What are the most social social games you have ever played?

Social games (as in games hosted on social networks like Facebook, Google+, Weibo and... ummm... Facebook) have been (fairly appropriately) accused of being anything but social because they don't really encourage or need cooperation or communication with other players.

Anyone know of some social games that have bucked this trend and really work well with getting players to be sociable with each other?

edited 9th Aug '12 9:30:30 AM by betaalpha

Wii sports? Though we were socialising well before playing it.

The best example I've seen off the top of my head is Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates.

While most MMORPGs play up the team angle at some point, this one benefits from chat mechanics that make it easy to form conversation groups even among non-guildmates, a guild system that makes temporary or trial members a legitimate possibility, and gameplay that requires teaming up, but in a manner that rewards and also allows for proper learning of multiple aspects rather than sticking to a single role, and for which no player can ever be truly underleveled. And then there's the entirely player-driven economy.

There's a reason why a large aspect of the game's structure is referred to tongue-in-cheek as the "social puzzle".

Thanks for your replies chaps. Those games are definitely sociable. But they are not in the genre of 'social games', aka Social Network Games - they are not hosted on social networks like Facebook. These include Farmville, Mafia Wars, The Sims Social (A Facebook version of The Sims) and the excellent backyard Monsters

Social network games have been accused of not being sociable, even though they are on networks that are all about getting with friends and communicating with folks. I was looking for examples of social network games that buck that trend.

edited 9th Aug '12 10:50:55 AM by betaalpha

Social media in general is actually very anti-social, so it's no wonder that "social games" are much the same.

Hehe, "social games". Never thought of games as being "social". You meet some weird people while playing them, I suppose, like when I played World Of Warcraft for a year when I was 16. Never touched it again after that.

Yeah, I've played Farmville and Mafia Wars, back when I still had a facebook account. Lasted only 2 weeks on Farmville (5 mins of playing it a day, before I got bored) and about 2 months with Mafia Wars, with pretty much the same amount of time spent playing it a day.

"Social" games aren't.

That is all.

There are quite a few social network games where socializing is the game as there's nothing to do other than going to view other 'play'ers' stuff and leaving points for them to buy more stuff with and there's virtually no mechanism for hurting others or competing with them.

None of them?

I mean, I tend to avoid them because most of them seem like shit, but the ones I have played it seems like the most social they got was my friends spamming me to give them ingame stuff.

So I'm going with Fiasco. It doesn't count? Well, it's more social than any of the crap on Facebook, so there.

Fiasco is a book by Stanislaw Lem?!

...I'll just add this to my "Get these books!" list.

edited 9th Aug '12 2:40:24 PM by whataboutme

Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator (see the thread for it) is pretty social, since you pretty much cram six people into a room and they have to act as a team in order to be victorious. A riot of fun, too.

But it's not really a "social" game (per definition), so eh.

edited 9th Aug '12 2:50:58 PM by pvtnum11

There used to be a game called Warbook that people team up together and fight against others. Until cooperation was considered "cheating" tha is.

@Whataboutme: I actually meant a roleplaying game with the same name, which I guess we don't have a trope page for.

I find that in reality, "social game" typically means "game that bribes you with in-game benefits if you advertise for them". This then translates to "spam and annoy your friends for personal gain" and is counterproductive to actual socialization. In conclusion, there are no truly social "social games" I've ever seen. There are games with a strong social aspect (as mentioned above, Puzzle Pirates makes for a great example of how to do socialization right), they just aren't under the definition of "social game".

Ah, I see. Well, now I've heard both, so I consider this a happy coincidence for me.

Coincidentally, this article on real-time multiplayer came out today. Real-time multiplayer should increase the social aspect. We'll have to wait and see.

It would be nice to see games use Facebook for things like grabbing friend photos and sticking them on avatars, basing game events around their event diaries etc. Adventure World is nice in that it lets other players' avatars come anbd help you in your adventure (though because it's a Zynga game I can't in all conscience ask any friends to actually play it so I can use this feature. Ah well...)