Facebook – The Good

Facebook does a lot of things right.  The staggering user base is proof of this.  I’ll begin by touching on the key positives of Facebook that relate to social game developers.

Large Numbers

Arguably the primary reason so many developers are jumping on the Facebook wagon is due to the crazy amount of users.  Facebook games have grown in player count faster than any games the industry has seen to date, overshadowing existing behemoths like World of Warcraft.

This large player base can be attributed to a number of key reasons.  Most users are joining to connect with friends, past and present.  Once in, the tools at their disposal (such as planning events) are keeping people coming back frequently.  The multi-purpose nature of the site is key to its success, and why other sites like MySpace and Kongregate have not reached the same levels of success.  This is important for game developers to note as it shows that having a site with a single key focus is not the best approach in this space.  This seems to go against the conventional wisdom of game developers and is why many people did not foresee the explosion of Facebook games.  Many people thought that anyone who wants to play a game would go to a gaming site.

Viral

Social networking is by its very nature viral.  Wall posts both push and pull information to users.  Messages are pushed to their main page for up to the minute information from friends and anyone can pull information from any profile or page on the site at any time.  Unfortunately the main culprit for “spam” within wall posts has come from games (and applications in general).  This is likely why Facebook has made moves recently to limit the ability for games to spam other users.

The ability to use Facebook Connect outside of Facebook is vital to maintaining the large customer base that has grown.  It is also a great way for games to make use of the Facebook platform without necessarily being a flash based Facebook game.

User Driven Content

Facebook is simply a platform allowing people to do what they want.  This lets users and application developers fill in the gaps and meet the needs of the users.  News, product advertising, opinions and interaction are all better when experienced with, or generated by, friends and family.  This is the primary reason Facebook is different to most other websites on the internet.  It’s like walking into a room full of your friends and spending time with them.  I’ll talk later about why this is important for social game developers when creating deeper experiences.

Facebook – The Bad

Facebook also has its fair share of problems.  Below is a list of the issues that related to social game developers.

Lack of Depth

I’ve spoken about this before.  Many of the current Facebook games lack depth and meaningful gameplay.  I’ve spoken to a number of Facebook users from various demographics and many of them simply ignore Facebook games as they’ve been burnt in the past.  This lack of depth also sets a bad precedent within the minds of users.  When players play 5 clones of <something>Ville they have a certain mindset about how most Facebook games play out.  We must be careful as we add more depth that we don’t overwhelm the player with a preconceived notion of what to expect.

Community Concerns

People are already becoming bored with Facebook and its games.  The massive drop in numbers from most Facebook games recently is proof enough of this.  The primary reason given by people I’ve spoken to is a lack of interest in the platform and what it has to offer.  Superficial relationships, meaningless games and pointless applications are listed among the top issues.  Adding to this problem is the concerns over security and privacy on Facebook.

Platform Issues

The platform is closed off and owned by Facebook Inc.  I’ve heard a number of Facebook developers complaining about the frequent breaking changes they make to their API’s.  Also, the complexity of the API’s can be a deterrent to young developers and bogs down progress when rapidly prototyping games that fit into the Facebook ecosystem.

What’s Next?

I’d like to look beyond Facebook to think about what may come next for social games.  This is simply a thought experiment looking at the possibilities and where we’d like to see social gaming in the coming years.

Strong Platform

We need a new a platform for games that includes other content.  Kongregate and the myriad of other game portals have shown that while there is success in a gaming-only platform, they cannot compete with a multi-faceted platform like Facebook.  To reach the non-gaming audience, the platform must be about connecting people.  Games fill a part of this social connection.  The platform also needs a clear way of differentiating the good from the bad games.

One concept that is growing in popularity of late (largely due to Jesse Schell’s speech) is the idea of bringing game playing into all facets of life.  Adding game elements to the actual platform is a great way of encouraging people to use it.  Simple activities like levelling up your profile or small mini-games that gather information about you for use in your profile.

Deeper Experiences 

I spoke earlier about user driven content within Facebook and why it’s critical to the success of the platform.  The best way to build deeper experiences is to take this user driven content and create games around it.  Giving players the ability to create meaningful experiences together will allow games to move this shared experience to the next level.

Just as Facebook users are building communities together, we need to look at building entire experiences based around our social games.  Imagine a game like World of Warcraft in a social networking setting such as Facebook.  If the addictive nature of WoW can be mixed with the accessibility of a social networking platform then deeper experiences will emerge for the user.

Who?

So who could create such a platform?  There are three main candidates I can see:

Google

Google is known for their attempts at toppling the big players in software.  They’ve had varying success with products like Gmail, Buzz and Chrome.  They have an extremely large user base, excellent skills and the money behind them to pull off a platform like this.

Google recently announced that they are talking to several developers in the social game space about the creation of a new social network.

Small Developer

A small developer with the right idea (and a lot of luck) may be able to move their way into this space.  Both Facebook and MySpace started developing their major platforms when they were relatively small compared to their competitors.  A small, agile team that’s close to the ground may be in the best position to rapidly build what people want, and react to the needs of the users as it grows.

Facebook Inc

An obvious candidate is for Facebook Inc itself to evolve in the coming months and years.  While this may be extremely difficult as there are already preconceived ideas about what Facebook should be like, they’ve shown their ability to make fairly major changes to the platform while only upsetting 90% of their users.

Conclusion

What are your thoughts on the direction of Facebook in the coming years?  Do you see opportunity for Facebook to grow into a more dynamic, deeper experience for users or will a competitor move in and build a better platform?

The current landscape

After my last blog post I was asked my thoughts on FrontierVille.  I fired it up and started playing.  I immediately hit a snag as I needed energy to continue playing.  Energy is used to perform most actions in the game.  There are three options for acquiring energy:

1. Waiting – Energy replenishes over time
2. Asking friends for energy – Spam your friends to request energy from them
3. Spend real money to get more energy

None of these are very inviting to me.  In fact, they all make me want to switch off the game and play something else.

I decided to investigate how much it would cost if I chose the third option.  I found that 7 points lasts me about one minute.  This equates to:

• Smallest payment – $60/hour ($1 = 7 points)
• Best value payment – $40/hour ($199 = 2,100 points)

And that’s just for energy alone!  You can also buy other items in game which don’t add to your energy reserves.

The Problem

This kind of cost is not sustainable long-term.  People will either end up spamming their friends, paying ridiculous amounts of money or letting the game dictate when they can play.  While current Facebook developers may be happy to cash in on this it is not going to last.  There are two options for gamers from here.  Facebook gamers will find better alternative Facebook games, or they will stop playing Facebook games entirely.

Why Sustainability?

Game developers have the perfect opportunity to reach a massive audience with deep and meaningful gameplay.  This audience also has an extremely large disposable income which can be tapped.  If we don’t take advantage of this, the droves of mainstream gamers entering the market will disappear as quickly as they arrived.  Giving a deeper experience than these expensive, spam-driven games will help to capture and grow the audience.

The Solution

There are a number of steps we can take to make Facebook games more sustainable.  I’m not suggesting we stop micro transactions and wall posts entirely; we just need to be more respectful with how we use them.

Players should get a solid reward for their time and money investments.  This expenditure should be treated more as an investment than just the cost of playing.  Players should be encouraged to spend as much as they like, but should also be rewarded in valuable ways.  By adding value to the gamers experience they are more inclined to continue paying as they see a direct correlation between enjoyment and money spent.  Currently the only correlation is between game time and money spent.

Wall posts and “spam” are a necessary evil of viral and social marketing.  The current drop in numbers has shown that they are an ideal way of advertising the game (the limitation on spamming ability of games directly relates to decline in number of players joining).  This viral marketing should be done in interesting ways that add value to the player, rather than being superficial requests for or sharing of items.

Rather than wall posts simply asking for things, or “sharing the good news” developers need to look at the core gameplay mechanics of their game and have a thread of continuity to their posts.  The main problem with existing games is the lack of deep and meaningful gameplay means there is little the gamer wants other than more of everything in the game.  Game designers need to factor wall posts and the like into their game design at a foundational level if they want any meaningful effect on gameplay to be seen.

Conclusion

With the right attitude and a good portion of respect for the player, we can turn this large audience into large revenue for the games industry.

What are your thoughts on sustainable Facebook games?

The problem

I remember a few short years ago when many designers hated Popcap games and their simple gameplay.  With the proliferation of Facebook games, many of these designers would give anything to be back in the days when Popcap was their biggest concern.  I’ve listened to many designers complaints about Facebook games and there is a common thread through most of the discussions:

There is not enough depth or emergence in Facebook games

Another way of putting this is that there are very few operative and resultant actions the player can perform.  What do I mean by operative and resultant actions?  Jesse Schell used these terms in his book of lenses.  Operative actions are the base actions the player can take.  For example in Bejewelled this would be “swapping the place of a gem”.  Resultant actions on the other hand are higher-level actions that are only meaningful in the larger picture of the game.  They are how the player uses the operational actions to achieve their goal.  In bejewelled this would be equivalent to “match 4 or more gems to receive a special gem”.

A case study: “Plants vs Zombies” and “Treasure Isle”

Let’s look at two casual games to see a correlation between the actions and the depth of gameplay.  Plants vs Zombies (PvZ) has very few operational actions, simply selecting a plant and placing it on the game field.  However it has a myriad of resultant actions that build upon this simple foundation.  Plants interact in special ways that add emergence and depth (e.g. Torchwood doubles the damage of any peas that go through it).  Rewards are given to the player (the death of more zombies) for discovering these resultant actions.

Treasure Isle on the other hand has few operational actions and few resultant actions.  Players walk around the island digging up treasure.  There is very little emergence or interaction that grows out of these operational actions.  Rewards are given to the player for the operational actions.  Players are not encouraged to dig deeper into the game but instead to simply open their wallets so they can continue to get the next reward for finding the next piece of treasure.

The Hypothesis

Both Popcap and Zynga games are popular.  It is becoming apparent that much of Zynga, and other Facebook games, success is from the viral nature of Facebook rather than the quality of the game.  My hypothesis is that bringing the depth and emergence of a game like PvZ to Facebook would see more success than the current round of shallow games we’re seeing.  A game like PvZ would obviously need to be changed to fit with the social nature of Facebook, but the key is that giving a deeper player experience, as well as the means for virality is going to see greater success.

The Solution

I’ve looked at a number of casual games and the consistent thread between the successful games that have some depth is to:

Keep the operational actions low while maximizing resultant actions

The fewer operational actions a game has, the larger the market it can reach.  While the more resultant actions a game has, the deeper the game experience.  This fits in with the age old adage of “easy to play, difficult to master”.  Players want to pick up a game quickly and not have to learn controls.  This is perfect for Facebook games as they are primarily played with a mouse and one button.  Resultant actions need to be layered on top of this simple set of operations actions in the best ratio possible.

Why the need to change?

With the huge success Facebook games have been seeing over the past years, why am I talking about changing the formula?  The problem is that all the big Facebook games are seeing a drop in numbers.  The biggest games are losing millions of players per month!  To put that into perspective, many PC and console games are lucky to reach these kinds of numbers.

Why are they dropping off? The main reason is that Facebook has limited the ability for these games to send spam to the player’s friends.  A big part of their success is the viral nature of Facebook.  The game is more about convincing you to spam your friends than about convincing you that you’re having fun.  These games need to get more depth quickly, or they will disappear as quickly as they grew.

An analogy for this is that terrible restaurant in the food court of the local mall.  The food is terrible and however so many people go through the mall that even if people only go once or twice the restaurant will still always be full.  What happens if suddenly they get moved to the back part of the mall where few people visit?  They either make better food, or go out of business.

Conclusion

What are your thoughts on the current wave of casual games?  Do you think it’s possible to add more depth to these games without comprising the casual nature of them?  Is the Facebook game market already dying or is it just in need of some deeper games to bring it back?