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Game Design for Social Networks: Interaction Design for Playful Dispositions

Aki Järvinen1 IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark / mygamestudies.com

1 E-mail: aki.jarvinen@itu.dk

ABSTRACT The author argues that tasks of designing games for online social networks, such as Facebook, can benefit from understanding the project as a practice where techniques and methods of game design are embedded into interaction design and service design tasks. Research into motivations and emotional dispositions of social media use, and analyzing existing popular games in said networks, help in identifying game mechanics that tap into user practices. Through a number of Facebook games as case studies, the author extracts a set of design principles into a design framework where interaction, social, service, and game design meet. The framework aims to support the inherent sociability, spontaneity, narrativity, and playfulness that permeate online social networks.

CR Categories: D.2.10 [Software] Design – Methodologies Keywords: Game design, interaction design, social media, social networks, Facebook, Twitter 1. INTRODUCTION: Social network games as an emerging area of game business and development As online social networks, such as Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter, have become increasingly popular, an increasing number of games have found their way into these platforms. Facebook applications attract millions of users per monthly basis, and game applications frequently reach the top 10 popularity lists of the platform [see http://www.appdata.com]. Furthermore, social media experts are claiming that social media games are threatening the market of so-called casual games, due to, e.g., their virality, accessibility, and scalability [Mayer 2009a]. Furthermore, it can be argued that online applications and services incorporate playful, game-like qualities, even if they are not explicitly presented and marketed as games. Flickr, the photosharing service, originated from a game concept at a start-up company [Graham 2006], and its origins arguably show in the service’s design features: e.g., how users are motivated to interact and build their reputation among the community. As the paper will demonstrate, Facebook and other social media entertainment applications often tread the fine line between trivia, socializing, play, and gaming. Facebook has drawn this line in the water by separating the application category ‘Just for Fun’ from the category of ‘Gaming’. In terms of design practices, these observations point towards a junction where interaction design projects embed game design tasks, and vice versa.

From the vantage point of game design, it becomes engulfed by interaction, or service design tasks. In practice this means that the context of use, or in this case, play, has to be taken into account in the design in more complex ways. The author has worked on both fields, game design and interaction design, and recently on projects (such as an online sports fantasy league platform; http://www.liigaporssi.fi, and an MMO targeted at children; http://www.peliakatemia.fi) where the two practices and methods of the two have been joined. Thus, the research emerges from both theoretical interest, but also from practical experiences. Valentina Rao [2008] has studied the ‘playful mood’ that, e.g., Facebook applications encourage, noting that individual use them both for entertainment purposes and socialization tools, and often they are considered as unsatisfactory experiences, which, on the other hand, forces developers to reconsider whether they are designing and developing games, or something on the borderline of social media and games. The two principal research questions are: First, how can interaction design inform game design practices in the context of designing games for social networks? Second: How can such observations and findings, based on an understanding of user motivations, be formalized into design principles that would solve design problems and inspire new design solutions in this particular design space? The paper explores the overlapping design spaces by identifying prominent game design principles in popular Facebook games. These principles outline high-level design solutions that evidently tap into the user motivations and their practices in present online social networks, as their popularity suggests. In addition, how such principles are embedded into the designs of other online applications, is discussed. The paper uses Facebook applications as primary examples, but the results are also discussed in the context of other online social platforms, such as Twitter. 1.1 Design Research into Games Answering the research questions requires bridging ‘design research’ [Laurel 2005] from two areas: designing online applications, i.e. practices of interaction design, and designing games, i.e. practices of game design. The perspective presented here is the one of ‘research into designs’, which means that the research focuses on the practices of interaction and game design practices as objects of study, and treats the results of those practices as design objects or design events.

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In practice, this entails deconstructing existing design objects (Facebook games, in this case), and indentifying design solutions from them, and abstracting them into principles so that the results would inform future design tasks. The method of analyzing the designs takes advantage of methods that the author has developed previously for analyzing games as particular systems. [Järvinen 2008] These methods enable us to identify formal properties of games as systems, and for the research question of this paper, they are expanded into studying games in the context of social networks, and how design solutions contribute to player experiences. 1.2 Definitions: Service/Interaction/Social Design meets Game Design Wikipedia defines ‘game design’ as ‘the process of designing the content and rules of a game. The term is also used to describe both the game design embodied in an actual game as well as documentation that describes such a design.’ This paper argues that game design is a subset of interaction design. Therefore we need to define ‘interaction design’. Dan Saffer gives us a definition that goes as follows: ‘Interaction design is the art of facilitating interactions between humans through products and services.’ Saffer goes on to include to his definition interactions between humans and products, which are able to respond to human actions, i.e. devices and services with microprocessors. [Saffer 2007] Thus, game design is a subset of interaction design that focuses on facilitating interactions of player and games as particular entertainment systems. This seems particularly true in terms of game development for social networks. In addition, it is useful to relate these fields to so-called service design. Saffer defines it as follows: ‘A service is a chain of activities that form a process and have value for the end user.’ Saffer relates service design to the design of systems by stating that in service design projects, the system is the service. He goes on to say that service design focuses on context, i.e. ‘the entire system of use’. [Saffer 2007] Game design in this context is, on one hand, succumbing to the constraints of the social network service, and on the other hand, using the service’s social functionalities to the benefit of your design. I suggest that there is one more area of design, or at least a term, that we need to relate game design to. Joshua Porter has introduced the term ‘social design’ to emphasize the social aspects of particular interaction and service design projects: ‘Social design is the conception, planning, and production of web sites and applications that support social interaction.’ [Porter 2008] One could conclude, then, that social design is a subset of service design, where social functionalities – e.g., communication, sharing – are the design drivers. For the practice of designing games for social networks, the consequences are: The game design part of the design has to be embedded as a subsystem into the larger system of the social media or network service. In practice this often means that the developer does not design, nor own, the service itself, but takes advantage of the service API. In effect, the API brings along a number of design constraints, but also possibilities. In any case, the community context, as with service design, becomes part of the design.

2. Game Mechanics for Social Networks The notion of applying game design techniques to the design of online applications is gaining prominence. Amy Jo Kim is a designer who has promoted ‘Putting fun into functional’ approach where the design of game mechanics is applied as an interaction design method [Kim 2008]. Jonathan Follet [2007] is another user experience designer who has promoted the benefits of designing playful experiences. Daniel Cook [2008] is a game designer who has put forward the idea of ‘building princess applications’, i.e. taking advantage of structures like goal hierarchies and skill progression in designing applications. Cook takes the high level goal of the classic video game Super Mario Bros. and uses Mario’s (i.e. the player’s) journey through the game as a motivational structure that could be applied to the use patterns of any application. The approach introduced here will continue this line of thinking by placing it in the contexts of academic design research and game studies. I argue that these kinds of efforts call for more rigorous and concisely defined terminology. Kim’s notion of game mechanics as ‘a collection of tools and systems that an interactive designer can use to make an experience more fun and compelling’ [Porter 2009], works as a starting point. In her work, Kim has also identified certain core gameplay mechanics, i.e. player actions, such as collecting and exchange. However, I argue that in order to translate the premise into actual design projects, the tools and systems need to be analyzed in more detail. The design space of game design for social networks is certainly not exhausted yet, especially as new social media platforms emerge almost monthly – without doubt, an increasing number of design elements and patterns can be identified and tested within this design space. This can be easier if we lay down certain vocabulary and conceptual framework from which to follow the development of social networks for purposes of game design. 2.1 Designing Game mechanics: A Method of Triangulation I will introduce a method of triangulation, which helps in designing game play into social networks. It starts with a more concise definition of ‘game mechanics’. In theoretical conceptualizations of game design, the design of so-called core mechanics has been widely acknowledged as being of fundamental importance in creating play [Salen & Zimmerman 2004, Järvinen 2008]. Core mechanics has been defined as the actions that players repeatedly take in a game [Salen & Zimmerman 2004]. Instead of understanding game mechanics as a generic set of game design elements, I suggest a narrower yet more practical definition: Individual game mechanics can be thought of as verbs that game designer give the players to act in the world of the game. The verbs as mechanics are linked with the goals of the game, i.e. they are the means to reach the ends. Core mechanics are, thus, combinations of individual game mechanics that are used to accomplish certain goals imposed at the player. In effect, these relations are the building blocks for designing play. [Järvinen 2008.] Whereas in a single player video game, the core mechanics might create a feedback loop between the player and the software as a system, in multiplayer games, the system becomes more complex, as it will govern the actions of multiple players and their relations.

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In social network games, the is system the social network as a whole, consisting of the service (e.g., the Facebook platform), individual players, and the community as large. Game play in social networks is a feedback loop of player actions that try to accomplish goals, and are given feedback through the network, either through the system itself, or individual players, or community as a whole. The dynamic within these elements can be conceptualized as a triangle with the three elements, around which the user experience starts to emerge as play:

Image 1: Verbs – Goals – Network play model.

The model gives us a tentative idea of the scope and focus of designing games for social networks, i.e. what are the elements through which play can be created in this context. In which kind of rhythm and reciprocity should this dynamic be put into action is another game design question that we will tackle later. Before that, a more substantial, user-centered question is: What are suitable verbs and goals that speak to a user’s motivations of engaging with social networks in the first place? 2.2 Motivations for online social networks and games In order to bridge interaction design with game design techniques, it is useful to take the motivations of, first, social media use, and second, game play into account. The advantage designers can gain from thinking about user motivations is that they can proceed to design opportunities for the users to act in ways that become expressions of the users’ motives. Therefore, games for social networks should target motivations of using those networks, and stylize them into playful interactions that give the players a feeling that they are expressing their motives -- consciously or unconsciously. In his study of social networks, Yochai Benkler (2006) has identified the following motivations for social media use: Social connectedness, psychological well-being, gratification, and

material gain. Peter Kollock (1999) has defined four motivations for contributing in online communities: Reciprocity, reputation, increased sense of efficacy, and attachment to and need of a group. When these motivations are addressed in terms of playing games in social networks, besides the obvious social aspects of play, it can also be leveraged to for increasing well-being and sense of efficacy. On the other hand, people playing multiplayer role-playing games are motivated by aspects having to do with achievements in the game (e.g., competing, and advancing), and immersing themselves into the game’s world (e.g., discovering, customizing, enjoying the story aspects). Social aspects matter as well, e.g., working in a tem, player relationships, and socializing in general. [Yee 2001.] I argue that these two sets provide a useful starting point for synthesizing a framework for thinking about game design for social networks. It combines a number of the above features, however, by filtering them through the emotional disposition of playfulness, as discussed by Rao [2008]. Therefore the motivations for game play in social networks may become more casual (random, fleeting, effort-aversive) than the ones of, e.g. players of MMORPGs by average. According to emotion theorist Jon Elster [1999] emotions transform into emotional dispositions through their long-term consequences, i.e. repeated experience of an emotion that is triggered in connection with a particular event, object, or agent, becomes an emotional disposition towards it. Playful disposition, and variations in it, can thus be seen as long-term consequences of emotions experienced during the play of social media games. If we look back at the notion of user’s behavior as an expression of their motives, and designing for it, the challenge is how to design for playful dispositions. Another interaction design practice, namely the design of user personas [Saffer 2007] to guide the design, can be useful here, as personas can be used to conceptualize different types of goals that the players have, such as end goals, experience goals, and life goals. The Verbs - Goals –Network model helps in determining how such goals figure in the design of a game for the broader contexts of social network use. 2.3 Five Design Drivers Now we are ready to establish a framework of motivations and dispositions regarding social network use, which in turn can be formulated into a number of design drivers. Rao [2008] identifies three qualities to the playfulness that characterizes Facebook use: Physicality, Spontaneity, and Inherent Sociability. My research shows that the narrative aspect of the network is important, and therefore I will add Narrativity to the list. Furthermore, as a particular game design feature, Asynchronicity, as discussed by Ian Bogost [2009], needs to be considered as another quality. I will use this four-fold distinction as a framework for further identifying principles that would support designing for the playful dispositions. (We will come across more examples of how these qualities are evident in the case study section on Facebook games.) 2.3.1 Symbolic Physicality Rao identifies the symbolic ways that Facebook games ‘add physical depth to playful interactions’, such as poking, drinking beer, hi-fiving, etc. These features essentially try to add ‘human warmth’ of actual physicality to the non-physical online space.

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2.3.2 Spontaneity The apparent silliness and/or simplicity of Facebook games, such as complicated set of actions being simplified into a click of a single button, is there to support the inherent spontaneity of user behavior in online social networks. Many of the above-mentioned manners of symbolic physicality draw from this quality as well: a one-click ‘poke’ functionality encourages spontaneous acts of symbolic physicality. In the context of networked play, spontaneity is closely related to both accessibility and familiarity: by modeling acts and themes familiar from everyday life (such as giving gifts or parking a car) or popular culture (gangsters), eliminates the need to explain various rules, as players are familiar with the conventions and behavioral schemas associated with their game counterparts. 2.3.3 Inherent sociability ‘Playfulness is intrinsically connected to social situations and cannot exist without them’, according to Rao [2008]. Again, the above-mentioned features highlight this – in addition, Rao lists fast rewards for player actions, abundance of positive feedback, no negative consequences for exploration, and ablity to build on someone else’s work as design solutions that support the inherent sociability. These features are, by and large, similar to ones identified from the design of casual games in general. In terms of designing games, the inherent sociability opens up possibilities for intuitive teaming of players, since networked individuals might have a particular social context where they know each other. Nabeel Hyatt [2008] has indeed pointed out how social network games can ‘rely heavily on social context (namely school, department, and residence loyalties) to provide a framework for alliances, gameplay and motivation.’ It is no coincidence, thus, that games for social networks have been generally grouped, in business and design discourse, under the label ‘social games’. Even if it can be pointed out that games have always been fundamentally social, the fact that these online networks do not meaningfully exist without the users’ social ties does make the term appropriate. In terms of design, it accounts for taking such inherent sociability as a starting point for concept creation and design. 2.3.4 Narrativity When studying how popular social network games' play dynamics work, it becomes evident how fundamental it is for the concept that various player actions and play results are not only communicated but stylized into particular narrative rhetoric across the network. Therefore narrativity warrants to be defined as an important design driver. It has consequences for the visibility of the game concept in the network. Facebook games embrace narrative by using it in propagating word of the game and its players across the network. This happens using the standard functionalities – individual users’ news feed and notifications, in particular – first, in order to keep existing players engaged, and second, in trying to elicit curiosity towards the game from people in the network who are not yet playing. It is useful to make a distinction between functional means of communicating game results and player progress, and narrative techniques to do that. The differences are specifically in the use of rhetoric that draws from the metaphors and fiction that the game

designers have constructed in relation to the game’s rules. Consequently, a social network game about mobsters might address the player, and communicate its results and events across the network, with parlance that is associated with particular rhetoric of fiction, familiar from as crime and gangster movies, comics, and novels. 2.3.5 Asynchronicity Finally, the last high-level design driver is one that can be used to guide design solutions regarding the tempo of the game, i.e. how design solutions concerning the other drivers come together in the social play of networks. This ties directly in with the verbs-goals-network response model presented earlier, and how it’s poles function as the triangle where network play emerges. Game designer and academic Ian Bogost [2004] lists four features of asynchronous play – it ‘supports multiple players playing in sequence, not in tandem’, it requires a ‘persistent state which all players affect, and which in turn affects all players’, and finally, it is organized around the breaks between players: ‘‘opponent turns in Scrabble often mean bathroom breaks, email checks’ [Bogost 2004] Yet, according to Bogost, this kind of asyncronicity needs not be the game’s defining characteristic. However, it would seem that most games in social networks do center around such breaks, it is just that the quality and quantity of the breaks are based on the nature and/or constraints of the system – i.e. breaks in play in social networks that center around instant messaging or micro-blogging, such as Twitter, would create different variety of asynchronous play than Facebook, which supposedly has a slower, more structured rhythm of use. 2.4 Interaction Design for Playfulness Concluding from the definitions and observations made thus far, we can tentatively define game design for social networks as ‘Interaction design for social playfulness’. This means designing for inherently casual yet highly engaged disposition to play around in the social network, with the general means afforded by the platform, and the ‘extended’ affordances that applications, such as games, bring with them. Yet, designing for playfulness also means that the focus of the design result should privilege emotional engagement rather than highly intricate and innovative gameplay – even if these two are not necessarily in contradiction. Mihaly and Mayer echo this observation: ‘Good games on FB are as much about communication and/or self-expression as they are about gameplay’ [Mihaly 2008], and ‘For users of these applications “where am I at?” can be almost as important as “what’s next?”’ [Mayer 2009b]. Rao concludes her research by stating that ‘Facebook Applications seem to appeal to the sphere of emotions (fun and playful mood) rather than actions (gameplay)’. She elaborates that instead of modeling and stylizing actions concretely for gameplay as verbs, which is what ‘real’ games do, these games rely on compressing that action into a few clicks (at most), and then narrating the resulting action through a ‘dramatic tale’, as Rao puts it. As a consequence, minimal engagement produces high rewards. [Rao 2008]. One could summarize this difference into a comparative principle: Whereas video game designers create skill-based justifications for resolutions of events, i.e. whether an action was successful or not;

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social network game designers create story- or community-based justifications for the resolutions of events in their games. The illustration below models the different aspects of interaction design for playfulness. It starts with the asynchronicity that permeates play in social networks: Play takes place in turns, or in individual time units ('ticks') per player which then get acknowledged by the game as a system facilitating networked play. That is why it is pictured as an orange, cyclical path of game play along which players repeatedly go through. Furthermore, their progress, network standing, and reputation evolve parallel to this cyclical process of core play mechanics.

Image 2: Design framework for social network play dynamics visualized.

In the above visualization, the clouds between individual play moments specify certain, predictable consequences for player experience. Therefore, the idea of the framework is that design solutions affecting and producing such transitions can be put into specific focus, and some perhaps emphasized over the others, thus giving the play the game facilitates potentially a different flavor. (The design solutions are visualized as the ‘drops’ marked GD in connection with each driver.) Now we will move on to see, how these consequences of ‘interaction design for playfulness’ can be seen in a sample of Facebook games and their designs. 3. Case studies in Facebook Games As this case study sample is focused on game applications produced for Facebook, a certain set of functionalities will be in place due to the platform itself. These include, for instance, access to a list of ‘friends who are playing’, the ‘invite friends’ feature upon installation, and the notification functionality, which is used to alert players to change of turns, request for help form friends, and other dynamics of the game. In the context of this paper, such ‘standard’ functionalities can be interpreted as being part of how the users can express their motivation for socializing through Facebook. They are also functionalities that encourage the users into ‘network proliferation’ [Brathwaite 2007], i.e. the game developers can try

to leverage their player base into marketing the game to their network of friends. The selection of six games here is based on two factors: Either the given game is among the most popular in Facebook (Lil’ Green Patch, Mafia Wars, Who Has the Biggest Brain?), or it is interesting in terms of its game design (Parking Wars, PackRat, PhotoGrab). I will shortly describe each game and analyze their design features. 3.1 Parking Wars: Risk and Reward In Parking Wars2 players own a street with a number of parking lots, and a set of cars of various color. The task is to earn money by keeping one’s own cars parked and by ticketing fellow players who park on illegal zones on one’s street. Money accumulates as time passes, which makes Parking Wars appear as an asynchronous waiting game. However, soon after one starts playing, the game becomes a resource management game in the sense that the player is not able to park your cars on the slots that their color permits you to. Thus, players have to take risks by parking on illegal zones (parking a red card on a slot reserved for blue ones, for example) in the fear that the other player catches her and gives a ticket. As one gains money in the game, new cars are unlocked, which makes the task more difficult, but at the same time, one has more resources for making money. I would argue that Parking Wars is a relatively sophisticated game design when compared with most Facebook applications. Game designer and academic Brenda Brathwaite [2007] has analyzed its dynamics. Her discussion of how the game encourages repeat visits is the most interesting design detail in the game. These repeat visits work on a risk-reward principle: in case the player has parked her car on an illegal zone, or finds another player who has parked illegally on her street, she can, instead of ticketing or leaving with her car immediately, wait in the hope of accumulating more money. This is a risk, though, as the other player might leave the illegal zone, or her car might be ticketed at any moment. What makes this risk-reward structure in Parking Wars interesting is how it is tied to the asynchronous nature of the game, and thus to common practices of using the social network, i.e. checking back Facebook few times a day per average. Getting engaged with Parking Wars might very well mean that a user’s visiting frequency starts to accelerate, in direct proportion to one’s friends’ activity in the game. Fittingly, area/code designer Frank Lantz [2009] described the game in a recent Game Developer Conference talk as a form of ‘gardening punctuated with 'gotcha' moments’. In these ways, Parking Wars’ design melds asycnhronicity, sociability, and spontaneity into an addictive mix. Slapping tickets on fellow players can also be seen as an instance of symbolic physicality that makes the game more emotional. ‘We had accidentally designed a social MMO’, Lantz [2009] stated. This also led to the need to add features to the game, so that it would evolve with players' needs: achievements in the form of different badges, new types of cars, etc.

2 Parking Wars by area/code.

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?sid=e518c5ec77fe98b2bcffac8227d89996&id=31435010008&ref=s

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Parking Wars is an interesting example of how a game design has been appropriated to many of the inherent, motivating features of the social network it is being played in. 3.2 Lil’ Green Patch: Reciprocity and Communality In Lil’ Green Patch3, each player is given a small garden patch, where they can collect various kinds of plants by exchanging them with other players. In the process, the application motivates players by promising that ‘For every 10 friends receiving a plant you save 1 square foot of rain forest from deforestation’. This is achieved by sponsorship deals, where the sponsors donate money according to overall player activity. ‘Green bucks’ are a currency in the game with which one can unlock new plants and tools which help in tending the garden. Fellow players can also tend your garden, by weeding it, for example. The main design feature is the shared goal for a common cause, which is extraneous to the game itself, even if facilitated by the exchange mechanic, which necessitates player response, rather than system response. This asynchronous feature facilitates reciprocity, which can be seen as an expression of the inherent sociability that Lil’ Green Patch supports. Fighting global warming is also made more accessible and spontaneous by tapping into cultural and seasonal conventions (Valentine’s day etc) regarding the plants and the ritual of exchange and remembering friends. These design features can be seen as supporting both narrativity and spontaneity. 3.3 Mafia Wars: One-Click Choices within a Reputation System Mafia Wars4 describes itself with the following slogan: ‘Start a Mafia Family with your friends, do Crime Jobs for cash, buy Powerful Weapons, and Fight!!!’ Mafia Wars, and many similar games by its developer Zynga, is a strategy game designed to the mould of games like Civilization: The player gathers resources and accomplishes tasks in order to progress ahead on a tree-like structure of new goals, gameplay elements and environments. Civilization designer Sid Meier has famously defined a game as a ‘series of interesting choices’. Formally it can be said that Mafia Wars follows this design philosophy, even if the interestingness of its choices can be debated. As it is, Mafia Wars demonstrates a number of design solutions outlined earlier: it compresses seemingly complex actions and events – e.g. ‘Corner-Stole Hold Up’ - into single clicks of a button. This is a design solution that adheres to Rao’s earlier observation that in Facebook games, the story of the action is more important than the act itself. The consequence is that the act, the verb, can be ‘minimized’ into a simple one-click choice; a gang war in the press of a button. Another aspect that Mafia Wars highlights is how it incorporates a design of a ‘reputation system’ into its gameplay. This is a feature 3 Lil’ Green Patch by Ashish Dixit and David King.

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?sid=3e931187c0ff99b1e72ac7bbd4482989&id=7629233915&ref=s

4 Mafia Wars by Zynga. http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?sid=3f2022455da3e7ef7166d1508f85d9cf&id=10979261223&ref=s

that Amy Jo Kim addresses as a game-like feature that has found its way into many online services [Porter 2009]. Mafia Wars’ reputation system is a goal hierarchy as well, and it is communicated to the player through a metaphor that is modeled after the power structure of the Mafia: The player starts as a regular thug, trying to earn the reputation of a Capo, and so on. There is an existing reputation system that has been modeled into the purposes of the game, and this narrative aspect gives playing the game a touch of make-believe. In a reputation system like this, constantly communicating the player’s status or standing in the game is of utmost importance. As Andrew Mayer has noted, these kinds of social network games are ‘constantly telling you where you’re at, what you need, and what’s next.’ [Mayer 2009b] When this is linked to the one-click choices, together they support spontaneous playfulness. The reputation as a reward is more important than the activity described in the one-button choices, and thus they can be as sparse as they are. However, Mafia Wars embeds the inherent sociability of the network into its simple goals: Most of the goals cannot be achieved without friends from one’s network. As the screenshot above illustrates, the game employs a deliberate rhetoric of ‘with your help’ in both complementing the players based on their actions, and in requesting them to join an action with a fellow player. 3.4 Who Has the Biggest Brain? This game5 recycles Nintendo’s highly popular Brain Training game series into a Facebook game application. It provides various types of cognitive challenges, and uses of the metaphor of brain size as an indicator of player progression. The game is among the top 30 most popular Facebook applications with approximately 4 million monthly active players. The game also applies a pattern in its title that seems to be frequent in development of casual games: Who has the biggest Brain? communicates its high level goal directly in its title, at the same time referencing the hugely popular television game show Who wants to be a Millionaire? Based on the games popularity, it seems that the longing of being smart, and being recognized as one in the game’s leaderboard, is almost as desirable as being a millionaire. The game’s design also incorporates achievements handed out to the players as various ‘brain labels’: Based on your play of the brain-teasing games, it tells you whether you have a ‘nerdy’ or an ‘alien’ brain. These labels can be easily shared and discussed as personality types, which likens them to various ‘Which movie are you?’ and other ‘Just for fun’ tests that populated the Internet even before the popularity of present online social networks. Such achievements are another design solution for supporting the inherent sociability of the network, where exchanges and comparisons with your friends are spontaneous to conduct. 3.5 PhotoGrab: User-made levels

5 Who Has the Biggest Brain? by Playfish.

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?sid=0940691730d1d704dfc50e41efaca2f3&id=8827826004&ref=s

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PhotoGrab6 is marketed as ‘BrainGames meets Photo-Sharing’. It is is developed by Shufflebrain, a company of Amy Jo Kim’s, who was referenced earlier on her work on bridging game design and interaction design techniques. The game is based around photographs, which users can share and turn into games that test players’ quickness in pattern recognition. This game application draws from inherent sociability by tapping into online photo sharing that has become very popular. The game makes itself accessible via the fact that almost everyone has photos, and everyone is familiar with the process of trying to spot details in an image. In summary, the verbs of the game are familiar, intuitive for human cognitive processes, and they are connected to goals with cognitive benefits, i.e. the ‘brain game’ aspect. Another noteworthy feature is that PhotoGrab give the users’ creativity an expression through the possibility of making one’s own games out of photographs picked from the user’s Facebook albums. This is a design feature that takes advantage of user-generated content, but also, it is interesting how it takes advantage of the user as a resource of information beyond her Facebook profile credentials. PhotoGrab is an example of how any content that the user makes available in the social platform can be appropriated into the purposes of a social network game, if spontaneous, playful game mechanics can be designed around the content. 4. Design elements for playful dispositions Based on the theoretical discussion, and the case studies, I will summarize notes about tentative design principles for social network games. The playful qualities of spontaneity, sociability, symbolic physicality, narrativity, and asynchronicity are the driving, yet high-level principles. If we go into more detail, first, it seems that games that manage to bridge a number of the playful qualities of social networks are successful, at least in the short run: If a game concept includes design features that support both spontaneity, asynchronicity, and symbolic physicality that take use of the narrativity and inherent sociability of the platform, it is at least formally promising. However, implementing the features can just as easily make or break the game – therefore, it is not only the design of the metaphors, verbs, goals, but their communication and implementation that is important. How the network as an instance of individuals and community responds to the user’s playful activities, is a fundamental design task in a social network game project. The author suggests that the Verbs – Goals – Network model is helpful in designing these aspects. Whereas interaction design techniques help in grasping the social possibilities of the network, game design techniques are needed to create competition, challenge, and tension into those acts of socializing, even if they would be more playful than with most other game contexts. The logging in/out of the social network as a risk-reward structure is an example of what clever game design solutions can bring to the table.

6 PhotoGrab Beta by ShuffleBrain.

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?sid=adb3bea6b53a40dd8bdec0a2bc92ed8b&id=15807092154&ref=s

Through the case studies, this paper has documented a number ways that high level design principles for playfulness can be implemented in order to support the playful dispositions that majority of social network users seem to embrace. We can already identify a number of design patterns that can be used to inspire design solutions. Below, a visualization of them is presented in analogous fashion to the earlier visualization of the high-level design drivers. The patterns are meant to inspire concrete design solutions for the ‘gaps’ in asynchronous social play – and, to highlight the aspect of game design that it is a form of system design where the dynamics of the system create play experiences, which are always more than the sum of the system’s parts. Therefore, use of such patterns should always be complemented with iterative design practices where play-testing is fundamentally important.

Image 3: Design patterns for supporting the design drivers.

5. Conclusion for Future Research and Development As social networks emerge that move from Facebooks symmetrical reciprocity of friendship, and onto a more free-form structures, as with Twitter’s asymmetrical ‘follower’ structure, this has consequences for game design tasks as well. Asynchronicity, or at least its rhythm and implementation, need to be reconsidered. Another considerable design space is that of application APIs and the information feeds they create. Social networks with an existing user base might be applicable for game concepts, which feed information to and from the network and its users. The research presented here suggests that analyzing the API of a social network helps in identifying the ‘playability’ of the platform. On the other hand, there are weak signals of so-called crowdsourcing becoming more prominent feature in game applications as well. In practice this could mean tapping into creativity of users by motivating them with game-like goal structures. Jane McGonigal’s work in the Institute for the Future with social games, such as Superstruct and Free Space (see http://lab.signtific.org), presents early examples of these kinds of

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social game concepts which create their own temporary, experimental social networks, where the ‘verbs’ are essentially qualitative means of expressing and imagining future developments. To conclude, this paper presents work in progress and introduces a beginning for a collection of design patterns for games in social networks. The above collection, and the five high-level design drivers present raw material for future work. One option would be start formalizing them according to a model that, e.g., Björk and Holopainen [2005] have done in their study of patterns for game design. In this context, this paper presents an initial harvest of patterns that the author hopes not only to formalize, but also to validate through prototypes and applications. 6. REFERENCES

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