What is More Social: Playing With Your Real Friends or Making Friends With Strangers You Are Playing With?

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Here’s a fascinating panel discussion from Social Gaming Summit 2009 on social games outside social networks with –

- Andrew Busey – Founder and CEO, Challenge Games
- Jim Greer – Founder and CEO, Kongregate
- Daniel James – Founder and CEO, Three Rings
- Matt Mihaly – CEO and Creative Director, Sparkplay Media
- Jeremy Liew – Managing Director, Lightspeed Venture Partners

The panel raises some interesting questions about what really makes social games social –

1. What is more social: playing with your real friends or making friends with strangers you are playing with?

This is similar to the social network versus community question: hardcore gamers (who don’t have too many real-life friends) might become friends with other gamers, but most people would prefer to play games with their real friends, as a means to connect with them. Like I said, the favorite part of playing like Nightclub City for me is exchanging gifts with my girlfriend, and watching her build the most kitschy club ever.

2. What is more social: primarily single-player, asynchronous, asymmetric (but primarily collaborative) games like Nightclub City or multi-player, synchronous and symmetric (but primarily competitive) games like World of Warcraft?

The best social games today — like Nightclub City — are designed around three core social elements: you play with your real friends (real social graph), you benefit if you help your friends (collaborative), and you exchange favors, gifts and messages with your friends (turn-based). However, they need to build upon these strengths by enabling players to interact in real time (synchronous) with friends and friends-of-friends (symmetric). In the context of Nightclub City, imagine being able to visit not only your friends’ clubs, but also their friends’ clubs (that should be simple). Or, imagine getting double points (to play bartender or bouncer, for instance) if you visit your friends’ club while they are playing.

3. What is more social: destination gaming networks like Kongregate that connect to the Facebook social graph via the Open Graph platform, or apps like Nightclub City that exist as Facebook apps?

Already, social game designers are moving to a multi-platform model, where you can play the game with your friends on farmville.com or petsociety.com via Facebook Connect, but also on Facebook, as an app, or even on other social networks like Yahoo!, MySpace and Hi5, or mobile platforms like iPhone and Android. Ironically, Facebook is driving this trend by enabling third-party sites to tap into the Facebook social graph with Open Graph, as it sees itself more as a web platform than a destination site.

So, I see all these three OR question evolving into AND answers, where social games will exist on both social networks and on their own destination sites, become true synchronous, symmetric, collaborative MMORPGs, help players both maintain existing strong ties with their friends and form new weak ties with their friends-of-friends, and even merge the real and virtual worlds.

What do you think? Am I being too idealistic here? Do share your insights in the comments below.

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

• Niche Social Networks Turn to Social Gaming and Social Entertainment
• The Opportunity at the Intersection of Social Entertainment, Social Gaming and Social Commerce
• Master List of Social Gaming and Game Mechanics Platforms
• Why You Should NOT Integrate Game Mechanics Into Your Service
• Game Review: I Like How Booyah is Blending Social Gaming and Social Entertainment with Nightclub City
• Fascinating Mid-2008 Panel Discussion on Social Game Design