Fording the River

August 5, 2010 | Written by Lucie Zhang

[Photo credit: Lost Magazine]

Back in elementary school, library trips were awesome because they always meant one thing: playing Oregon Trail in the computer lab. Who knew a game that teaches kids how to buy too many things at the General Store, shoot more buffalo than they can carry back, and write funny epitaphs for poor friends who have passed away from dysentery could be so much fun.

Open up my Macbook today though and you won’t find any trace of my sharp-shooting past. Instead, tabs for Gmail, Facebook, The New York Times, Tumblr, and a probably some recently-discovered hilarious website (New Yorker Cartoons Captioned By Kanye West Tweets, anyone?) will most likely be sitting pretty on my desktop. The luxury of being able to access multiple streams of information simultaneously makes me wonder how I ever stayed entertained during the days of dial-up. And what does all this say about me?

Well, that I’m actually pretty much totally average.

While The New York Times earlier this summer took an in-depth look at the Internet’s effect on our brains, a recent study by Nielson Internet Research on top of that found that Internet users spend almost one-fourth of their time on social networking sites, shifting their attention away from more traditional online tasks like checking their email. The second most common use of the Internet, though, was playing social games like Farmville.

Which in a way makes sense: these games didn’t stop being fun. We just started being told it wasn’t socially acceptable to play them all the time anymore.

“Games have always faced a sort of puritanical challenge in this country, that they are okay to play as kids but weird as adults,” said Mia Consalvo, a visiting associate professor at MIT, in a recent article by The Washington Post. “But play is a fundamental part of our lives. And now, with these social games, many people who weren’t gamers have an outlet again to play games as adults.”

What is it that makes these games so addictive for everyone? The fact that they thrive with an already-established social network. This answer may seem obvious, but the idea of having a game community exist within a social network rather than having a a social network result from a game community (in which all members of that social network therefore play a game) is an interesting (and entirely logical) phenomenon. While the second scenario often is filled with individuals stigmatized as “gamers,” the first situation involves a wide spectrum of personality, gender, and age groups. And this fact has large business consequences.

Mainly, the proliferation of social games attests to the influence friends have on one another online. Unlike in the Oregon Trail of my childhood, social games normally require collaboration in order for players to stay interested and achieve success in a game. Yet, similar to Oregon Trail versus games like Halo, these social games can be “crude to the point of being almost retro,” according to MediaPost, with simple objectives and basic features. By supplying the element of entertainment, surprise, and competition, these games provide a heightened level of interaction between an individual and his/her social network, making it a popular way of meeting new friends while keeping in touch with old ones.

For businesses then, social games become an added arena wherein they can reach customers and establish brand salience. In an interview at MIT, Consalvo said, “There’s all this spillover right now as people are trying to figure things out, like what’s a casual game versus what’s a social game. There’s a lot of interest and excitement and people aren’t quite sure what’s going to happen or how they’re going to make money.”

But that’s not to say social games are not lucrative. While most games are free to play, many include different levels or add-ons that users can purchase at a low cost. For instance, based off of the recently-popular ”Double Rainbow” video  that became a bonafide Internet meme, Frontierville (a new game from the makers of Farmville) added a “Double Rainbow” decoration that players can purchase with in-game currency. It is estimated that $835 million worth of game-based purchases are made every year.

Furthermore, games have the ability to exist across platforms, from laptops to iPhones. The appeal of reaching large audiences who are actively and often engaged in a game has caused game developer and entrepreneur Jon Radoff to call social games “the most viable business model that has come along for social networks, even better than advertising.”

It also makes predicting how businesses will leverage this potential fairly complicated. Expectedly, it has been observed that more and more brands and companies are either building games themselves or providing advertising or product placements within already-established social games. In an interesting twist, however, some have also speculated that Google hopes to enter the social network by reversing the entire social-to-game process by building a social game site that has networking capabilities.

To me, this seems like a simple isolation of the social game trend, which raises a few questions as to its potential success. Namely, I wonder whether or not this would only create a new gaming community (thus, losing the mass appeal social games currently rely and thrive on), and if current social game players value a game more/find it more convenient to play if it exists within a social network that they have already established.

Either way, the build-up and rumors surrounding the release of GoogleMe is reminiscent of the anticipation and expectations that enveloped two other recent Google products–Google Buzz and Google Wave, eventually making both underwhelming. Hopefully, in this case, third time’s the charm.

Tags: Facebook, farmville, google, social games

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