Is Social Gaming Crossing the Line?

Social gaming has become extremely popular for both gamers and the gaming companies. We all know about Second Life and World of Warcraft, but the Japanese company, DeNA is becoming extremely popular. They have announced their total revenue for 2009 was a whopping $517 million: up an exorbitant amount from the $205 million they made in 2008.

DeNA is extremely interactive, similar to the interaction in Second Life. Games on social networking sites offer a different type of interaction. You can play a game with your friends while privately chatting with them, or others on the side. Some bloggers have considered this a huge difference though, and games on sites like Facebook and Twitter should not be considered social gaming, but instead viral gaming.

Farmville is an extremely popular game. Whether you want to call it a social game, or a virtual game, it is advertised on many social networking sites, including Facebook and attracts people of all ages. The interaction with a user's own farm and their friends' farms is definitely a huge draw and Farmville has had a huge success because of this. This game allows users to farm on their own virtual farm, but also visit their friends, help their farm, and give and receive gifts. Users can even leave messages on their friends farms. While some sites believe these games are scams, they are advertised perfectly and give users what the want: INTERACTION.

There are over 400 million users on Facebook, which makes it a popular place to promote social gaming. Myspace used to be as popular as Facebook is now, which is why they had different applications on their site. If they were still popular now, the games on their site would be pulling in as much money as the Facebook apps. Satya Murphy put together a fantastic slideshow going into detail of the future of the mix between social networking and social gaming. It is definitely going to become a lot easier for people to play their favorite games, and I for one cannot wait!!