I love social media. I am a long-time blogger, active Facebook and Twitter user, and enjoy the technologies so much that I pursued a career in which I could work with these technologies on a regular basis. I currently work in the digital/interactive advertising business, where leveraging social technologies to improve our clients’ position in the marketplace is part of my everyday life.
Combined with my love of games, I should be all over social games like FarmVille, Mafia Wars and Foursquare. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. As of now, I have no personal interest in playing any social games. It’s not the social elements that turn me off to the scene; it’s the gaming part.
Before I get onto my soap box, I should clearly define what I mean by ‘social games’. Defining this is difficult, because practically any game played with more than one person is social in one form or another. Nevertheless, I’ll try my best to define it for the purposes of this post. Social games don’t have to be about farming or anything in particular. What I mean by ‘social games’ are games that are played through social platforms where the crux of the experience involves interacting with others. Games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars work so well because you’re constantly in the loop in regards to what your friends are doing in the game and you’re encouraged to participate as well.
I’m all for the incorporation of social elements where it makes sense. I may not play games on Facebook, but I sure do stalk my XBOX Live friends to see what achievements they’ve gotten lately. I do peek at leaderboards every now and then and I do play games with others online on a regular basis.
Where social gaming really fall apart for me is in the games. As someone who would be categorized as a hardcore gamer, I really don’t fit into the demographics that social games aim for. Developers of social games are intentionally avoiding making games for gamers like me, because they want the much larger audience of people who would choose games like Diner Dash over Gears of War. It’s not that I don’t like casual experiences (my stash of iPhone/iPad games can back me up on this), but more often than not I want to play the types of games that are traditionally found on gaming consoles and not on social platforms. I want to play games like Street Fighter, Mass Effect and the Nintendo suite of games, none of which have any real equivalents in the social space.
At best, the subject matter of social games like Pet Society or Restaurant City just don’t appeal to me. Oftentimes, I have no interest in the gameplay. At its worst, I wonder why anyone would want to play these games. One common gameplay element currently featured in many social games is the link to real-world time. I don’t want to have to play a game at certain times or get penalized. As much as I like games, I don’t want to have to babysit one or become a slave to one. To each his/her own, I guess.
I don’t mean to say what I’m saying from an elitist point of view, nor do I want to sound like that old man who talks about how things were back in his day, but the current social gaming scene is not for me. I’m sure at some point, every game will be social and none of the semantics creating this ‘issue’ won’t matter. Until then, I’ll always keep track of the social gaming space for personal and professional reasons and continue to play my games on traditional home consoles and portable platforms.
In Third Person 