在最近一次与Gamasutra共同的采访中，社交游戏公司Playdom的主管游戏设计的副总裁Steve Meretzky承认社交游戏在最近三年中取得了明显的发展。但Meretzky认为现在的社交游戏还“不够社交”。他相信社交游戏在之后的几年里会变得更加精巧复杂。但这之前，社交元素必须真正地融入游戏中。

Meretzky表示，“在提升游戏产值方面，我们的确取得了很大进展。但作为一个行业，我们的缺点在于是没有继续推动社交游戏自身的社交性发展，而是利用了Facebook网站的病毒式传播渠道。”

Steve Meretzky

随着近年来Facebook的多次调整，新游戏玩家更难在网站中发现游戏。另外，Facebook发布的新功能Group可能令玩家私下交流游戏经验，分离社交游戏玩家群体。尽管Facebook平台促进了社交游戏的发展，但最终它有可能是社交游戏发展的最大挑战。

另外，Meretzky提出自己不喜欢听到人说Facebook游戏是肤浅的游戏。众所周知，所有游戏都一样是无意义的活动。除了娱乐，玩家无法从中得到任何回报。只不过Facebook游戏更加简单易上手，因此它们“肤浅”的本质也比较明显罢了。

也许将来社交游戏的题材会更加深刻，制作也会更加细致精良令它们不再像简单的任务—奖励游戏，但其实贬低者总是会存在的，任天堂的Wii就是一个例子。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译）

During a recent interview with Gamasutra, Design VP of Playdom Steve Meretzky (pictured) claimed that social games have come a long way since three years ago, but social games aren’t social enough. He believes that social games will only get more sophisticated as the years pass on, but not until the games’ social elements are more deeply integrated.

“We’ve certainly gotten better at raising the production values of the games, but where we, as an industry, fall short is not moving the ball forward in terms of really making these games more social and taking advantage of the viral channels that Facebook allows,” Meretzky said.

That’s going to be a tough sell considering Facebook just made game discovery even more difficult for new players. Not to mention Facebook Groups could potentially fragment social gaming audiences through players communicating solely through Groups. While the platform itself presents an interesting dilemma for the growth of social games, perhaps perception poses even more of a challenge to the genre’s success.

“I don’t want to hear that Facebook games are Skinner boxes,” he adds. “You know, when you come down to it, basically all games are Skinner boxes — meaningless activities where you’re not getting anything out of it other than enjoyment. But in traditional or more complex video games, the Skinner box core is more buried under a lot of sizzle. In Facebook games, just because they are so stripped down to their simplest, barest elements, the Skinner Box skeleton is just more visible.”

While it might be deeper, more sophisticated social integration that brings social games out of the light illuminating them as meaningless task-and-reward games, there will always be dissenters. (Just look at Nintendo Wii.) In other words, haters gonna’ hate. （Source：Games.com）