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If someone is able to read German, here is my blogpost on this topic: http://yannicklott.posterous.com/social-games-sind-asozial

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Sure, you may not be socializing with your aunt in *insert clone here*Ville, but you're still socializing (at least for me) with a guild or your friends.



Whenever we play WoW, or a shooter we often just chat on what's going on in our lives anyway. Or we'll talk about how we have to have those levels done, etc. It's much more fun than, say, chatting in the IM while tending to crop.



I don't know if anybody else does that, but it's just been that way since Xbox Live for us. Our game time is the new water cooler if you will.



(Note: We still love our water cooler).

That's like saying that MMORPG are not social just because you can go solo.



He obviously hasn't played enough social networking games, and thus, doesn't know what he's talking about. His argument comes from a place of ignorance.



I play social games and I make friends all the time, you have to be in a group in order to gain the best advantage.

Making money is not evil. I hate those social network games too but they've learned that they can make money from getting people to "cowclick", and that's what they are doing, making money.



Now hacking someone to death with a broadsword, that pretty evil ;P

I disagree with this for two reasons:



1. A game doesn't need to be synchronous to be social.



I have a been playing strategery (http://strategerygame.com/) with a friend for months now and we never play it at the same time. We talk about the games when we are not playing, but we rarely sit side-by-side and play. I consider this to be social, it enhances our relationship.



2. Social does not mean making new friends.



It turns out that many people do not like playing games with strangers, this stigma is strong with parents of children especially. Most people just like playing with their friends that they already know and social games give them a new avenue for enriching their relationships.

I see WoW and FarmVille much like cigarettes and fast food. The proper way to deal with them is through education. People need to be educated about the potential side effects of over-using WoW and Farmville. But I don't see a need to call them "evil." They provide a service that some choose to enjoy, and that's just fine by me.



I do personally think they're f'in stupid, though.

This would have been an interesting POV three years ago, but it's been said a million times already.

Now, I'm going to start by saying I've never personally played any "social games" but I do have a basic understanding of their mechanics/concepts. To this degree, I agree with Blow. Mr. Sivak, you said that some games we choose to play with just our friends, or what have you, and that is very true. I play with my two friends with frightening consistency on Halo(2,3,ODST,Reach) and CoD (name one..) and we always make a private party and don't talk to anyone other than each other. To this degree you could say these games are just like social games condemned by Blow, right?



I'd have to disagree. While yes these games offer the option of simply bolstering our relationships with current friends, they inherently foster the interaction with strangers and new people. These social games do not do that. I met my two compatriots originally online, via Halo 2 proximity chat. This kind of interaction is not available to people playing these social games. The only option is to interact with (or exploit, depending on how you look at it) our current friends.



Just a last thought. Forgetting textbooks definitions of the word, how "social" would you consider it to be for two friends to go to a big party and when they get there they simply speak to each other, disregarding the social atmosphere around them? May not be the best example, but, just a thought that came to mind.

Seeing as how the goal of many of these social games is to create addicts, I would say that evil is a valid description.

I think today's games are barely scratching the surface of enabling meaningful social interactions. Is the game i'm playing improving my social interactions? If No then maybe its time to play a different game.



Being social means finding common ground. I have zero interest in farming so I get a little ticked-off when I get requests from them...sometimes to the point of annoyance. This makes me wonder if the game itself is hurting my social interaction with these folks. Maybe if I knew how much the game mattered to them I would oblige but the requests for help tend to have a very generic tone to them. They don't do a good enough job of letting me know if they really love playing the game.



What passes for social interaction is being oversimplified and distilled into a short "i need something" request. We know what happens to people that just keep asking for shit, you start to pull away from them.



Moving on to WOW and Counter Strike, what's interesting about those examples is the element of skill needed to play those games as opposed to FarmVille. The social bonds formed when playing those games are stronger and I believe it has to do with the specialized skills needed to play those games. There is this common ground that binds these players. The pursuit of a common goal as opposed to satisfying an individual need. Specialization that allows members of a team or community to play a specific role or function that feeds into this overarching goal. Success and failures are shared.



Simply put, these games are "WE" experiences while the social games i've played to date are all "ME" experiences.



P.S. - to my good friends who play FarmVille, I still love you...but would it hurt to talk to me about non-FarmVille stuff once in a while? :)

Keep in mind, we're running into the problem of genre here. When people think of social games we tend to think of the more classic Farmville-clones. That's perfectly reasonable considering how ubiquitous they are, but that doesn't include every single game on Facebook. I wouldn't call Bejeweled or Scrabble a social game, but they are Facebook games and there are elements of asynchronous multiplayer in Scrabble.



When Blow refers to "social games" he's really referring to the biggest subset of the category: that being the Farmville clone. And I've played many a Farmville clone and there is absolutely nothing social about them.



It's debatable, but I wouldn't refer to Strategery as a social game in any sense of the word. But again when I think "social game" I think Farmville.

I'm tempted to throw a gauntlet in the general direction of the gaming press – to find some better genre labels for games. “Social Games” and “Casual Games” – have to be among the least effective descriptors ever.

I’m reminded of “New Wave” music in the early 80’s which somehow included Joy Division, A Flock of Seagulls and Huey Lewis and the News.

If the gaming press doesn’t take the lead, the upcoming generation of game-academics will do it for them -- a decade later.

Couldn't agree more. I won't play Facebook games ... because I'm not anti-social! I refuse to annoy and use my friends as game resources. I almost feel insulted every 10 seconds playing Cityville when it pops up yet another message with a great big button inviting me to annoy my friends.



WoW is a social game. I play it with my friends. "Words with Friends" (Scrabble clone) on iPhone is social.



I have yet to find any remotely social game on Facebook.

Blows' view is very interesting and is right for the most part, however I also think he has generalized social games.. for example, Yazino is a Live Social Gaming company who's games are social because they are played in real-time and designed to be multiplayer.

Being social is about interacting with friends- when games are multiplayer, you are therefore always interacting with your friends and other players!