GDC conference discuss social games

Crowdstar International co-founder Jeff Tseng said, “[Current social games] are still lightly social, with shallow social integration.” Most social games merely simplify traditional mass market game mechanics, but are not fundamentally social on a design level, he explained.

On Wednesday, a meeting of the minds took place at the GamesBeat conference at GDC to discuss the future of social games—the internet-based games that interact with players’ social network. The consensus among the panel was that these games need to better integrate their social aspects in to gameplay, than as a separate feature.

An increased social design means “more chances to interact with your actual friends,” said Brian Reynolds, chief designer at Farmville-publisher Zynga. “That’s whysocial games are taking off. There’s the excitement of interacting with people you know, and because of that, there’s more at risk when you play.”

Tseng added, “I think we’ll see people start to crack that in this generation.”