Designing Games Meant for Sharing

This book talks about the importance of social mechanics in games and how these mechanics evolved over time to accommodate new technologies and new social contexts. It looks at the innovation happening in the field of new-age social games, discussing in detail what has been learnt from designing for the younger generation, how these findings can inform game design philosophy and how this can be applied to game development more broadly.

Part 1 of this book provides a brief history of games as social interaction and discusses the differences between online and offline social gaming. Part 2 covers Facebook social gaming and design lessons from first-generation social games. Part 3 introduces design philosophies for the hyper-social genre and includes an important chapter on design ethics. Finally, Part 4 looks ahead to the future of social games and how game designers can incorporate learnings from this book in their own work.

This book will appeal to game designers and students of game design looking to learn how to apply learnings from social game design in their own games.

Part 1: Games have always been social

Chapter 1 A history of games as social interaction

Chapter 2 The person, the group and the game

Chapter 3 Games as a piece of the social puzzle

Part 2: The beginnings of social gaming

Chapter 4 The birth of social media gaming

Chapter 5 The fall of Facebook social games

Part 3: Social game design for a modern audience

Chapter 6 Experimenting with social mechanics

Chapter 7 The hyper-social audience

Chapter 8 Designing for a social-centric audience

Chapter 9 The ethics of social game design

Part 4: Innovative game design

Chapter 10 From observation to innovation

Ioana-Iulia Cazacu is a Game Designer at Mojiworks Limited.