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

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 • 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
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

• 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

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

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 #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 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

LinkedIn:
The Quest

Design:
Breakdown

Exercise #1 • Activity is more important
than actual result
debrief
• 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 & • Aki Järvinen, Ph.D.
Contact • +358 40 504 1367
• aki@mygamestudies.com
• Twitter: @aquito
• www.mygamestudies.com
• games4networks.posterous.com