Over at LinkedIn, former PlayFirst lead Chris Bennett posted the following question:
Those of you who use Facebook regularly; think about the games you have played. What has been missing from those games to make them a rich and meaningful experience for you and your friends? How could a Facebook game actually deepen the relationships with your friends?
My response, rated best out of the eight received, follows:
As a platform, Facebook has its definite strengths and weaknesses, and solid game design will always play to the strengths of a platform. For the sake of brevity, I’ll go with a numbered list:
- Passive Experience: Like casual games, Facebook games should be able to be played in relatively short sessions, but offer enough depth to keep users engaged for the long haul.
- Non-Simultaneity: Facebook is a vast network of people in different countries and different time-zones. Multiplayer experiences that require players to be logged in at the same time go against Facebook’s casual, passive nature. Turn-based games are the way to go.
- Don’t Let it Lull: Scrabulous’s biggest flaw? There’s nothing for players to do when one player is sitting on their turn. You can blame the source material for this, but players should be able to perform “sub-actions” or “sous-actions” while other players linger. Otherwise, lingering on a turn for too long should come with a penalty.
- Unique User Recruitment: Everyone hates the friend invite system, especially when applications require a minimum number of harassed internet acquaintances before they become playable. Still, a good social game requires other players, so you need to find other ways to recruit. Have the game publish updates to the player’s feed to get the attention of their friends, or integrate Facebook walls into gameplay and encourage the player behavior of posting game content to friends’ walls. Invites mean nothing anymore; the *true* endorsement of a game is knowing that one of your friends is actually actively *playing.*
For more on designing games for Facebook, or any other social network, check out my previous post on the topic: Game design for Facebook is a very different beast.