I’m an entrepreneur because I like to break things.
Breaking things starts with asking the right questions—questions that expose new areas for innovation and disruption. So, while this is a sort of manifesto—it is really more about asking questions about a market that I’ve come to love… and hate. That market is social games.
If you speak to anyone in the game industry today—as well as many gamers—you’ll quickly perceive that there are two camps. On the one hand are “social game companies.” On the other are the traditional game companies. If this were a medieval battlefield, you could imagine the traditional game companies, the sun flashing on their expensive armor, their shields emblazoned with names like Bioware and Blizzard. Outside are the social game companies—these are the Vikings, conquering the territories on the outskirts, finding unprotected lands. They’re a surly bunch, emboldened by the halo of their early success—but they’re also grizzled veterans who have often done war in distant lands called “social media.” They have experience and war chests overflowing with new treasure, and they don’t need expensive armor or horses. The two sides bristle with a contempt for each other that sometimes boils over whenever the two sides come into contact.
Is it really two camps? Or might there be a middle path?
Being Disruptive
All of the businesses I’ve ever started emerged from a simple premise: what if we shook up the status quo by doing something different? The first company I started asked whether we could treat games—not as games—but as programmed entertainment, more like television. That led to one of the first commercial real-time games on the Internet. I started a software company when every interactive agency startup was raking in dollars by performing manual updates for all of their clients—and we asked whether we could simply create a piece of software so people could do it themselves. It turned out that we were right, and we took that company public. My last company, GamerDNA, was started with the idea that gamers and game communities could share their game experiences better than professional reviewers. We managed to aggregate it into a community-of-communities of over 10 million gamers.
The “simple” question that led me into the social game market was whether they could become a lot better than they are. That, in turn, led to an awful lot of other questions.
What are social games?
Let’s start by looking at what a social game is. My personal definition is a bit different than the one that Techcrunch might use; to me, Farmville, Monopoly (the board game), Rock Band and World of Warcraft all share a common denominator: they are all games you play with other people (often your friends). However, when someone in the industry refers to a “social game,” usually they are referring to games that (a) leverage the social graph (usually Facebook’s) for customer acquisition, and (b) are played asynchronously.
Believe it or not, asynchronous social games predate the Web. Their original incarnation was play-by-mail games. [Wikipedia] (once upon a time, people used to play games where you filled out a form on paper, mailed it to a central coordinator, who processed all the rules and sent you back the next update in the mail. Yes, I’m talking about postal mail here!)
What are the ways we can disrupt? How can we do something new? Let’s ask some of the what-if questions:
What if…
- What if we were less concerned about getting you to recruit 500 strangers to get the largest mafia/clan/city/farm/etc. and more concerned about enabling a *deep* connection with 5-10 of your closest friends?
- What if we explode the idea of “virtual goods” so that they are no longer just virtual equivalents of objects—but expanded to include personalities, character traits, stories, adventure pathways, etc.?
- What if we’re less concerned about cranking out a game in 6 weeks and more concerned about the quality of experience? What if we want to shift the market’s requirements for a ‘minimum viable’ social game rather than simply creating something minimally viable?
- What if we were less concerned about using the social graph for customer acquisition? What if we relied more on real word-of-mouth—real product remarkability—rather than spam? No less than a dozen people have told me that this is my most stupid idea. One person told me that Zynga already proved “the model” and I’d be foolish not to copy it. I think imitation is suicide and I think there must be a hundred companies trying to making the next Farmville at this very moment. I intend to prove them wrong while they continue to produce the equivalent of social slot machines.
- What if we focused on games with a target of one-tenth the players but ten times the retention?
- What if we are more concerned with how someone will enjoy a game experience for 6, 12, 24, 50 *months* rather than days? How does that change the way we look at things like engagement, A/B testing, conversion analytics, user experience?
- What if virtual items were more about collecting cool collectibles, customizing your experience, unlocking new content and stories—and less about eliminating annoyances?
- What if we’re willing to talk about our ideas publicly, rather than operate in “stealth” because we’re convinced there are like-minded folks out there? Is there value in creating a community around these ideas, and being the first to sound the clarion?
- What if we are concerned about entertaining people who also play games on other platforms?
- What would it take to make a social game so engaging that the way in which they become “really social” is that people are talking about them around the water-cooler? What if we thought more about how the real world (and real-world lifestyles) could intersect with our games?
- What if we think about what it means to be a “publisher” in the age of social games? Would it be possible to create a platform that helps creators finance, distribute and market their products a lot better—without needing to “own” everything? Is it possible to deconstruct the whole idea of the publisher and create a new model that maximizes the wealth and health of the whole gaming ecosystem?
Social games more social?
Recently, a lot of social game companies have talked about making “social games more social.” Fair enough; but games like Rock Band and World of Warcraft are already a lot more social than “social games.” That’s not really an area for amazing innovation. Instead, I’d like to think about ways to use the social graph in novel ways. The question we should be asking is not how to make social games more social, but how can we make them more innovative. Here are a few thoughts on areas that aren’t fully explored in the domain of games:
Seven Areas for Innovation in Social Games
Creativity
There are games that allow you to be creative—whether it’s making a character, designing a city, creating action-puzzle games or designing adventures for others. Nevertheless, the creative drive is something we’ve barely begun to explore within games. What if the social graph enabled whole new forms of creativity—turn the notion of the “wisdom of the crowds” into the “creativity of the crowds”? How can we blend the distinction of game-player and game-creator?
Storytelling
As far back as the 1930’s, Walter Benjamin wrote about how the storyteller was once a person who related experiences. Traveling bards, troubadours, soldiers returned from war; the elder at the campfire. Although we have story-crafters (screenwriters, novelists, game designers, etc.) we don’t really have many story-tellers like we used to. There’s a unique connection between the interaction of a story-teller and the story-listener, and it seems like we’ve lost something. How can we enable people to share their experiences (either from the real-world, or simulated within the environment of games)—to become that elder at the campfire?
Imagination
Stories, characters, imagination—this is the stuff of most art and most of the better games. How can we truly engage imagination and a “sense of wonder” within social games?
Emotion
A good story makes me feel something. The same for a good game. I’m not sure social games have made me feel much so far. Can we do more?
Reality Blurring
We have real-time data, sensors, mobile devices, ubiquitous access to social data. At the same time we have more people in urban centers than ever before; we have self-organizing networks of people that are growing like fractals out of the social graph. We have reality-annotation systems like Foursquare because technology is getting easier to take with you. We have real-time technologies that digest and process massive amounts of news. For years, people have asked “how do we make games more like reality?” Instead, I’m interested in asking, “How can we make reality more like a game?” Can games weave social experiences and reality together in novel ways? Can we merge the cultural zeitgeist with games in a new way?
Learning
People learn by observing and watching what other people do. Isn’t a social environment a perfect place for teaching behaviors, skills, etc.? Can role models emerge from within social games? Can we integrate cool content in ways that enable tangential learning—without the drudgery of “being taught”?
Personality and Consequence
Games have explored decision-making and consequences. For example, I can be good or evil in Knights of the Old Republic. What about games that made you think about the social consequence of your actions? What happens in a game where there’s no save-game to return to after you’ve made the decision to do a greedy versus a self-sacrificing act?
Bonding
I met my wife in an online game called Gemstone about 18 years ago. OK—that was a little unusual back then, but it’s now a frequent occurrence in MMORPGs like World of Warcraft. Likewise, a lot of friendships have been formed because of an interaction that happened within an MMO. My hypothesis is that close to zero marriages and/or real-world friendships have emerged out of the “social games” market. How do we change that?
My Call to Action
I’m convinced that this is the most important—and largest—thing that I’ve initiated in my entrepreneurial career. If you share a passion for the same things that interest me, I’d like to hear your questions (and answers!) about the social game market. If you disagree with anything I’ve said here, then I especially want to talk with you. If you think I’m asking the wrong questions, I want to hear from you. And if you want to be part of a team that is going to ask these questions and challenge each other all the time, then we should talk immediately. Whether you’re a creator, a player, a business-person—we’re on the verge of something special and great.
