Courtesy of Flickr's LivingOS

If you’ve been reading our blog, you know that we try to provide a steady stream of insightful information about the business side of social games. In our last post, we started to examine understanding micro-transactions and virtual goods. In particular, we focused on how game design could motivate players to interact with these features. So in today’s post, I thought it would be valuable to offer my perspective (as a newbie gamer) to playing social games and the different features that appealed to me. Why? I think it’s something that game designers, businesses and hopefully others (new Facebook gamers) can appreciate: a fresh look into what makes games “fun” to play. What are certain game design features that (even new) players can feel excited about? Here’s my list of Facebook games that I found interesting to play, let me know what you think.

Need For Speed Nitro

Although I’m not a big fan of racing games, this popular car racing game is really fun to play. If you like collecting, sharing, and racing cars and want to challenge your friends to races, this game is a must-try.  Admittedly, I do have a competitive spirit and love winning my races, so I like the option (feature) of being able to select the cities and race courses (that I want to use in the races). It’s probably all just part of engaging game mechanics (I’ve been doing a lot of research on this topic lately), but I feel like each course offers me a unique advantage for my experience level and my car’s abilities. It seems to me (not sure if this has any validity), as if I’m more successful at winning my races on the Rio course, as opposed to the ones in Madrid. Nevertheless, having that feature option is really nice. What really got me hooked though was the free customization feature in the game (kind of like Pimp My Ride, but a do-it-yourself version).  For me, designing my car is comparable to the experience of getting dressed every morning. It’s my way to express myself and add my personal stamp on something, to show-off a part of my personality. Secretly, I like the fact that my hot pink 1960 Volkswagen Westphalia might grab some attention.

Pet Pupz

In Pet Pupz, taking care of your puppy (the purpose of the game) feels like you are really nurturing a real-life animal. I feel like I have to visit my puppy every day and take care of it: it’s the ultimate responsibility for me, and it’s only available in this virtual setting. As far as specific features go, I really like the fact that I can take care of my friend’s puppy as well as mine. I feel like I am extending a helpful hand, showing that I care about her when I do that. It’s a nice social gesture and I feel as if through this process, I am actually strengthening my real-life relationships. Another feature that I really like in the game is the Scene Builder, because it allows me to (like in the previous game), customize and build my own product. As the name suggests, you can build a customized photo or scene and place your puppy in it. The reason I like the feature (and I feel that it’s worth my time investment) is because I can show it off to people when the product is finished (you can download the scene, print it out or post it to your wall). Bragging never hurt anybody…

Mob Wars

Mob Wars is interesting to me, because it’s a role playing game that I actually didn’t think it’d enjoy playing… that is until I started advancing in the game.  The fact that you can recruit your friends and therefore finish jobs quicker or level up faster made me feel like I really accomplished something and there was a real incentive for me to keep going on. I even thought that I could possibly start an all-girl mob (I’m not sure why I would’ve wanted to do that, but I did) however after realizing that I needed all the help I could get, I abandoned that idea. I also really like seeing my progress in the game, being able to buy my weapons (guns and crowbars) and seeing how it helps me to complete jobs etc.

I realize that this list is only a start. There are many other games that could be engaging to try and I promise to do it in time. In the meantime, if you have any recommendations, don’t hesitate to leave us a comment or contact us.

The principles of game design are really no different than the behaviors we foster in our day-to-day lives.

You may be familiar with a silly game adults play when little children ask for something without saying please: the adult pretends not to hear in the absence of the “magic word”. Well, one day my wife and I realized that we were wasting a valuable opportunity to teach our 3 year-old daughter. Instead, we changed the rules: whenever she forgot proper manners she would be asked to do some simple task like counting to 20, spelling her name, reciting her address, adding numbers etc.

Looking back, it’s amazing how much she learned from these “punishments”. But even more interesting is that she never saw them as unfair or onerous. Even at 3, she seemed to intuit that when she made a mistake there would be reasonable consequences. Giving her an easy way to atone reduced her feeling of guilt and frustration. Instead of being nagged, she was being taught (which she actually appreciated). Instead of feeling like a failure who can never remember her manners, she became a budding mathematician and speller. We knew that the technique had reached its goals when she started reminding us that she “owed” us a spelling: “Daddy: you can’t get the juice until I spell something!”

Similarly, in game design we can turn around the negative emotions associated with failure, and guide game players towards activities that are more profitable for them (or for game developers). Let’s take one of the oldest and most basic examples as our starting point. Imagine you are playing Space Invaders. One of those imaginative invaders bounces off a wall, returns in your direction and drops a little missile pixel on you. You’re thinking: “Damn! Why didn’t I see it coming? How did I let my attention wander? There goes my high score!”

Almost as if it was reading your mind, right after impact the game provides you the opportunity to continue for 25¢. What a deal! You don’t bemoan the greed of the game developers, instead you’re grateful for a second chance.  A more advanced game could even charge a bit extra for 30 seconds of missile defense or super-fast rocket-speed. Of course, in certain games, the sum is not so small. For example, if you get knocked out of a football “survivor pool” it can be very expensive to get back in!

Despite the direct monetization opportunities, there are more interesting ways to harness the impulse to atone. Consider the application that Ayogo did For MovieSet. MovieSet is a “buzz marketing” company that makes its living promoting movies before they are released in order to to build grass roots interest and soften the ground for the launch marketing. MovieSet wanted to accomplish a few things:

• Attract movie fans on Facebook and MySpace, thereby providing them with easier access to their target audience
• “Teach” movie fans about movies that have not yet been released
• Learn about fans’ movie preferences

What Ayogo delivered for MovieSet was “Behind the Scenes”, a trivia game that asks players questions about movies that have not yet been released. When players answer a question correctly, MovieSet confirms the correct answer by delivering a video: behind the scenes footage, interviews with actors, directors and producers, or b-roll. Great stuff. When a movie fan gets a question wrong, though, the game offers them the opportunity to try again (after all, these videos are scarce and fans want to see them all). In order to get that opportunity, the movie fan needs to do something for MovieSet, like answering a question about their movie watching habits. Within the first 10 days or so, 30,000 movie fans had answered 150,000 questions about their movie watching habits. The ROI:

• MovieSet got the addressable user base they wanted: ultimately, the game was installed over 250,000 times in the course of the first month; tens of thousands of fans submitted email addresses for follow-up; and MovieSet learned a great deal about what those movie fans like and don’t like
• Movie producers received more than a million views of promotional videos for their movies without investing a single marketing dollar, and better still, those fans “passed” a “quiz” about their movie before it was even released!
• Movie Fans had fun, saw loads of great, exclusive video content, and felt good about providing what would otherwise be considered very personal information

So next time you’re trying to motivate a specific behavior, remember that the best game design effectively mimics the principles of day-to-day life: mistakes have consequences, and atonement is a privilege that must be earned (or purchased!).