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I'll be fair. You're doing some things right. You're doing making money right. You're doing engaging lots of
users right. You're doing creating jobs where there weren't jobs before , right.
WHAT YOU’RE DOING RIGHT
But you're just not making great social games. And by great games I mean game-changing games. And the
game needs to change because it's just not good enough.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/markrabo/4654298588/
These are the faces of people who are "getting" a game. They are seeing a game at its mechanically finest,
and appreciating the careful interplay of a game's rules. This is my favorite moment of playing a new game,
of *getting* what makes it tick.
And yet when I play social games, I never hit this feeling.
Instead, I hit this feeling. Disappointment. I get the system, and it disappoints me. And since social games
are my job, and my passion, I feel like this every day. Every day I play the latest social game and every day I
am let down. And I'm sick of it.
TWO YEARS AGO...
WE WERE DOING GREAT
And it bums me out because two years ago, we were doing GREAT. Great in the sense that things were
showing potential. WE WERE ON THE RIGHT TRACK.
DeveloperAnalytics.com
And yet Farm Town rapidly became the biggest game on Facebook, and the most influential social game of
the next two years,
through a combination of a time-based return mechanic focused around crops, and a deep integration with
Facebook's "Requests" channel, forcing players to send and accept Requests in order to receive gifts, and
visit their friends' farms.
APPS WITH FREE GIFTING?
Title Title
YES NO YES NO
2 47
48 3
We started mimicking these success patterns. And then mimicking other mimics. Everything just got more
and more recursive. Even the games which bare no immediate resemblance to Farm Town, still retain those
same patterns.
TIME-BASED RE-ENGAGEMENT
NEIGHBORS VIA REQUESTS
FREE GIFTING VIA REQUESTS
EMPHASIS ON LONGER SESSIONS
AD SPEND
+ CROSS-PROMOTION
SUCCESS!
We all created this common vocabulary of "success". And we started repeating it.
But this formula instills BAD HABITS, and creates dangerous assumptions about what success *means* in
social games.
TIME-BASED RE-ENGAGEMENT
C I A L
NEIGHBORS VIA REQUESTS
S O Y
FREE GIFTING VIA REQUESTS
T
RE A L A C
EMPHASIS ON LONGER SESSIONS
E G F A L
AD SPEND
T H
+ ME S
CROSS-PROMOTION
G A SUCCESS?
I've seen some amazing developers come in, and make Facebook games, and just DO IT WRONG. Because
this formula as a foregone conclusion is one of the THE GREAT FALLACIES OF SOCIAL GAMES TODAY.
What's worse, the formula leads to player assumptions of the limitations of what Facebook games can do.
"There’s no other word for it except
evil. Of course you can debate anything,
but the general definition of evil in the
real world, where there isn’t like the
villain in the mountain fortress, is
selfishness to the detriment of others or
to the detriment of the world."
JON BLOW
BRAID, THE WITNESS
And what's even MORE WORSE, is that it drives away potential new talent from the space -- developers who
just don't see what more can be done. And the fallacies propagate and spread.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tunruh/233316674/
All because two years ago, we made a hard right turn and never looked back. We never reconsidered the
road less traveled. THIS NEEDS TO CHANGE.
The best thing we can do right now is strongly rethink the last two years of social game development. WE
NEED TO START OVER.
THIS IS OUR ETCH-A-SKETCH MOMENT,
OUR CHANCE FOR A BLANK SLATE.
SHALLOW
ESCAPISM
a short-form indulgence of
distraction, often as a
punctuated instance of a
more long-term form of
escapism.
And maybe we can give ourselves the time to think about what works on the platform, what I call Shallow
Escapism, these brief and fleeting moments of procrastination which we choose to fill with play.
THE MAGIC CIRCLE
And we can think about how the magic circle plays into these brief moments.
And how the best games create that magic circle within the player's mind,
and how it can persist even when the game's no longer in front of them.
Maybe we can take a closer look at those early examples
And find something new to play with, to iterate on.
Or maybe we can look over at the mobile space, which fills those same or similar idle moments in our lives
through fast bursts of low-friction gameplay,
and yet has seen a great deal more innovation than social games.
http://shelleydraws.com
But the best thing we can do is work together. No developer should be an island. If we can figure out how
to do this right, it's a win for everyone.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tunruh/233316674/
BONUS RANT
and it certainly gave the rest of the panelists the fun exercise of trying to guess which one of them was the
scarred veteran,
HOTHEAD YOUNGSTER
but it was immediately obvious which one of us was the "hothead youngster",
HOTHEADED
YOUNGSTER
which, by the way,
HOTHEADED
YOUNGSTER
should be hotheadED. HotheadED youngster. That has been bothering me for WEEKS.
So I don't understand why I'm a hothead, unless it's because I called Ian out for spending more time
satirizing my industry than trying to help legitimize it.
Or because I tried to empower indie game developers to make social games by accusing them of being
afraid to do so, thereby employing the "Biff Tannen" school of logic.
Or why it's really necessary to focus on my age. I guess I'm sorry that I'm young? I feel like I end up
apologizing for that far too often.
TIMELINE OF SOCIAL GAMES
INVOLVEMENT
But it's worth noting that despite my age, in terms of social games,
TIMELINE OF SOCIAL GAMES
INVOLVEMENT
I'VE ACTUALLY BEEN DOING THIS LONGER THAN ANYONE ELSE ON THIS PANEL.
TIMELINE OF SOCIAL GAMES
SCARRED VETERAN INVOLVEMENT
And I think that actually earns ME the title of SCARRED VETERAN. I certainly have the scars to show for it.
TIMELINE OF SOCIAL GAMES
SCARRED VETERAN INVOLVEMENT
HOTHEADED YOUNGSTER
Which technically leaves IAN BOGOST as our industry's HOTHEADED YOUNGSTER. And I really think that's
the best possible fit.
TIMELINE OF SOCIAL GAMES
SCARRED VETERAN
http://numberless.net INVOLVEMENT
scottjonsiegel@gmail.com
@numberless
HOTHEADED YOUNGSTER
Thank you.