Social games have been with us since the dawn of time, so next time some one talks about this new arena you can point out that we’v been engaging in the social game probably since DNA appeared on earth. In fact DNA is probably the virtual currency of nature over a long period.

So what is a Social Games?

A Social Game by its very nature is a multi-player activity. It requires others to participate and interact. But what are social interactions? Well here is a good diagram of everything considered to be a social activity, game or otherwise.

But there are lots of different aspects to social game design in today’s media landscape and so for the record this is what PlayGen defines as Social Gaming Mechanics :

Competition – the struggle between players or against the game system which is aimed at achieving key goals where the performance of the player can be measured in an absolute or relative way.

The easiest form of competition in social games is the accumulation of resources but literally any situation where the players have goals and rewards can be considered a competition.

Collaboration – a well designed game with a high level of social interaction often relies on the players to be able to collaborate and not only to compete against each other. This means coordinating their actions and sharing resources in order to reach goals or sub-goals of the game. Cooperation may allow players to divide goals between them and rely on one another abilities and resources to triumph.

Group Activities – although this may look like collaboration its actually a step beyond this, where a number of players do things together , this could be team play, developing alliances or specialist role play.

Stimulated Social Interaction – When we play games together it is social ! But what happens when you’re sat in front of a computer? At the basic level the idea is to provide the means with which players can have two-way communication between each other and respond to each others actions. This could be literal or it could be symbolic such as Trading or Duelling.

Here some of the top industry leaders try and define the means with which to make money from social games.

Its worth remembering, aside from War (an extreme form of social games) its games we play together that gives us our collective identity.

Ofcourse here at PlayGen we are developing  new social games, focusing on the serious and interesting issues and topics, rather than wasting time making games about planting virtual gardens, when in reality, the real garden is withering for lack of attention. The way we see it, this is the future – after all its been our collective past!

To see  how we start thinking when we conceptualise our game designs see :  Designing Social Games.