Facebook games and other social games are truly on its way forward. Recently there where a couple of studies, emphasizing that the time of hardcore gamers are over and this decade will be the one of causal gamers. Indeed Social Games reach a wider audience, than “Classic” Games, according to the findings of Flurry, Social Games are mostly played in the age group of 18 to 49 years. Also among the so called casual gamers, women are the larger group of players, compared to men.

But what does this term Social games mean? And are Social Games really different from the old, usual… Games?

One of our competitor, the Norwegian company Playfish, describes Social Games as the following:

Social games are games designed to be played together with friends. [...] This is in some ways a return to the roots of games. You play with the same people you would play cards, board games or go bowling with in the real world. Sharing the game experience with friends makes it more compelling and fun.

Clearly, this is how most people receive the term Social Games. We use the technology given by Social Networks, to play games together. But how social are this games really? Is it Social when you have to invite another 200 so called friends to get into the next level? There is an interesting article on this topic on WhatGamesAre, about the selfishly social aspect in Facebook games. This topic seems to be making the round in the game development scene, as also on currently on-going Game Developers Conference, there was a discussion whether Social games are evil? I think evil is always a strong word, and to describe Zynga’s Farmeville as evil is not exactly getting the point, but still there are a lot of improvements that can be made to lay more emphasis on the Social in games.

Virtual Worlds already provide a more social aspect to gaming, because they let you meet people in games and together you can play certain games, chat or just walking around with the virtual space. As the technology is getting better, also this Virtual World get more advanced in their game play and design. Also Mobile integration can add to more Social aspects of gaming. Communication is a strong tool to connect players, beyond the classical multiplayer experience. We at TribePlay believe, that the next generation of games will have to take this aspect into account. Lets see what the future brings…

By the way, try this cool game, not really social, but fun anyway: Interlocked.