Social games are not social enough, Playdom Design VP says

During a recent interview with Gamasutra, Design VP of Playdom Steve Meretzky (pictured) claimed that social games have come a long way since three years ago, but social games aren't social enough. He believes that social games will only get more sophisticated as the years pass on, but not until the games' social elements are more deeply integrated.

"We've certainly gotten better at raising the production values of the games, but where we, as an industry, fall short is not moving the ball forward in terms of really making these games more social and taking advantage of the viral channels that Facebook allows," Meretzky said.

That's going to be a tough sell considering Facebook just made game discovery even more difficult for new players. Not to mention Facebook Groups could potentially fragment social gaming audiences through players communicating solely through Groups. While the platform itself presents an interesting dilemma for the growth of social games, perhaps perception poses even more of a challenge to the genre's success.

"I don't want to hear that Facebook games are Skinner boxes," he adds. "You know, when you come down to it, basically all games are Skinner boxes -- meaningless activities where you're not getting anything out of it other than enjoyment. But in traditional or more complex video games, the Skinner box core is more buried under a lot of sizzle. In Facebook games, just because they are so stripped down to their simplest, barest elements, the Skinner Box skeleton is just more visible."

While it might be deeper, more sophisticated social integration that brings social games out of the light illuminating them as meaningless task-and-reward games, there will always be dissenters. (Just look at Nintendo Wii.) In other words, haters gonna' hate.

Survey says, 'One third of social gamers play several times daily'

A recent survey of two thousand social gamers and consumers conducted by UK-based Econsultancy found the usual statistics such as "one fifth of consumers have played a social game" to gender breakdowns (surprise: slightly more women play than men). However, the report, titled "Social Gaming Smart Pack," found one startling number: 30 percent of social gamers claim to play several times daily. Now, we don't know exactly how many times the word "several" means, but it sure does imply more than, say, a couple.

This means that one third of social gamers log in... let's say more than twice daily. If this statistic is truly representative of the global player base, then perhaps the rampant addiction claims and stories hold more merit than we thought. Below that are the 26 percent that admit to playing social games several times weekly, which is far more manageable for most.

Econsultancy found that one fifth of social gamers have paid to play one of these games, which is even more surprising. The typical comments you find in messages boards and even right here on the Games.com Blog suggest that this number would be far lower. Perhaps the paying players aren't too keen on bringing that up in conversation? Even if these numbers aren't on the nose, one thing is certain: social games are far from seeing their twilight years.