Are social games evil?

Who was there: It's next to impossible to take a step at this year's Game Developers Conference without overhearing someone talking about social gaming. In a session titled "Are Social Games Legitimate?" Margaret Robertson (Hide & Seek) leads a panel consisting of Ian Bogost (The Georgia Institute of Technology), Daniel James (Three Rings), Nabeel Hyatt (Zynga), and Curt Bererton (ZipZapPlay) to debate whether this phenomenon is a good thing.

What they talked about: Robertson led the debate by restating the name of the panel, swapping out the word "legitimate" with "evil," saying that fundamentally this is a philosophical disagreement on whether social games are, in fact, nefarious.

As for the arguments, Bogost began by drawing a parallel between social gaming and high-fructose corn syrup. HFCS is in nearly everything nowadays, he said, and many people see this as harmful, due to its long-term cloying effect, gastronomical monotony, and obesity. He noted that the largest producer of HFCS is ADM, which makes billions of dollars creating the cheap sweetener.

He then equated Facebook to ADM, saying that, aside from also sharing a color scheme for their corporate logos, the social media megacorp provides an infrastructure for converting people into resources in the same way that ADM creates sweetener from corn. Also, just as ADM snuck HFCS into everything, the social-gaming phenomenon is sneaking into games.

James, who also took up a position against games that follow the Facebook model, then took over, saying first that the opinions that he would be expressing are for the purpose of debate, and as such, shouldn't be taken too seriously. Disclaimer thus delivered, he said that while he's happy that hundreds of millions of people are now playing games, the experience that is being delivered to these people is not what he'd like from the future of entertainment.

Rather than genuinely creative, deep, and artistic forms of expression, social games are more like gambling slot machines, where people are simply pumping coins into the system to enrich the maker. He said that as a game creator, he would have a serious problem creating gambling games and that social games open up a number of ethical issues.

Zynga's Hyatt then introduced his position, saying that two worthwhile things that are often overlooked about social games is that they are actually fun to play and they're fun to make. He then offered a few anecdotal examples to back this up, describing a receptionist at Zynga who began playing a social game and then extended that experience into the real world by meeting up with in-game friends to play together, much like a LAN party.

As to his second point, he said that acclaimed designers such as Sid Meier, Bob Bates, and Brian Reynolds share the opinion that social games are where they can actually go to still be a game designer. With a social game, designers can quickly implement and iterate upon ideas, a marked difference from the traditional studio way of doing things.

Bererton then picked up the conversation in support of social gaming, saying that to simplify the issue to a question of good versus evil is problematic, in that it is a more complicated question than that. Pointing to the good, he said that the games he creates provide a way of instigating conversation between friends and family. As one example from his game Baking Life, players can create their own custom cupcakes to give to, say, a mother, which provides a reason to talk.

James is asked what the difference is between spending time in a social game and spending 60 hours a week in his title, Puzzle Pirates. He responded by saying that there is an ethical concern to all games, especially multiplayer ones that have compulsive elements. However, he said that Puzzle Pirates is fundamentally different from a social game, in that it is a genuinely social experience that you play by interacting with others, as opposed to serving as a bridge to facilitate communication.

Hyatt quickly disagreed with James' argument, calling the situation that Puzzle Pirates creates far more insidious. In that game, he said, players actively coerce others to participate in gameplay, whereas in Facebook games, all players can do is send gentle, and easily ignored, reminders to play.

The conversation then shifted to metrics-driven game design, and Bererton said that many companies have become overly reliant on these metrics and consumers are able to recognize when this is happening. However, metrics are ultimately the measure of human behavior, and as such, can be used to create a better play experience. For instance, if players aren't reaching the end of a tutorial, it is helpful to know why.

Hyatt then changed the subject to say that it is important to not lose sight of the fact that the conversation is centered upon a form of entertainment, and in the broader scope of things, it's all about ways of wasting time. He said that if he is going to be wasting time, he'd like to feel like he is building something with friends. In this sense, social games are better than jumping into a Halo match and shooting a stranger in the head, he said.

He went on to say that the things that social gaming renders obsolete are being bored at work and watching soap operas on the television.

Robertson then posed the question of whether the structure of social games is inherently evil. For Bogost, he said that it feels bad, in that these games aren't helping people excel as human beings. Bererton said that to take that argument to the extreme, one would have to question whether Facebook is evil, and that doesn't sound right to him. After all, he said, the social network has created a far more connected society.

Hyatt then said that he finds it problematic for an industry that has fought for the past 30 years to legitimize itself to now turn on a certain subset of gaming. Bogost quickly fired back, saying that argument is specious, in that just because the industry as a whole has been fighting for, and still continues to fight for, legitimacy, not all facets of gaming are created equal. After all, there's a reason why slot machine or other gambling companies don't have panels at GDC.

Hyatt refuted this statement by saying that there are reams of anecdotal evidence that social games are adding real value to society. For any new kind of entertainment, there is some skepticism, he said, bringing up how novels and comic books were villainized when they first gained popularity. He said that he'd prefer not be on the conservative side of the issue that all new things are bad. He'd rather be on the progressive side.

As part of the audience Q&A session, Hyatt was asked whether he thought the process of creating clones in the social gaming sphere, such as the way CityVille cloned Social City, is an evil thing to do. Deflecting the question, Hyatt offered an anecdotal example of a designer at Zynga who had previously worked primarily with first-person shooters. That designer, he said, once said to him that he joined Zynga because no one in the FPS genre had done anything new in 10 years.

The idea that there are certain things that resonate is immutable across all forms of entertainment, he continued. What makes these ideas exciting are their innovations, of which FarmVille and CityVille have plenty.

Quote: "Are these things evil?"--The question of the hour, posed by Margaret Robertson.

Takeaway: Though no definitive victories were won, it seems clear that it is possible to construe both positive and negative implications of social gaming. Regardless, it would appear as if the question will continue to be debated for the foreseeable future.