What is real in social gaming?

In a recent editorial in the New York Times, a reader laments that 60 million people playing Farmville might better spend their time getting out and growing some actual plants.

I actually agree with the dismay of the author that so many people would spend both money and time investing in Farmville. It can be argued in defense of Farmville that people enjoy playing games and as such it stands on the merit of entertainment. However, I would argue that Farmville offers poor value as social entertainment and to this point I should draw some very important distinctions between Farmville and social networks such as Facebook or Real Life Plus, a social network I am currently building.

The first point is that Farmville is not truly socially interactive. Players build and optimize their farms in a bubble without any real time interaction with friends. The sole purpose of roping in your friends is to increase your farm efficiency through networking, not meaningful socializing. The mechanic exists for marketing purposes and it is very good at sucking in new players. Social networks like Real Life Plus want to facilitate genuine, lasting friendships through chat, sharing and interactive social play.

The second point is that Farmville is completely endogenous. No value is created from Farmville that exists beyond the scope of the game. Social games ought to build an online community by building a space in which users can play, explore and chat in real time. Real Life Plus creates meaningful value that is tied into the real world through our Personal Assistant who will suggest movies, books and activities the user might like based on their personalities. After you have your adventures, we encourage users to share their experiences with friends online.  In the end, both Farmville and RLP will teach players basic skills in economics, but players at RLP will have additionally built meaningful friendships.

Online social spaces are now the norm for the new generation. You can't separate online socialization from reality - it is part of our society in every sense that cell phones and e-mail are part of our society. The lack of a cell phone or e-mail is considered a huge social handicap. Ultimately, I believe games like Farmville will fall in and out of fashion, but social networks like Facebook and RLP will have a lasting presence because they have the social glue of true friendships to sustain them. I can't wait to look backwards ten years from now to see where things went.

The Future of Gaming

Jesse Schell spoke about the Future of Gaming at this year's Dice Summit, which points to a future in which economic systems are improved through social game play theory. This is a phenomenon that Schell refers to as "Gamification".

The applications of Gamification does not end with economics, of course. By extension, game play theory could be applied towards and improve almost any system you could imagine, such as education, civil engineering or even bureaucracies. Indeed, my game designer friends often marvel at poor design in nearly every facet of daily existence. Some are obvious, like maps, intersection designs, interior spaces, etc. Professionals who work in these spaces are at least trained to learn some fundamentals of design. There are also examples of poor design that abound in abstract systems that affect us every day, such as policies, procedures, correspondence and finance. These are all things that we must cope with every day at both the professional and personal level, yet almost nobody receives any training towards designing within these disciplines until they reach a decision to specialize.

It is in this context that I often marvel that a bachelor's degree does not require the study of design as applied to abstract systems. I imagine that if such a course of study was taught, I would no longer be subjected to e-mail with horrible cognitive structure, or company policies that encourage the opposite of what they are meant to achieve. Imagine a world in which ordinary professionals applied game design skills towards creating better systems in all aspects of life. I think if we taught the application of ideas such as 'efficiency of structure' and 'risk vs. reward', we would have a more engaged and productive society.