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 documentation 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

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

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

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

http://games4networks.posterous.com	124
http://www.slideshare.net	79
http://funding101.blogspot.com	66
http://crezard-textcube.blogspot.com	18
http://www.game-designers.net	12
http://idothis.posterous.com	9
http://societyofg.blogspot.com	5
http://wildfire.gigya.com	3
http://www.scoop.it	3
http://whiterabbit.co.kr	2
http://crezard.textcube.com	2
http://jujo00obo2o234ungd3t8qjfcjrs3o6k-a-sites-opensocial.googleusercontent.com	2
http://socialgamesworkshop.pbworks.com	1
http://paper.li	1
http://posterous.com	1
https://jujo00obo2o234ungd3t8qjfcjrs3o6k-a-sites-opensocial.googleusercontent.com	1
http://conhecimentopiq.wordpress.com	1
http://game-designers.net	1
http://www.tstoryteller.com	1
http://www.funding101.blogspot.com	1
http://funding101.blogspot.de	1

Social Games Design Workshop

by Aki Järvinen on Oct 05, 2009

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

21 Embeds 334

Statistics

Social Games Design Workshop — Presentation Transcript