughter produced by sardonic gameplay in an RPG; the emotional impact of a

jeepform or story game produced through unexpected improvisation with others; the banter and play of power dynamics in a Eurogame; even the table talk and insights

into character you gain through the play of a conventional card game with friends — these are experiences to be prized.

Even for single-player PC or console games, if you try to recall the most compelling experiences you’ve had playing them, I think you’ll find that those experiences derive not so much from triumph over mastery of a system — but from a moment of insight into the mind of the designer, a grasp of what the game is trying to achieve, an insight into the game’s subtext.

That moment of epiphany, when you finally understand; that sense of engaging with the creative product of others; that sense of being part of a cultural conversation, of something that you can discuss and debate with your friends — that, perhaps, is at least as important and earning a score. In these cases, the social nature of your experience is indirect, since you experience it alone; but the experience is part of a larger, and continuing, social conversation among the players and creators of games.

If you were the last person on Earth, would you play games? And if so, would it do anything other than to make you sad with the realization of what has been lost?

The social nature of games — indeed, of any form of art — is part of what makes them compelling; and games that strike deep into social connections are often the most compelling of all.

“Social games,” then — that is, games that strive particularly to make and exploit social connections between players — have enormous potential, as forms of art.

It’s too bad, then, that few so-called social games are remotely social.

The first commercially successful “social games” were social network role playing games (SNRPGs), like the various Mafia and Vampire-themed games. Like more conventional digital RPGs, they are games in which you control a single character, with the primarily objective to level up by completing tasks of one kind or another.

They strip this down to a bare minimum — missions are accomplished by a single click, leveling up opens up new ones, and “energy,” which recharges slowly, is the main constraint on advancement, since you may accomplish only so many missions in a period of time.

In addition to mission and level advancement, SNRPGs allow you to attack other players. In an attack, a character stat (that can be improved with level) is added to the attack value of equipment, and compared to that of the defender; the winner gains EP and money, the loser loses money and health.

An additional fillip — critical to the game’s virality — is that players may use network invites to ask friends to join their clan (or mob, or what have you), and when in combat, your value is increased by the values of your friends. Thus, the more clanmates you have, the more powerful you are, the faster you can advance — and the less likely you are to suffer from the attacks of others.

SNRPGs are, in fact, completely solitaire in nature, except for the ability to attack others, and the ability to have clan mates. The idea of the “clan,” however, has no real meaning; each player’s clan list is entirely separate from every other player’s.

If I join “your clan,” this does not mean that I join also with other members of your clan; I can belong to any number of players’ clans simultaneously, and the only relevance this has is to increase of combat power of these people (and my own). The “clan” is merely a game conceit; it has no organization, no mechanism for interaction or planning, no common assets. It is nothing like an MMO Guild; it’s just a list.

Games of this type do allow you to type in messages that are seen by your clan mates, which sometimes produces weird conversational lacunae, since your clan mate may be responding to a message from his clan mate who is not your clan mate, so you see only one side of a conversation.

The main way players use this feature is to list friends of theirs who are looking for more clan mates, so you can increase your power by friending and adding them to your clan; I now have more than three hundred social network “friends” who I do not, in fact, know, and have scant interest in knowing. Their only purpose is to make me competitive in SNRPG combat.

You can argue, in fact, that SNRPGs are antisocial in nature, since the only real interaction with other players is attacking them.

At present, most social network games are, in essence, light sim/tycoon style games. You control a map on which you may build structures, place decorations, plant crops, and so on; some of the items you place produce game money, which you accumulate by clicking on the item in question after some period of time.

Sometimes, but not always, you have an avatar, who moves around, performing the “work” you request when you click on an item. You level up over time, and this gives you access to more placeable items and other content. Typically, there are badges, collectibles, and quests you may accomplish.

In other words, the core gameplay is inherently solitaire in nature; you do not cooperate with others in building your business/city/what have you, but are doing so on your own, each player in his own atomistic world.

However, social tycoon games provide many hooks for inter-player interaction, of a kind. One critical system is “gifting”; players are urged to send others free gifts, which cost the recipient nothing but provide some modest game benefit to the recipient.

In particular, the construction of critical items in a game are often gated by the requirement to have some number of a particular item that can only be received as agift, giving players a motivation to request such gifts — and, of course, to spend real money to eliminate the restriction if they have a small number of friends or are simply impatient.

Players may, of course, brag about their accomplishments, which serves the purpose of spamming social network communication channels with posts about the game, thereby helping to attract new players (a practice still encouraged by social tycoon games, despite the fact that Facebook now makes these posts invisible to non-players, thereby nerfing their viral function).

And players may “visit” each other’s maps, performing some limited number of tasks on each friend’s map. This provides some sense that other players exist in the same game world, although in truth each map is wholly independent and solitary.

If you look at the interplayer communication fostered by social tycoon games, you will see that every possible communication, every game action that a player may take relative to another player, exists solely to serve the purposes of the developers. Each communication action is designed to do one of three things: attract new players (virality), encourage players to return (retention), or encourage purchase (monetization).

Player interaction has modest, if any, impact on game progress; no impact on game outcomes; no or virtually no consequences for the players involved.

If SNRPGs are, truthfully, antisocial, social tycoon games are, truthfully, asocial; the interplayer interactions they foster are not, in fact, social in nature, do nothing to build friendships or enmity, and provide scant, if any, sense of connection to other people. They’re like soloing in an MMO; you’re aware of the presence of others, but they are largely irrelevant to your play.

Developers of social games have clearly given great thought to using the social graph to foster player acquisition, retention, and monetization; but as far as I can see, no thought whatsoever has given to the use of player connections to foster interesting gameplay. It’s all about the money, and not at all about the socialization.

The peculiarity of this is that social networks are actually far better suited than most online environments to fostering social gameplay. Messaging and chat are built into the system, and need not be separately implemented by developers; but more importantly, the social graph allows players to interact with people who are their actual friends.

Most other online environments make that difficult. For example, MMOs make it hard to play with true friends, because of their segmented nature. I may learn that you are a WoW player, and want to play with you, but find that you play on a different server from me; I’d have to start over at level 1 to play with you.

Even if I and a group of friends all decide to start out on the same server, the reality is that we play on different schedules and with different levels of intensity, so even all starting at level 1, we will soon be of divergent power, and MMOs gate content by level. If you are level 5 and I am level 20, there’s no easy way for us to play together, since progress for my character requires me to be in areas of the world that will kill your character quickly.

On a social network, it is easy to discover what games your friends play, and it would be trivial to implement systems to allow people to play with each other –reserving games for groups of friends, say, or designing systems to accommodate players of diverse power who are network friends.

Online sites that allow quick, pick-up and play games are problematic as well; it’s easy to go to a site like Pogo.com or Days of Wonder and play with strangers, but this is far less interesting and enjoyable than playing with friends. The messaging provided by social networks, and the ability to share content with others, means it should be far easier to implement games that allow play with genuine friends than on other sites.

In short, developers have learned how to use the social graph to rake in the bucks, but not how to use it to foster gameplay that is actually social.

What does “actually social” gameplay look like? It’s not very mysterious. The following is not exhaustive, but here are at least a few of the means by which social play can be encouraged.

Teams

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In a team sport, you must coordinate with your fellow team members. It is certainly beneficial if you are an excellent athlete yourself, but if, say, in basketball, you do not remain aware of where your teammates are, and be prepared to pass to them (or receive the ball from them), you will not be a great contributor to your team.

While sport is sufficiently faced-paced that communication beyond hand signals is rare, the team that coordinates effectively will, more often than not, triumph over the one that does not.

Much the same is true in any sort of team-based activity; in a team shooter such as Counter-Strike, team coordination counts at least as much as individual FPS skill.

In a World of Warcraft instance, the boss can only be overcome by excellent coordination — and the ability to confer before a battle, together with voice chat, makes interplayer communication vital.

In a social game context, teams have great value as well; they are potentially a strong player-retention mechanism, because players will return to the game, not wishing to let their teammates down. Why SNRPG “clans” are implemented in such a meaningless, atomistic way is a mystery.

Diplomacy

In any multiplayer game where players may form alliances, diplomacy becomes vital. In the classic boardgame Diplomacy, for example, all players are of equal strength and can rarely overcome a single opponent alone; alliance formation is critical. Moreover, there are no joint victories in the game (though ties are possible), so there is a strong incentive to backstab your allies at just the right moment.

The result is that players talk constantly; you need to persuade your allies to remain on board, you need to lull them into faith in your loyalty as you plot their demise, you need to try to gauge the likelihood that they are about to betray you — and you need to try to persuade your enemy’s allies that their best interest lies in switching sides. Diplomacy is a game with fair strategic depth, and some degree of tactical finesse — but its heart likes in negotiation, and the silver-tongued will more often win than the player who has memorized opening strategies.

To allow diplomacy, however, you do need a game in which players can provide material assistance to each other, and also damage their foes; you cannot have a system of “solitaire games played concurrently,” as in social tycoon games. It is true that some (such as City of Wonder) allow “attacks” against others (as, of course, do SNRPGs) — but they do not enable the formation of alliances, the alignment of strategy, or joint actions of any kind.

Negotiated Trade

For trading to be important in a game, it needs to contain a degree of asymmetry. In Edgar Cayce’s classic cardgame Pit, for instance, the random distribution of cards encourages players to attempt to assemble monopolies in different types of cards. In most games that foster trade, there are several different kinds of resources, and players are likely to have access to some but not all, providing an incentive to trade with those who have the resources you lack.

Trade, like diplomacy, gives players a reason to engage with each other; to discuss strategy, to find those who have complementary things to trade, to negotiate price, perhaps to establish enduring trade relationships. Social tycoon games have an element of this — for instance, it is common to allow one set of players to gift certain items and another set a different group of items, encouraging swaps between them. But this is ad hoc, and pointed mainly at promoting Facebook requests, without any real attempt to foster market behavior or player discussion.

Resource Competition

In many games, resource competition is a key element of player interaction. In an RTS played in multiplayer mode, for instance, battles often arise around critical resource extraction sites.

But “resource competition” can be over things more abstract than literal game resources. For instance, in “action selection” boardgames such as Agricola or Puerto Rico, a limited number of action types may occur each turn, with some actions passed over.

In Agricola, one player’s choice of an action means others must choose different ones; in Puerto Rico, all players may perform selected actions, but must select the ones they think will benefit them most and others least. In Steam, there is a very strong first-mover advantage, which the game balances by auctioning off the right to go first each turn, forcing players to make a difficult calculation over the costs and benefits of what they bid.

Whenever resources, opportunities, or other aspects are constrained, with not all available to all players at optimal levels, players are forced to engage with each other to try to obtain what they need, while denying critical aspects to others.

Hierarchy

Games with explicit hierarchical systems are rare, but the concept is particularly well suited to a social graph environment. As one example, in the play-by-mail game Renaissance, a new player begins with few resources, and can progress much more quickly in the game if he swears allegiance to a more powerful liegelord, or joins an existing trading house as a subordinate. In Slobbovia, a Diplomacy variant, players who control more than a few provinces are required to turn control of some over to a subcommander — who can declare independence if not satisfied with his commander’s play.

Hierarchies are useful in acculturating newbies, in fostering continued communication up and down the hierarchy, and in fostering team play, but with the additional advantage that ‘teams’ can be more fluid than in games with explicit teams, since players may change hierarchies, and move up or down within their existing hierarchy.

Performance

In a non-digital role playing game, much of the pleasure of play derives from playing a role: from making decisions in the spirit of your character, from a vicarious experience of what it is like to be a person living in an imaginary universe, from speaking and acting “in character.”

In some types of role playing games — in LARPs, in many indie “narrativist” RPGs, in story games, and in jeepforms — the line between ‘game’ and ‘theater’ is blurred to the point that the distinction between between “role playing” and “acting” is moot.

Role playing, in this case, is not merely about vicarious experience, however; it’s also about showing off for, and entertaining your friends. Saying interesting things, acting in unpredictable (but character-consistent) ways, and improvising with your friends becomes critical.

Performative play like this need not be as freeform as in tabletop RPGs, however; as an example, one of the most popular games on the old Sierra Network (a pre-Internet commercial online service) was called Acrophobia.

The game is very simple; a group of players are served a random string of characters. Each must devise a sentence in which the first characters of the words of the sentence together produce the random string they were served.

When all players have entered a sentence, they are revealed, and the players then vote on which they like best; after several rounds, the player with the most cumulative votes is the winner.

In this case, the way to win is to come up with the sentences your fellow players will think are wittiest and most amusing; despite the restrictive, formalist nature of the game, it is performative at its essence.

Performative play is utterly social in nature, and possible only in multiplayer games; it is also something to which online games have always been well suited. The existence of a social graph, making it easier to play with actual friends instead of strangers, should foster performative play more effectively than other online environments. And yet not only do social games not foster performance of any kind, they eschew the kinds of communication — messages (other than the preformatted) and chat — that could support performance.

Conclusion

In recent months, the number of monthly active users for social games has dropped a bit, and there’s been some discussion of the idea that the social game boom may have passed its peak. No good thing lasts forever, and unquestionably the success of social games owes some debt to their novelty, and novelty wears off quickly. In my opinion, this is a temporary matter, largely resulting from the sameness of available games; one new game exploiting a play pattern social gamers haven’t seen before will be sufficient to restore interest in the field.

Where that play pattern will come from is a matter of conjecture, but to my mine one place to look is obvious: in fostering gameplay that is itself social, in a meaningful sense.

As social media natives, social games need to become truly social. This means more than exploiting the social graph for business model purposes; it means figuring out how to use the social graph to provide unique and compelling gameplay.

Social games must become actually social.(source:gamasutra


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