Terra Nova

A History of Social Games

Over on his blog, Jon Radoff provides a terrific map of the history of social games.  Really worth looking over in its more detailed version.  He starts with ancient times and wends his way down to the present (leaving out many games, even some seminal ones, but still catching the main currents).

What I'm most interested in is where we are now and (of course) what's next.  Jon's brief taxonomy separates current social games into Strategy, Sim, RPG, and "experiences" (music, pets, etc.). Not a bad set of categories -- and note that this includes some social games as descendants of MMOs and VWs as they descended from paper RPGs and MUDs.   I'm particularly interested in the potentially convergent growth of RPGs (Mafia Wars, etc.) and Sim games (Farmtown, Social City), and whether both can interweave well with some kinds of strategy games.  Are these kinds of games sufficiently social that as they evolve they can support hybrids and cross-overs, or are we more or less stuck with these genres?

(Crossposted in slightly edited form from my Online Alchemy blog.)

13 Percent

According to Playspan, and reported by various outlets this week, 13% of internet users bought virtual goods last year, spending a little over $90 on average.  (If this is accurate, it matches the percentage of voters who claim membership in the Tea Party, the percentage of CEOs who drove hybrids in 2007, and the percentage of teenagers who eat the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables.)  Estimated global revenues from sales = over $10B.

In related news, 44M game passwords were reportedly stolen, presumably with the hopes of supplying a bit of that 13 percent, multi-billion dollar market.

Steven Spielberg's New Show

...has a pretty cool name.  Eric Nickell is keeping the death watch on our #1 Google fu.

 

Quick Notes

• Just a quick follow-up to Mike's post from about 3 years ago. It looks like Club Penguin, while it has done very well, hasn't met the requirements for the extra $350M -- so the final price tag to Disney will be about $350M. Worth noting: Mike's earlier predictions about a significant trend toward lightweight, non-traditional VWs/MMOs were right on the money, esp. if you factor in Facebook.  Somebody probably owes Mike a quarter.
• And in other news, CNN ran an article on the Second Life lawsuit du jour, discussed by Ren immediately below, with Prof. James Grimmelmann making some nice feudalism analogies (cf. this & this & this).
• Update: And while I'm at it -- I just noticed that there's a new issue of Game Studies online, featuring an article from Vili L, Virtual Worlds don't exist, a review of Mia's Cheating book, and Richard doing a very in-depth review of the Euro guild "WoW Reader" book.
• Update 2: And apparently, Ted is speaking today (or yesterday) at The Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds Conference 2010.  Video w/interesting "name that VW" potential embedded below.
• Update 3: And one last note, if you're looking for VW-related Podcasts, Robert's Metanomics series has a page with MP3 downloads.  Interesting interviews with Josh Fairfield, Doug Rushkoff, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, and many others.