8 Ways to Transform the Game Business with Social Technology

Jon Radoff

CEO, Disruptor Beam

jradoff@disruptorbeam.com | @jradoff

Jon Radoff

• Built “social game” called Legends of Future Past, distributed on CompuServe in 1992.

• Started Eprise, a Web community platform, IPO on NASDAQ in 2000.

• Created GamerDNA, social networking for gamers, 2006-2009

• Started Disruptor Beam in 2010.

Sohaib Athar’s Story

Just wanted to get away from society and do IT consulting up in the hills…

In a matter of days, he went from an unknown person to over 100,000 followers on Twitter.

Why is this important?

Mesh Network analog

• Social network = human mesh network

Soon trillions of sensors—the “Internet of Things”will transmit information from every corner ofthe Earth.

Photo Credit: Matthew Stewart (Flickr)

Meanwhile, humans are almost everywhere, detectingvast information, and interconnecting as never before.

Flickr Image CreditL Hijod Huskona

Distribution of Smiling Faces on Facebook

Happy people cluster.

Unhappy people cluster.

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND HAPPINESSBy

Nicholas A. Christakis & James H. Fowler

Experiences Yields MoreHappiness than Things

Leaf van Boven and Thomas Gilovich. “To Do or to Have? That is the

Question.” American Psychological Association. 85.6 (2003): 1198.

Reprinted with permission.

Before: Creating Emotion in Games.

Now: Creating Empathy in Games.

So What Makes PeopleHappy?

Shameless Plug

What can games show us about how to make any experience more fun?

Can the same approaches reflect back to the game industry itself—beyond the immediate entertainment of playing a game?

Bartle Quadrants

• Richard Bartle tackled “What makes online games” fun with his categorization of achievers, socializers, killers and explorers.

• Later expanded into additional categories.

Nick Yee’s Player Motivations

Radoff’s Social Gameplay Quadrants

Immersion Cooperation

Achievement Competition

Qualitative

Quantitative

Few Players Many

Players

#1: Player Discovery

• MMO players discover other players through random encounters (exploration)

• Social games mostly enable people to play with those within 1 degree of a player’s existing social graph

• Both approaches to player discover can support each other

In-Game Player

Encounters & Outside Player

Discovery

Social Graph as Memory

Engage with Friends

Explore Content

Cooperatively

#2: Fame is greater than Fortune

Lessons from Word of Mouth Marketing:recognition amongst peers is often more valuable than material reward.

Beyond Leaderboards: Approaches to Support Fame

• Player spotlights

• Should you be able to “follow” or become a fan of a favorite player?

• Integrate with sense of kinship w/factions

• Notify me when player does something interesting

• Event-driven broadcast messages

#3: Cross-Cultural Discovery

• On Facebook I can encounter people from across many different backgrounds and cultures

• Why has this become less common in MMOs?

• There’s a certain magic lost when regional barriers between players are erected

Flickr Image by Seattle.roamer

#4: Dissolving Walls between Network and Game

• Magic: the Gathering: seeing people play creates the desire to play

• Facebook wall: projects game into the public square

• Use social network to login to game

1995-2003: Creating Proprietary User Logins

2003+: Delegate Unique ID to User Email Address

2009+: Delegate User ID to Social Network Accounts

Player Activity

Visibility

Game Discovery

#5: Colonize Social Media

• Support tribal identity; loose ties v. strong ties

• The guild as “player-created content”

20092008 2010 2011

“Social Games” take

advantage of groups,

events, invites, etc.

Guild Websites

Forum signatures

SWTOR

Integrated

Guilds

Guilds as an

application?

Toolbars

Outward and Inward Propagation

Mobile apps, Armory-

esque interfaces

#6: Open up Content

• WoW has the right idea: XML-based data, collaboration with third-party gaming websites

• Build on it—create ways to access and get at the content. A “Graph API” for games.

#7: Create Artifacts

#8: Social Graph as Novel Game Mechanic

• Social graph as a unique place for experiences

• There’s a whole range of human social interactions that aren’t realized in games yet.

• How can we systematize this within games?

• Romance

• Advanced Trading/Economies/Reputation

• Sense of shared history, belongingness

• Gifts & Reciprocity: more than “items”

• Collaborative creativity

• Social organizations beyond the guild: loose and strong ties

What’s it all mean?

• “Traditional” AAA game franchises are going to become increasingly social to occupy a larger part of everyone’s life.

• “Social games” are expanding their footprint to become a larger part of everyone’s life.

?

Thank You!

jradoff@disruptorbeam.com | @jradoff

Disruptor Beam partners with media and game companies to develop innovative social games.