Mafia Wars : 25.8 million. These games bring masses of people together on the internet. How do they do it? These games, on facebook, encourage interactions by exposing it as much as they can to people. On facebook, in my news feed, i can see all the people who have been participating in the game "mafia wars". Facebook: "Your friend just trespassed on your turf, do you want to get a bat?".
Form here i can choose to participate or not, most of the time i dont. but i have explored this phenomena. Social gaming is a great way to get masses of people together. But in terms of creating actual social interactions, theses games are very inefficient. These social interactions are based mostly on yes or no responses, these responses that "feeling" of an actual interactions First the reaction is simply based on, yes or no reactions, and encouraged through advertising.
True social gamin, i believe can be experienced on games like, "World of Warcraft", "Call of duty" and networks such as xboxlive, or playstation online. While on the surface "these are just games" thought comes to mind. That is just the surface, these games encourage live interactions with people on line. They allow me to socialize with a profile, taglines, thoughts and even a live avatar. This is a great way to get people to socialize. on these networks i can have a live chat room with friends and people that i have just met in the game. These reactons tend to be very social, and have just as many participants. in fact xbox has over 40 million Xbox 360 consoles worldwide. While it may not be as many total participants, the social interaction is much stronger based allowing participants to essentially have an alternate life completely, socially and privately. to me this embodies the idea of "social gaming" and has better more efficient potential.
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