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What, if anything, makes social games social? What is ‘social’ made of, anyway? Digital Chocolate’s Lead Social Designer Aki Järvinen answers the question by analyzing the current state of social exchanges in Facebook games. He introduces concepts such as social presence, social graph, and social space to explain the kind of social interactions these games embrace, and fail to embrace at the moment. The concepts are put into practice with a display of concrete examples from various titles. The talk is targeted at anyone working with social games, regardless of platform. The attendants will walk away with a set of design vocabulary which helps in creating and evaluating engaging social exchanges, and serves as an inspiration to redefine social in social games.
Delivered at Casual Connect Europe, February 2011
Aki Järvinen works as the Lead Social Designer at Digital Chocolate’s Helsinki studio in Finland. He has a decade of experience from designing and producing mobile games, online gambling, and browser-based games. Järvinen has also written a Ph.D. on academic methods of analyzing games from the perspectives of design and psychology. Currently he is writing a book on the design and business of social games. Follow the progress on his blog: http://games4networks.posterous.com [Email Aki]
