How one would make a good social game?

[aattss]

I noticed that, although there are numerous complaints, most of the games on Facebook have the same faults. I decided to start a thread to discuss how one would make a game otherwise whilst still keeping it a "social game".

1. Remove all this junk involving using real money. Although some people like KMMOs, many people regard them as immoral, especially when they claim to be free. Also, one reason it takes so long to do things is because they want you to buy their currency. As such, by removing this element from play, they will have to make and balance games based on the ordinary person.

2. Don't punish people for not playing the game and rewarding them for obsessing over it every day. If I choose not to play a game for a while, the game should not punish me for it.
a. You could deal with max energy by letting the players set to automatically do quests, or even make a schedule for their character to follow while the player is afk or on a vacation.

3. Do not force people to or encourage people to spam their walls and recruit friends because they need this part or something. A good game will make people naturally advertise it by telling their friends about it, or request help because they want a friend to help on a difficult boss which is designed to be eventually defeatable by normal means. Even so, one could ask strangers in-game without friending them on the social network. A good game will not force people to advertise a game to advance to the next part of the game.

I'm really not sure why a majority of the social games aren't doing this.

I may edit this later.

 

[Smooth Operator]

I'm really not sure why a majority of the social games aren't doing this.

Because they are in it solely for the money, the companies do not give two shits if you enjoy even a second of what they spam you with because that is what they are, spam companies.
The biggest success story in that market is Zynga that started their budget with scams, and now makes the big bucks by stealing other peoples games and turning them into spam software.

And this is why that genre is absolute horseshit.

 

[Zipa]

I'm really not sure why a majority of the social games aren't doing this.

Because they are in it solely for the money, the companies do not give two shits if you enjoy even a second of what they spam you with because that is what they are, spam companies.
The biggest success story in that market is Zynga that started their budget with scams, and now makes the big bucks by stealing other peoples games and turning them into spam software.

And this is why that genre is absolute horseshit.

This pretty much, if you want to make a good social game do the opposite of Zynga pretty much.

As the OP said take all the real money and spamming of friends and not playing = punishment out and actually make a game that is engaging and not just a grind , some of which are worse than the MMO genre.

 

[Anton Yeo]

My ultimate hope for social games should be crafted so that they could be played fully without paying for in-games items, however a paid subscription should be there so that those that become a member could access fun features like trophies, competitions and achievements.

 

[Esotera]

There are almost certainly a load of social games out there that are like this, and the reason no-one has heard about them is because the three points you've just described are very effective at spreading games. It might not be a fun player experience, but it's addictive and will get a large player base going, and earn the developer money, whereas if you don't include at least a few of these aspects, you're less likely to achieve success.

 

[Bad Jim]

One thing that's starting to baffle me.

Plently of great single player games with good stories were once made on a budget of $100k or so and could easily last 20-40 hours. Throw $10 million at making MMO content and you ought to end up with 2,000 to 4,000 hours of decent content.

So why the pointless grind? Sure, quality HD content is too expensive for MMOs, but you can make a tonne of decent low definition content, which would be miles better than endless grinding in HD.

And if you replace the grind with real content, people won't try to skip it, so there would be less powerlevelling, gold farming etc.

 

[Xixikal]

There is a distinct difference between 'play' and a social experience.
There are a lot less people who focus on socialisation in games as opposed to the other archtypes: killer (i.e. most "hardcore" gamers"), explorer, achiever. As people above have said, money is the key factor. Why make a game focussed on a tiny market, when there is a wider and more prevalent audience available?

 

[aattss]

So, the problem is a lack of indie games on social networks? In my opinion, a lack of good games means a lack of inspiration, so it will continue that way until an indie game developer makes a fun social game.

 

[Elate]

MMORPGs, pay to play MMORPGs. Particularly ones that have good open world PvP and varied classes that are required for dungeons, but don't punish it, because it allows people to work together properly, sociably. Do I get /thread?