Social Heroes: Games as APIs for Social Interaction
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Games can serve as APIs for social interaction by allowing players to interact through game states and actions. One game prototype had players collect friends and tag them to support different groups for points, but the rules were too complex and synchronizing players did not work well. Another consideration for social games is using ludic or game-like language for communication between players.
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Social Heroes: Games as APIs for Social Interaction
- 1. Games as APIs for Social Interaction ! Catch them all playtest, 3/08 Adam Simon May 9, 2008
- 7. web site desktop app facebook IM text message
- 8. web site desktop app facebook IM text message web site desktop app IM text message
- 9. game state Rumplestiltskin (an artefactual performance) prototyping, 12/07
- 10. Alliances Players belong to different groups, and must decide which group to support at any given time. Catch them all playtest, 3/08 Collection Collect non-players as Friends, score extra points for socializing them into one of the player groups.
- 11. :-( friend collection + tagging was fun highly visible in the environment & for non-players Catch them all playtest, 3/08
- 12. :-) rules & scoring were too complex synchronizing all the players doesn’t work game state was confused with too many tagged friends Catch them all playtest, 3/08
- 14. time
- 15. sending player
- 16. sending player game
- 17. sending player receiving player game
- 18. sending player receiving player game action
- 19. ludic language description or action? time
- 20. ludic language time invocation
- 21. ludic language adopted game syntax for communication time
- 22. rule modeling
- 23. identity response to real world actions time
- 24. identity relational identity construction time
- 25. identity time positive social hacking
- 26. identity time (failed) attempt at personal identity construction
- 33. To Play: follow quot;socialheroesquot; on twitter
Editor's Notes
- how i’ve been thinking about games as an interface for social interaction between players
- Social Heroes is a game which runs on top of Twitter, online service to broadcast short pieces of text to people in lots of different ways. Players give each other points by tagging each other with key words, and eventually start earning achievement awards based on the combinations of points they’ve earned from their friends. It provides a framework for communication and identity construction in the context of a game. every game does this to some extent - people playing chess, tag, football, wii, and halo together are all engaging in a conversation with each other and with the game but what happens when games address that conversation directly, and make communication a core part of play? games are sometimes metaphorically compared to software, so i started looking there
- Social Heroes is a game which runs on top of Twitter, online service to broadcast short pieces of text to people in lots of different ways. Players give each other points by tagging each other with key words, and eventually start earning achievement awards based on the combinations of points they’ve earned from their friends. It provides a framework for communication and identity construction in the context of a game. every game does this to some extent - people playing chess, tag, football, wii, and halo together are all engaging in a conversation with each other and with the game but what happens when games address that conversation directly, and make communication a core part of play? games are sometimes metaphorically compared to software, so i started looking there
- every game does this to some extent - people playing chess, tag, football, wii, and halo together are all engaging in a conversation with each other and with the game but what happens when games address that conversation directly, and make it a core part of play?
- in software development, we have this concept called an API, an application programming interface, which allows data to flow in and out of a piece of software. Twitter is an API more than it is standalone software - can use without the website So, how can we apply this API concept to games?
- in software development, we have this concept called an API, an application programming interface, which allows data to flow in and out of a piece of software. Twitter is an API more than it is standalone software - can use without the website So, how can we apply this API concept to games?
- in software development, we have this concept called an API, an application programming interface, which allows data to flow in and out of a piece of software. Twitter is an API more than it is standalone software - can use without the website So, how can we apply this API concept to games?
- in software development, we have this concept called an API, an application programming interface, which allows data to flow in and out of a piece of software. Twitter is an API more than it is standalone software - can use without the website So, how can we apply this API concept to games?
- in software development, we have this concept called an API, an application programming interface, which allows data to flow in and out of a piece of software. Twitter is an API more than it is standalone software - can use without the website So, how can we apply this API concept to games?
- in software development, we have this concept called an API, an application programming interface, which allows data to flow in and out of a piece of software. Twitter is an API more than it is standalone software - can use without the website So, how can we apply this API concept to games?
- in software development, we have this concept called an API, an application programming interface, which allows data to flow in and out of a piece of software. Twitter is an API more than it is standalone software - can use without the website So, how can we apply this API concept to games?
- - formal systems of rules: make it possible for us to predict the outcome of our interactions (unlike in the real world, which has too many unknown rules) - this is what makes them fun! - do this by evaluating game state, a snapshot of what’s going on in the game at any given moment (examples: board, sports, videogame) - we treat everything else in the world the same way: devising theories of the way the world works, making predictions, testing them, and revising them - we mostly don’t think about those models explicitly. It’s just how we see the world. ---overlap - areas where this is more conscious, and one of these is our social interactions -good at modeling what other people are thinking - exploring games that bring mental models of social interactions to front-of-mind, and how that affects those models and those interactions - paper prototyping around alliances and friend collection
- - we treat everything else in the world the same way: devising theories of the way the world works, making predictions, testing them, and revising them - we mostly don’t think about those models explicitly. It’s just how we see the world. ---overlap - areas where this is more conscious, and one of these is our social interactions - exploring games that bring mental models of social interactions to front-of-mind, and how that affects those models and those interactions
- things like SF0, big games like Pac Manhattan, and ARGs create game interfaces for the physical world, forcing us to reframe our assumptions about our environment what sort of game would produce the same results in our social interactions?
- all of these problems could be solved with some amount of computing power, but i didn’t want it to get in the way of the player interactions
- players send short text commands to twitter thru website, desktop app, text message, etc, tagging and sending points to each other the system awards achivements based on the number of points earned Rockstar (2 punk + 2 glamor + 1 creative) everything is public - points traded between players as well as achievements are broadcast to anyone who’s watching
- this is the web interface for twitter older messages are at the bottom, newer on the top started with: limited number of tags (13 tags, 15 achievements) about 10 users the tags & achievements were originally intended to be descriptive, but users, of course, always find better things to do than what you intended.
- this is the user who is speaking/acting/etc
- this is the user who is speaking/acting/etc
- this is the user who is speaking/acting/etc
- this is the user who is speaking/acting/etc
- tags designed to be descriptive, can also be used in other was zannah uses the ambiguous “flirt” tag with john - is he flirting, or is she? use of tags for both description & action
- here, I’m using “glamor” points more as an invocation, to boost confidence, than a descriptor
- a few days after we began, people start appropriating the syntax of the game (+Tag) for meta-communications, which looks like gameplay but isn’t decided to incorporate that into the game - buying tags = explosion of gameplay that became more integrated with activities outside of the game
- first impulse: break the game!
- rockstar example: in response to a favor he did IRL, Scott tries to give Daniel a rockstar point got back a message that it’s not a tag
- bought the new tag and gives it to Daniel
- daniel protests because “rockstar” is actually an achievement, but it sticks
- heather tries to give herself rockstar points (fwiw, she was rebuffed) difference between relational identity & personal identity affects a lot of our social dynamics, and so wanted to provide a game space to play and explore that ->another use of the game is for metacommunication of players’ current state
- needs coffee example: daniel buys a tag “needs coffee”, probably wants someone to give him that point
- Jonathan gives 3 points in rapid succession, to Heather, Corey, & John
- Corey tries to take “needs coffee” points away from John. he can’t do that yet, another example of players using game syntax to communicate meta-information