Inside Facebook on Social Games February 13, 2008
Posted by jeremyliew in facebook, games, games 2.0, gaming, social games, social gaming.trackback
Inside Facebook has a nice story on social gaming (it’s going to be big!) and a run down of the major players. I even get a call out as a recommended read!
Two key graphs below; one of social games by installs:
and one of social games by daily actives:
Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog 
I’m all for the development of games on the Facebook Platform, and can even see the value and revenue model working…..but does it really need to be branded ‘Social Gaming’? The idea of playing multiplayer games isn’t exactly new, and even on a web model, Yahoo and MSN Games have existed for years….
Who loves gaming? I know I do. Check out my gaming forum to talk about all the online/offline gaming you possibly can. 🙂
@ Andrew, I think the important difference between multiplayer games of the past and social gaming is that social gaming is played between people who actually know each other, so that there is social context to the game (vs. playing chess against someone you met in the lobby of Y! games and will never see again).
@Jeremy: I completely agree with the model – I’m just questioning the use of the term ‘Social Gaming’. I used to meet coworkers, college friends and fraternity brothers on Yahoo Games to play against them, and played even more games against friends via MSN (since you could challenge them directly via IM). It just seemed like an abuse of the whole ‘Social’/’2.0’ naming convention.
@Andrew: It’s not an abuse. It’s a term for games that exist on social networks. If it bothers you, take it up with Facebook and MySpace for using the term “social” network.
@andrew chen: everything old is new again. take your tired Web 1.0 term from yester-year, apply some Web 2.0/3.0/social-branding, and PRESTO! insta-fundable new category 😉
semi-joking, semi-serious.
ex:
* social network -> social graph
* collaborative filtering -> prediction markets
* multiplayer games -> social games
* live web -> push
anyway, i think the one new riff with “social games” from “multiplayer games” is the expectation of built-in viral marketing due to the social graph. maybe not earth-shatteringly different, but notable.
my .02
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