The Evolving Social Gaming

* This is for the extra credit assignment, not the common post.



As social networking sites becomes more popular, now form of game is generated with the flow. According to the Wikipedia, Social gaming, which is played by interaction with other people, is played by people from all over the world, still now. People feel enthusiastic to the new concept of game, because they can enjoy game without feeling alone.

There are various topics of social gaming, and many of them are very funny things. The most important factor of social gaming is easiness to play. Different with other kind of games, it does not require too much function and understands. For example, Farmville, one of the most famous applications in Facebook, is a game making users’ own farm to do things from growing to harvesting. Another social gaming is Pet-society, which is also based on application in Facebook. People can grow pets and communicate with them. Also, they can let their pets communicate with other users’ pets. It seems like playing Tamagotchi on the Internet. I don’t have experience to play social gaming, but I referred to honestcake’s blog posting.

People who play social gaming are very different from other kinds of games. Usually, age between teenagers and twenties male are the main players of normal games. However, according to Who’s Playing Social Games? [STATS] and Social Gaming Defined, women in their 40s are the largest players of social gaming. The survey found that 55% of social gamers are female and 45% are male. Females are more avid gamers, too; 38% of females said they play multiple times a day, but just 29% males said the same. Women are more likely to play with people they know (68% vs. 56% for males), and men are more likely to play with strangers (41% vs. 33%) than women are. It is very surprising result, but it is understandable. This is because social gaming is very easy to play, so people can treat it regardless of their age. Also, people can meet many people on the web through playing social gaming. It makes housewives communicate with more and more people when other family members are working and they are in the home. Also, the players enjoy more than one game per day. As the survey suggested in Social Gaming Defined, 95 percent report playing multiple times per week, and 64 percent play at least once per day. Interesting result is that most people play social gaming not because of meeting people on the Internet, but because getting fun and relieving stress. When asked why they play social games, the most respondents answered that “to be fun and excitement" (53 percent), followed by "stress relief" (45 percent), and "competitive spirit" (43 percent). Surprisingly, less than one quarter of respondents cited "connect with others" as a motivation for playing social games.

In my opinion, social gaming is worth to be loved to the people. Traditional games have excluded users by gender and age. However, social gaming is not difficult to use, so it helps women in the house to spend their leisure time. As I commented to Social Games Nations, social games can make people feel like being the God of the world, because they can control the world and the virtual people respond to in process. It is not that serious like Star Craft or Lineage, so more and more people can access to the game.

I was worried about the game money when I read posts about social gaming. This was because it can make many problems about money in the real world. However, after visiting Massively and read a post, my concerns disappeared. Nowadays, companies developing social gaming are trying to replace the way deposit gaming money from real money to alternative things. For example, Nexon is in its way to make game money with advertisement profit. As my comment to the post, it will attract people who did not want to spend their real money to play social gaming. As the research from Social Gaming Defined, people are willing to gain game money with their real money. However, people prefer using another way to earn game money to spend real money. Therefore, it is the best way to make the number of players increased. The only thing to be careful is that the game should not be a commercial thing. If it happens, people will be sick to too many advertisements and they will leave the game.

Social gaming is evolving. The number of players is increasing, and the game is being developed. It has many unique points compared with traditional games, so it is the blue ocean of game market. Even though it is just for killing time, I think it gives people much fun than the time it was not developed.