Games With Friends

Choosing the right Social Graph Model for Your Interactive Experience

The recent news that Mobage in Japan is going to allow login with Twitter is a distinct pivot for the Japanese social mobile gaming platform, and raises all sorts of interesting questions about the two opposing social gaming philosphies known as Real and Virtual Social graphs.

Note the subtle use of the word "superiority" the slide.  

Simply put: I am more likely to play more with other people if I can do so under the guise of anonymity (like Mobage)?  Or is it more compelling to play with "real" friends, whose identities you presumably know? Mobage was built with the Virtual Social Graph at its core.  The idea seems sound:  you play games, and meet others, through a shared interest in game type and genre, and this bond is reinforced through multiple instances of shared ongoing gaming experiences.

Dr. Serkan Toto does a succinct job of outlining DeNA's and Gree's Virtual Social Graph philosophy in detail.  Now, given the market saturation that both Gree and Mobage have achieved within the Japanese markets, this move could simply be an attempt to broaden customer acquisition and find the last few souls in Japan yet to start playing mobile games on the Mobage platform.

Or, more interestingly, what if this means that the core principle illustrated above has proven to be false? That a Virtual Social graph does not actually provide more engagement, and better monetization?    

Without the data to analyze, I can only hypothesize.  But when I think about my experiences playing games, mobile, console and social, the best and most memorable multi-player experiences have resulted from playing with and against people I know.  Team based, collaborative play with a group of real world friends playing Battlefield2 provided countless hours of timesuck -- and a real why-to-buy map packs and expansions. And free to play Scrabulous on FaceBook, with its asynchronous, broadly appealing play against dozens of friends at the same time was always a great time.

The point of all this connectivity is to truly connect.  So perhaps, leveraging existing social frameworks and reality-based experiences result in stronger digital connections?  It's a very relevant question to be asking right now.