musings of a social architect

Game Meets Web

Wow, the gaming world is revving up to Web speed. Checkout this exchange from an allstar panel of gaming luminaries @ GDC 2008.

Raph Koster: “Iteration speed on the web is insane. The base assumptions on pace are astounding. The web can test and iterate in matters of hours; Flickr is patching every 30 minutes. Web analytics is something we can’t do and on top of this games are very hard to make. Unlike the web guys, we can’t afford to make six different versions of a game to see which one works best.”

Peter Molyneux: “Shouldn’t we be making our own social networks [as games and as platforms]? I see what those guys are doing and I think the mistake they are making is the one that we took 20 years to fix; they are mistaking complexity for depth”

Raph Koster: “The fact is that those guys are learning our tricks much quicker than we are learning theirs. They are gamers. They understand the things that we are good at, like interfaces and they learn fast.”

Phil Harrison: “We already make social networks. MMOs are social networks but with a narrative.”

Neil Young: “At EA we’ve been playing around with creating applications and releasing them and watching them go viral. It’s incredibly fast. If you are making games right now and you don’t understand this stuff, you won’t be around for long.”

Applying game dynamics to virtual worlds

Jeremy Liew has an excellent post up today - Applying game dynamics to virtual worlds. Especially this passage:

4. Free to play can mean casual (to start) but if you want to get paid, you have to focus on the hard core. They are the ones who will shell out real dollars for digital goods. There must be a satisfying hardcore experience even for casual and social games. Not only are they the sources of your revenue, they are also evangelists, and beacons on the horizon for new players. If you’re missing hard core, you’re missing deep fun. [THIS WAS A LIGHTBULB MOMENT FOR ME].

I've seen this lesson unfold in practice -- it's TRICKY, you have to design an experience that's light enough to attract massive numbers of casual players, but deep enough to attract the get-a-life Web gamers who have the time and propensity to get deeply involved in something.

Betting on Social Networks | Bubba Murarka

Thanks to my friend Rajat, I just discoved Bubba Muraka's blog. He's got some great posts -- e.g. Betting on Social Networks. Here, he articulates just what I've been wondering about - is FaceBook (along with other social networks) just another distribution channel among many? Or is it the new "destination site", above and beyond all others? I don't think anyone knows the answer right now -- the market will answer that question over the next few years. And many of us will be part of creating the answer. Fun times.

Social Ads: what's old is new again

Joshua Porter has an excellent post up analyzing  Why Social Ads Don’t Work.

...What if the activity you’re doing actually does determine your willingness to click on ads? This is what is being suggested by the early returns on ads in social networks. If this is so, then we can start by making a list of activities in which it would make sense that people are most susceptible.

    * Searching
    * Shopping
    * Traveling

These activities all share something in common. People are on the move, and are actively looking for products and services to help them along their way.There is a reason why Google wants super short time-per-visit and Facebook wants super long time-per-visit. It’s because the services support two completely different activities. Google wants a tremendous number of incredibly short visits. Facebook wants people to never leave.

But a fundamental problem with the way that MySpace and Facebook have been looking at their audiences is that they think their audiences exist to make them money through the sharing of attention. They believe since they have so much attention (super long time-on-site) that they should have no problem doing so. But it is the very reason why they have long time-on-site that makes them bad for advertising. They have provided a comfortable third place…people are already where they want to be!

Social network audiences are less like searchers and more like homebodies.

It's fascinating to see the same pattern playing out in today's social networks as we saw with chatrooms in the late 90's. Highly interactive social spaces don't generate high click-through rates, 'cause people are there to engage with each other. HOWEVER -- activities that enhance relationships (e.g. digital gifts, lightweight social games) can generate lots of interest in social spaces.

I'll bet that the more that social ads look like relationship-enhancing activities, the better they'll do.