Katy Lindemann; "Any game you play with other people is a social game"

We're delighted that Katy Lindemann, strategist & gamer extraordinaire, has had a wee think about games, sociability and that there real world, and shared the following with us...

Hello pocketgamers.

Like my esteemed colleague Mark Earls, I'm definitely not a game designer. Or a game expert. Though I love games, gaming and most of all, plain and simple play. Stuff that's just fun to do. Stuff that's fun to do together.

Lots of games are great fun by yourself, no question, but playing with other people adds a whole other dimension.

Games have always been a social activity - and it's awesome that more and more digital (console, mobile, computer, whatever device you choose to play on) games are becoming increasingly social, allowing you to play with - or against - both friends and strangers.

The term 'social games' has come to refer to social-networked-enabled web-based games, like Farmville or Scrabulous - which are absolutely ace, but it's a bit of a shame to think of such a narrow meaning.

Any game you play with other people is a social game - such as those illustrated in this fantastic infographic illustrating the history of social games from game designer Jon Radoff.

And of course, you'll notice when you look at this image that loads of these games aren't ones that require loads of technology.

They're real life games, played with real physical things, with real physical people. And there's something pretty magical about playing with your mates right there and then, together.

Sure, you can all be sitting in the same room playing Xbox, and that's ace. But it's also pretty ace to be able to play a casual, pick-up game, that doesn't require a shedload of specialist equipment, something you can just pick and play with, for that spontaneous moment of fun.

And wouldn't it be just brilliant if that something was something you could, say, fit in your pocket...

I'm really excited about seeing what you all come up with.

Let's play!

Posted by John V Willshire

Jul 06, 2010

Mat Morrison said...

Wotcher! You seem successfully to have added the word "social" to the word "game". This seems redundant and wasteful (just like the word "wasteful" in this sentence.)

We might equally well apply the term "solo games" to solitaire and other non-multiplayer games.

You've also left us with no label for what we were previously calling "social games." Other than say "social-networked-enabled web-based games" which seems like a bit of a mouthful.

Accepted: your point is probably more "human needs and behaviour haven't changed just because we've got whizzy technology" and there's much that's true in that. But it also misses out on the fact that we do, in fact, have whizzy technology.

And - I'd add - a lot of the fun stuff (notably in gaming) is a direct product of that whizzy technology. If it weren't, we'd still be using knucklebones for dice.

I think that social gaming (used in this context to mean "social-networked-enabled web-based games") bears investigation. There are things to learn about - well - how to do it well, and how to do it better, for example.

While I agree we could always extrapolate from what we know about the human condition, it might be simpler to look at what companies like Zynga, Playdom, Playfosh, Crowdstar and ngmoco are doing.

Because it sure beats knucklebones.

katy lindemann said...

hello mat! thanks for stopping by. I think in many ways we're in violent agreement! games are mostly inherently social - that's kind of the point. some games are played by yourself, but by and large the whole point of a game is a structured way to play with other people. and so yep, the phrase social game is in many ways, tautologous. and if the phrase 'social gaming' is to become pretty much interchangeable with facebook games, it seems a bit strange when, as you say, most of the games we've always played are by their very nature social...

I love whizzy technology. it rocks. but I also like lo-fi stuff as well, and there's plenty of space in the wonderful world of gaming and play for both. everyone's getting excited, and rightly so, by the latest developments from the playfishes and zyngas of this world, because there's lots of really interesting stuff coming out in this space. yay! but it's nice to remember that innovation isn't only restricted to the world of bits, and that we can still have a lot of fun coming up with new and interesting games to play in the world of atoms. yay too! and if we can learn from what kind of developments are happening in the whizzy technology space, and how new and innovative ways of playing games are being designed online, to bring some of these learnings into the physical world, then that sounds pretty bloody cool to me

and, let's not forget, this is a competition to make a real, physical, pocketgame, so it's not hugely surprising that I'd be focusing on the non technological stuff here, really? ;)

John V Willshire said...

evenin' Mat, Katy

Just as a quick addition to the above, I thought I'd make two points...

Firstly, I found this quote a wee while back from a chap called Raph Koster:

"The entire video game industry’s history thus far has been an aberration. It has been a mutant monster only made possible by unconnected computers.

People always play games together. All of you learned to play games with each other. When you were kids, you played tag, tea parties, cops and robbers, what have you.

The single-player game is a strange mutant monster which has only existed for 21 years and is about to go away because it is unnatural and abnormal."

...which I agree with wholehearted; in five years time, we'll wonder why we bothered calling social games social games AT ALL, as they're all social (see also: media, television, anything else prefixed by social).

Secondly, I TOO love whizzy technology, it's ace, and we couldn't (or indeed perhaps wouldn't) have contemplated trying this wee pocketgame project without it...

...said whizzy technology has enabled us to quickly set up & run a (fairly niche interest) competition for a widely dispersed group of people in such a way that people can see what everyone else is doing, talk to each other about it, etc etc.

It just so happens that the whizzy technology in this is the means, not the ends.

What's (hopefully) going to be really interesting is what people invent and submit in terms of 'pocketgames' (pretty lo-tech) with the access they have to all the whizzy technology they do have in their lives to research, design and so on...

Simon Thornton said...

Not sure I 100% agree with the "a 1 player computer game is abnormal" thinking, I have to say. You're playing against the programmer(s) essentially. I wrote computer games as a kid and the whole process, for me, was about "so if the player choses to do this, then the computer will react like that". It's just a bunch of "what ifs", yes, but games IRL are about that as well, surely. Just because there's not 2 human beings in the same place at the same time reacting to events doesn't mean there isn't an underlying reactive process going on - however limited that is from the computers side.

Just a random thought...

I do know what you mean about the 'versus the programmer' thing. The thing that always bothered me when playing one player games was the level of difficulty 'set' by the people who made the game... some games were made 'too hard', some 'too easy'... but it was just that, they were 'set'.

When you play against someone else, no mater how good they are, you know they're not going to be programmed and 'set' at a consistent level. Which makes game play more unpredictable, and perhaps more fun...

Katy Lindemann; "Any game you play with other people is a social game"

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