Recently it was announced that Uncharted 3 will make use of social networking integration with services such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Players will, presumably, be able to have their Facebook and Twitter feeds automatically updated with achievements and upload replays of their most impressive moments to Youtube. Social networks have been showing their faces in games for a while now. The latest Need for Speed games include an autologging system (referred to by Criterion as "Facebook for the game") that allows players to keep track of game progress, compare best times with friends and share screenshots. More recently, the heavily community-based Little Big Planet 2 was released with features such as commenting on user-created levels and activity feeds for yourself, your friends and your favourite creators. I'm sure it's no coincidence that you now rate levels by either "liking" or "disliking" them.
The Rise of Facebook Games - So Many Lost Cows
Games companies are turning their attention towards social networking more and more. And why wouldn't they? The popularity of Facebook and Twitter has exploded in the last 5 years. There are millions of people using both services, meaning a lot of potential consumers outside of the existing gaming audience. In particular, the success of Facebook games must have turned a fair few heads. Back in March 2010, 32 million people were playing Farmville on a daily basis. That's 3 times the amount of subscribers World of Warcraft has and that's already considered a huge market. Being able to reach that many people has to be very tantalising to game developers. In fact, we're already seeing some big developers working on Facebook games of their own. Firaxis are currently developing a Facebook version of Civilization that'll be free to play and will make use of similar social features of other Facebook games.
Also drawing developers in is the business model of free to play games with micro-transactions. Making a game free to play draws in a much larger audience who may find the price tags on the shelves of game stores intimidating. Companies still need to make their money, however, and that's where micro-transactions come in. Progress is limited per day and players are given the tempting option of spending a little pocket change to get something extra out of the game. While many players will stick to playing the free content only, others may see the cost as so small and of little commitment that it's an easy decision to make a few transactions every now and then. Even if only half of the 32 million people that were playing Farmville in 2010 regularly made micro-transactions, that's still a massive amount of income for Zynga. Whether or not Firaxis and other companies developing Facebook games will follow a similar model is unclear but with the opportunity of high profits in a market that is mostly untouched by their usual gaming products, it's difficult to find a reason why they wouldn't.
Specialisation
Of course, this means very little to us gamers as we prefer a little more complexity in our games that Facebook just doesn't offer. However, the focus on social networking may have quite an influence on the next generation of consoles. For a long time, multiplayer has been used as a way of increasing the longevity and overall value for money of games and the increasing online integration in our consoles and PC gaming platforms has made multiplayer much more accessible to players. We may very well find games moving beyond the simple feed-updating tools that exist now and into online services that are more dependent on social networking ideals.
That doesn't necessarily mean we'll be logging into Facebook when we switch our consoles on. Facebook and Twitter, while popular, are not focused on any particular audience and contain many features that just wouldn't work well with a console's online service, to the point where it could even be frustrating to have to put up with it. Sony and Microsoft (and Nintendo, depending on how much online integration their next console has) may benefit from designing their own exclusive social networks. The next PSN and Xbox Live could end up closely resembling Facebook, only catered to gamers.
The advantages to games companies would mostly be to do with advertising. For starters, with a news feed feature game developers would have a much easier way to deliver news of updates and upcoming downloadable content releases, keeping players interested in their products. Users talking about games or posting updates of their achievements could be followed by a 'learn more about this game' button that conveniently links to the game's page on the online store. Of course, with social networks you also have the most powerful advertising tool there is; word of mouth. Games that are trending in conversation or receiving a lot of 'likes' are likely to create a lot of buzz and increased interest that could lead to a boom in sales.
Not All Doom and Dislike
But what's in it for us? So far I've painted a picture of corporations rubbing their hands together in glee as we're led to line their pockets with cash by their automated sale-making system. Thankfully, we could get a lot out of social networking too. We'd get more tools to share our finest gaming moments by being able to share screenshots and videos of our antics. With activity feeds we'd be able to flaunt our achievements more than ever before. Finding like-minded people who enjoy the same types of games as you would be easy and there'd be the potential for tools that allow you to arrange multiplayer events with your friends.
Recommendations of games could be offered by looking at your most played games and pointing out titles that you may also enjoy. Yes, this is another way you could be fooled into emptying your wallet but it could also be a way of finding some of those lesser known gems that usually get overlooked.
How Close Are We?
Some companies are already dabbling in this concept. Bioware have a social network for their own games that includes many of the features mentioned. Due to the limited amount of games that use social networks such as this, it's unlikely that they'll be successful with anyone other than hardcore fans of the developer in question. Steam is probably one of the closest platforms we have so far that resembles the social network that online gaming services might become. It has news feeds, friends, groups, community forums and event planning, as well as a wish list and gifting system that, once again, promotes sales of games. Since it supports releases from a wide variety of publishers and is already a good template for a social network, Valve shouldn't find any difficulty in keeping up with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo if this is the route they take.
Like it or not, social networking is big right now and is just waiting to spread to other mediums. The potential for its success on games consoles and in PC gaming all depends on how it is handled by respective games companies. Too much of the advertising aspect and it could result in a lot of resentment from those who have been gaming for several generations. A balance between profit for the company and benefit to the gamer will be vital. It'll be interesting to see just how much of the social networking craze makes its way into future generations of gaming, especially in the next one that's set to occur during the current height of the frenzy.
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