social games design workshop
DESCRIPTION
My slides from the workshop I tutored at the MindTrek 2009 conference in Finland. The workshop showcases methods and findings that will be published in my forthcoming book on social games.TRANSCRIPT
Workshop: Game Design for Social Networks
@ MindTrek, Oct 2nd, 2009
Aki Järvinen, PhD
mygamestudies.com / IT University of Copenhagen
Aki’s Background
Resume at Prezi.com
The focus: 50 million
active monthly
users
Concept design
process for the day
Idea production:
Quantity breeds quality
From Idea evaluation
to Concept design & iteration
Design template to
structure your concept
design task
Takeaway: High level documen-tation to
communicate your idea
Concept presentation:
Articulating your design & reflecting on
your decisions
Programme
• 10.00: Introduction to workshop and participants
• 10.15 Lecture: The Design and Business of Networked Play
• 11.00 break
• 11.15 Exercise: Brainstorming social network game mechanics
• 11.45 Exercise debrief & Introduction to design templates
• 12.00 Lunch Break
Programme • 12.30 Introduction: Design Drivers & Patterns for Social Games
• 13.00 Exercise: Social Game Design
• 13.30 Exercise: Designing the Service Aspect
• 14.00 Coffee break
• 14.30 Iterating the Game Concept & Preparing game concept presentations
• 15.00 Concept presentations & Evaluations
• 15.45 Workshop debrief & closing
Concept design
process for the day
Let’s get it done
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/3489717185/
The Design and Business of Networked Play
Focus of the day • Not: the ‘games people play’
in social networks
• Yes: Game applications for social networks
• In particular: Facebook
Business of ‘social games’
• Zynga, the market leader in social game development, aims at 1 million $ revenue per day
• Reportedly they are half way there
Success factors
• For a social game, he said success is driven by by virality, engagement, and monetization. “Each of these variables you can effect over time. None of them are fixed [variables].”
- PlayFish COO
Top Applications 2009-09-30
http://www.appdata.com
Top Games Applications 2009-09-30
http://www.appdata.com
Top Game Application Developers 2009-09-30
http://www.appdata.com
Social Networks
There are also other big fish in the sea
Zynga’s recipe for
success
• A company’s success on Facebook revolves around three factors:
• ability to maximize viral channels (to drive new users),
• the ability to create an effective internal engagement loop within an application, and
• access to an open communication channel with Facebook’s platform people.
Networked Play Motivations, Qualities, Design
What is ‘Game
Design’, anyway?
• ‘game design’ is ‘the process of designing the content and rules of a game.
• also used to describe both the game design embodied in an actual game as well as documentation that describes such a design.
• This is indeed what the workshop is about, but...
Social Game Design goes
beyond game design as we
know it
• Into the realm of Interaction design:
• ‘Interaction design is the art of facilitating interactions between humans through products and services.’ (Dan Saffer)
• And, furthermore...
Social Game Design goes
beyond game design as we
know it
• Into the realm of Service Design:
• ‘A service is a chain of activities that form a process and have value for the end user.’
• service design focuses on context, i.e. ‘the entire system of use’.
Motivations for social
media use (Benkler)
• Social connectedness,
• Psychological well-being,
• Gratification,
• Material gain
• All these can be facilitated through designing play, and games
Four motivations
for contributing
in online communities
• Peter Kollock (1999) has defined four motivations for contributing in online communities:
• Reciprocity,
• Reputation,
• Increased sense of efficacy, and
• Attachment to and need of a group.
Designing opportunities for players to express their
motives
• = designing social game mechanics as means of interaction that allow players to express their motives
Playful qualities of
network use (adapted
from Rao)
• Inherent Sociability
• Spontaneity
• Symbolic Physicality
• Narrativity
• Asynchronicity
Inherent sociability
Spontaneity
Symbolic Physicality
Narrativity
Asynch-ronicity
Social Game Design
Framework
Designing Networked, Social Play:
Beyond game design
Design: Breakdown
Design: Breakdown
Design: Breakdown
Design: Breakdown
Design: Breakdown
Design: Breakdown
Designing Social Game Concepts Getting it done
Exercise #1
Add description of your game mechanic here
Design: Breakdown
Identifying motivations->
designing mechanics in a
way that allows them to become
ways for players to express and enact their motivations
VNA gives you starting
points for designing
your mechanics
http://gamelab.uta.fi/gamespacetool/
Social game mechanics:
Designing interaction loops where players
use verbs towards goals, and the
network responds
Exercise #1
Add description of your game mechanic here
Exercise #2
Designing for the network, for the
casual mindset, and how it is virally
engaged into play –even how do you
copywrite your notifications might
matter substantially
Design: Breakdown
Design: Breakdown
Design: Breakdown
1-click accessibility
to support spontaneity
Press the bu*on to rescue the princess.
Rescue Princess
Daniel Cook http://www.lostgarden.com
Compressing complex
sequences of events into 1
click
Daniel Cook http://www.lostgarden.com
Social Game Design
Patterns
Pattern: Feed
propagation
Social Game Design
Patterns
Feed propagation, case example
from FarmVille
Appealing to players’ empathy
Feed propagation
supports discussion
Social Game Design
Patterns
Pattern: Chain letter
quests
Service / Propagation
Design Patterns
Pattern: Notifications
Service / Propagation
Design Patterns:
Anti-Pattern: Request
Flood
LinkedIn: The Quest
Design: Breakdown
Exercise #1 debrief
• Activity is more important than actual result
• We aim at Quality through quantity
Social Game Design
Framework
Exercise #3
Social networks shift playtesting towards
metric-driven feature optimization and
constant deployment loop
Design: Breakdown
Design: Breakdown
Day’s process &
results
Feedback & Contact
• Aki Järvinen, Ph.D.
• +358 40 504 1367
• Twitter: @aquito
• www.mygamestudies.com
• games4networks.posterous.com