Social Games Design Workshop

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

•  10.00: Introduction to workshop and
participants
Programme •  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

•  12.30 Introduction: Design Drivers & Patterns for
Programme 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

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 •  Zynga, the market leader in
social game development,
games’ aims at 1 million $ revenue
per day
•  Reportedly they are half way
there

Success •  For a social game, he said
success is driven by by
factors 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


Top Game
Application
Developers
2009-09-30


Social
Networks

There are also other
big fish in the sea

•  A company’s success on
Zynga’s Facebook revolves around
recipe for three factors:
success •  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’ is ‘the process
of designing the content and
‘Game rules of a game.
Design’, •  also used to describe both the
anyway? 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 •  Into the realm of Interaction
beyond game design:
design as we •  ‘Interaction design is the art of
know it facilitating interactions
between humans through
products and services.’ (Dan
Saffer)

•  And, furthermore...

Social Game
Design goes
•  Into the realm of Service
Design:
beyond game
design as we •  ‘A service is a chain of activities
that form a process and have
know it value for the end user.’
•  service design focuses on
context, i.e. ‘the entire system
of use’.

Motivations •  Social connectedness,
for social •  Psychological well-being,
media use •  Gratification,
(Benkler)
•  Material gain
•  All these can be facilitated
through designing play, and
games

Four •  Peter Kollock (1999) has
motivations defined four motivations for
contributing in online
for communities:
contributing
in online •  Reciprocity,
communities •  Reputation,
•  Increased sense of efficacy, and
•  Attachment to and need of a
group.

Designing
opportunities
for players to •  = designing social game
mechanics as means of
express their interaction that allow players
motives to express their motives

Playful •  Inherent Sociability
qualities of •  Spontaneity
network use
(adapted •  Symbolic Physicality
from Rao) •  Narrativity
•  Asynchronicity

Social Game
Design
Framework

Designing
Networked,
Social Play:
Beyond
game design

Designing Social
Game Concepts
Getting it done

Exercise #1

Add description of
your game mechanic
here

Identifying
motivations->

designing
mechanics in a
way that allows
them to become
ways for players to
express and enact
their motivations

http://gamelab.uta.ﬁ/gamespacetool/
VNA gives
you starting
points for
designing
your
mechanics

Social game
mechanics:

Designing interaction
loops where players
use verbs towards
goals, and the
network responds

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

1-click
accessibility
to support Rescue Princess
spontaneity

Press the bu*on to rescue
the 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 Appealing to players’ empathy
FarmVille

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

Exercise #1 •  Activity is more important
than actual result
debrief
•  We aim at Quality through
quantity

Exercise #3

Social networks shift
playtesting towards
metric-driven feature
optimization and
constant deployment
loop

Feedback & •  Aki Järvinen, Ph.D.
Contact •  +358 40 504 1367
•  aki@mygamestudies.com
•  Twitter: @aquito
•  www.mygamestudies.com
•  games4networks.posterous.com

Social Games Design Workshop

Recomendados

Recomendados

Mais conteúdo relacionado

Mais procurados

Mais procurados (6)

Destaque

Destaque (6)

Semelhante a Social Games Design Workshop

Semelhante a Social Games Design Workshop (20)

Mais de Aki Järvinen

Mais de Aki Järvinen (8)

Último

Último (20)

Social Games Design Workshop