Gaming Capital in Social Gaming

Gothenburg.
The next speaker at AoIR 2010 is Olli Sotamaa, whose interest is in social games and gaming capital. Olli is a social gamer himself (on FrontierVille and Mafia Wars), as are other presenters in this session – these activities are publicly announced on Facebook and other social network Websites, generating what can be described as gaming capital (a special form of social capital); how does this operate in relation to social games, then?

Playing Mafia Wars, for example, isn’t a particularly exciting or deep gaming experience, but it is still very popular; what is of most interest here are the in-game achievements. Games like it are based on a freemium model that attracts as many players as possible, involves them as deeply as possible, and attempts to make at least some of the play. A key design driver is to support sociability and virality, to make the game a natural part of the social economy.

In Mafia Wars, players cannot get all the in-game jobs unless they invite many of their friends; such social activities are rewarded in the game and announced through the social activity feed. Players are given specific in-game tokens which can be passed on to friends to get them involved in the game; however, it is also possible for players to ‘buy’ non-player ‘friends’ through in-game reward points. Achievements invite players to do things outside the game as well – to engage in cross-promotional functions (e.g. playing on mobile devices, or playing other games by the same developer).

In the FrontierVille game, too, there are various achievements available now; beyond building one’s farm, quests and missions are what drives the game. Missions are things which players are asked to achieve on their farms, but it is also possible to use money to buy such achievements. Additionally, the game also encourages players to coordinate with one another – and once such achievements are completed, they can be shared with one’s Facebook followers. Some friends, then, become more valuable than others, as working with them is more lucrative.

The constant updates from such games can tend to be very disruptive to non-players in the social network, of course – so while social games are making game capital quantifiable and visible, this is not necessarily an entirely positive development. Social game updates make their way into different contexts, where they may be seen in a very different light from what was intended. Finally, of course, how all of this unfolds also depends on the continuing evolution of Facebook as a platform – small changes on the site may well close down or open up new opportunities for such social games.

And that’s it for this conference – fabulous as always; great catching up with everyone. See you next year in Seattle!