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.

1. Workshop:
Game Design for
Social Networks
@ MindTrek, Oct 2nd, 2009
Aki Järvinen, PhD
mygamestudies.com / IT University of Copenhagen

2. Aki’s
Background
Resume at Prezi.com

4. The focus:
50 million
active
monthly
users

5. Concept
design
process for
the day

6. Idea
production:
Quantity
breeds
quality

7. From Idea
evaluation
to Concept
design &
iteration

8. Design
template to
structure
your concept
design task

9. Takeaway:
High level
documen-
tation to
communicate
your idea

10. Concept
presentation:
Articulating
your design &
reflecting on
your
decisions

11. • 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. • 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

13. Concept
design
process for
the day

14. Let’s get it
done
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/3489717185/

15. The Design and
Business of
Networked Play

16. Focus of the
day • Not: the ‘games people play’
in social networks
• Yes: Game applications for
social networks
• In particular: Facebook

17. 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

18. 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

19. Top
Applications
2009-09-30
http://www.appdata.com

20. Top Games
Applications
2009-09-30
http://www.appdata.com

21. Top Game
Application
Developers
2009-09-30
http://www.appdata.com

22. Social
Networks
There are also other
big fish in the sea

23. • 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.

24. Networked Play
Motivations, Qualities, Design

25. 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...

26. 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...

27. 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’.

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

29. 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.

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

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

32. Inherent
sociability

33. Spontaneity

34. Symbolic
Physicality

35. Narrativity

36. Asynch-
ronicity

37. Social Game
Design
Framework

38. Designing
Networked,
Social Play:
Beyond
game design

39. Design:
Breakdown

40. Design:
Breakdown

41. Design:
Breakdown

42. Design:
Breakdown

43. Design:
Breakdown

44. Design:
Breakdown

45. Designing Social
Game Concepts
Getting it done

46. Exercise #1
Add description of
your game mechanic
here

47. Design:
Breakdown

48. Identifying
motivations->
designing
mechanics in a
way that allows
them to become
ways for players to
express and enact
their motivations

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

50. Social game
mechanics:
Designing interaction
loops where players
use verbs towards
goals, and the
network responds

51. Exercise #1
Add description of
your game mechanic
here

52. 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

53. Design:
Breakdown

54. Design:
Breakdown

55. Design:
Breakdown

56. 1-click
accessibility
to support Rescue Princess
spontaneity
Press the bu*on to rescue
the princess.
Daniel Cook
http://www.lostgarden.com

57. Compressing
complex
sequences of
events into 1
click
Daniel Cook
http://www.lostgarden.com

58. Social Game
Design
Patterns
Pattern:
Feed
propagation

59. Social Game
Design
Patterns
Feed
propagation,
case example
from Appealing to players’ empathy
FarmVille

60. Feed
propagation
supports
discussion

61. Social Game
Design
Patterns
Pattern:
Chain letter
quests

62. Service /
Propagation
Design
Patterns
Pattern:
Notifications

63. Service /
Propagation
Design
Patterns:
Anti-Pattern:
Request
Flood

64. LinkedIn:
The Quest

65. Design:
Breakdown

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

67. Social Game
Design
Framework

69. Exercise #3
Social networks shift
playtesting towards
metric-driven feature
optimization and
constant deployment
loop

70. Design:
Breakdown

71. Design:
Breakdown

72. Day’s
process &
results

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