
We need more video games that are social platforms first, games second - makaroni1
https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/02/virtual-worlds-video-games-coronavirus-social-networks-fortnite-animal-crossing/
======
60654
Gamedev here. A different perspective:

1\. Social vs goal driven is a false dichotomy: multiplayer games are always
both. In any player population you're going to get a mix of players driven by
social and creative elements, driven by competition, driven by exploration,
etc (cf. Bartle types or Yee player motivation taxonomy).

You can try to encourage some play types over others, but it's really hard to
do a game that's social first, just because social by itself doesn't drive
retention and acquisition enough: you need _something else_ for players to do
to have fun while they're also having fun socializing.

History of gamedev is full of social-first environments, from legions of old
MUDs, to Second Life or There, to IMVU, etc. They never reached the same
heights as MMO games because it's hard to make a game "sticky" without having
the game there.

2\. Building a platform first, and then building a game on it, is a quick way
to lose all your money. Building a game first and then extending it to a
platform is the correct direction, because if you don't have a game, you won't
have users, see what works, etc. And until you have users, you don't know what
players want from a platform.

3\. "Still, it’s clear that we want to come together, not just in Instagram
DMs and email threads, but as avatars navigating shared spaces. Somehow."
That's just plainly false. Players are completely happy with social
interactions without avatars, without 3d space, etc. There are many ways to
make games more social, as gamedevs know well.

~~~
resu_nimda
For my money, Star Wars Galaxies is the gold standard here, imo that game was
far ahead of its time, and we will start to see more games like that in the
future (I honestly feel like WoW set the genre back by 10-20 years). It was
the perfect mix of social and gameplay, that enticed a broad range of player-
types to come together and create little virtual worlds where stories could
unfold.

Of course EVE has done some truly remarkable work in this realm as well but
it's definitely not enough "gameplay" for your average gamer.

~~~
def8cefe
Gonna plug SWG Legends here if anyone wants to play SWG again:

[https://swglegends.com/](https://swglegends.com/)

------
ck425
I get why folk deals desire this atm but honestly I'm sick fed up of
multiplayer games, or worse always online games.I miss the days of single
player story led games. Yeah they still exist but not as much as they used to
and it seems like big publishers want to shove multiplayer/online aspects into
every game (see any article about the demise of Bioware).

Maybe I'm just an old curmudgeon, but when I want social interaction I play
boardgames. I play video games for an escape from that.

~~~
hombre_fatal
That's a common meme, but in reality there are more solid single player games
out and coming out than you can play unless you play games full time. Just
google lists of recent "best single-player games" \-- you've really played all
of those? Not to mention the current boom of indie games, almost all of them
single player. You don't need to be a big studio anymore to get a game on a
console, it's truly amazing.

You probably just don't follow gaming like you used to as a kid so assume it
has gone to shit just because multiplayer games create the biggest waves. Or
maybe you just don't really care for gaming like you used to.

Kinda like when people assume there's no good music during the hey day of
dubstep. Or when people lament there's nothing to watch just because they only
watch The Office and never branch out.

~~~
ahelwer
Yup. I just finished putting 100 hours into Dark Souls 3. Anyone who says
there aren't any quality single-player games anymore just isn't paying
attention; video games are better than they've ever been. Just to list a few
great single-player games I've enjoyed over the past couple of years:

* XCOM: Enemy Within

* SOMA

* MGS V: The Phantom Pain

* Dark Souls 1 & 3

* Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

* DOOM (2016)

* Nier: Automata

* Hyper Light Drifter

* Hollow Knight

* The Talos Principle

* The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

* Wolfenstein: The New Order

* Furi

* Katana Zero

* Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Plus many more; I put significantly more hours into video games than many
people (probably to the detriment of my career, lol) and I am barely
scratching the surface of what's out there. Times are good for entertainment!

~~~
ryneandal
> video games are better than they've ever been.

They've never been more accessible and cheaper, either. Anyone else remember
seeing SNES cartridge costs at launch?

~~~
astura
Up to $70 in 1994

[https://imgur.com/r/snes/mMRJz](https://imgur.com/r/snes/mMRJz)

~~~
ryneandal
Man, local markup must have been pretty insane. I remember my parents picking
up Link to the Past from Pamida for $90 USD in the great plains.

------
throwaway13337
I'm a game dev with specific interest in the socialization aspect.

The guy that made slack and flickr started each with first trying to create a
social-first browser game and failing both times before making these huge
successes from their rubble.

I, too, have experience in this way but with more success as we focused on
kids. E.g. Club Penguin, Habo Hotel, and Moviestarplanet found their mark for
the time they were popular. I imagine Roblox is the modern version of this.
Adults don't seem to be as open to socializing with strangers online as
children.

There are also MMOs from the past like everquest that were definitely social
first.

The best way I've found to create social interaction is to give players goals
which rely on other players that are open ended enough for players to
socialize about which goals to achieve.

The problem with modern games is that they're too fast paced to rely on other
players. Games that require communication and discussing strategy (think D&D
style) require that you're not just doing finger DDR. That's a hard sell when
games are popularized through streaming and other video. It's a catch-22.

I'm excited about the future of real socializing with games. It's what I spend
my days building but there's a part of me that wonders if the world today will
allow for it.

~~~
snapperwhip
Except that Lance Priebe himself said he specifically made Club Penguin to
only “appear to be social” with a lot of the multiplayer interactions directly
designed to be superficial and emphemeral - making it easy for kids to pop in
and away without any significant time of talking and with props and items
designed to distract from conversation. This was on purpose - as moderating a
kids chat rooms was expensive and logistically inherently difficult to prevent
grooming etc.

TL;DR Club Penguin wasn’t really a social site.

~~~
throwaway13337
That may be - club penguin was part of the list of children browser games at
the time providing real time player interaction. I listed it because I imagine
that's the one most people in tech know because it got a lot of media
attention but I admit I know the least about it.

Club penguin limited chat as opposed to habbo hotel and moviestarplanet which
had, surprisingly, free style chatting (at least in the non-US versions).

These were both from scandinavian companies which had a more liberal attitude.
As a result, the player connections were deeper.

------
cdiamand
Looking back on more than 20 years of playing videogames, in hindsight it is
the social moments that stand out vividly. Staying up at a friends house glued
to whatever console. Lan parties. And then eventually the migration to
networks like steam.

The teamwork. The shared surprise, failure, and success. The bonding that
games facilitate with other people. That's the beauty of videogames to me.

I think we need to see a shift in the current paradigm of games. The biggest
AAA games are increasingly optimizing for addictiveness, treating players like
they are a statistic with a wallet.

I'm starting to entertain the thought that games (the current generation,
think fortnite and LOL) are a net negative for society. Sapping time,
attention, and interest from people who would otherwise be engaging with
reality and their peers in ways that would make their lives richer. And it
really pains me to say that, as an avid gamer for many years.

~~~
ahelwer
Video games have won! It's time to emerge from the defensive bunker that they
must be "productive" by improving your creativity or problem solving or
reflexes or whatever. They're a form of entertainment on par or even beyond
movies, shows, etc. Time spent enjoying video games is no more wasted than
when enjoying those other forms of media, although it is true some video games
demand much greater time investment (the entirety of Game of Thrones is only
63.5 hours in length, for example, which is easily surpassed in length by many
popular single-player games).

I do think things like LoL are a huge drain on some people's lives, though,
honestly.

~~~
wpietri
And that huge drain is related to the addictiveness that cdiamand was talking
about. I haven't heard of Game of Thrones ending relationships, but I know WoW
has caused divorces. I'll leave out the people I know personally, but stories
are legion. E.g.:
[https://www.olganon.org/node/20104](https://www.olganon.org/node/20104)

~~~
topkai22
A "game of thrones" divorce sounds like quite a bloody affair.

------
topkai22
A while back, possibly on HN, there was an article about why it’s generally
harder to make friends or find a community after graduation. It outlined some
of the requirements for developing strong friendships and community. The ones
that stood out to me are:

-shared experiences

-social bonding (knowing the basics of others lives, casual conversation, etc...)

-regular serendipitous interactions with people you know

It seems to me that current online services do a great job with the first
element, have mixed results with the 2nd, and fail at the 3rd.

The shared experience is amazing- games transport you to new worlds and give
you something to do.

The social bonding aspect varies wildly by game and play context. I haven’t
chatted socially playing an FPS online for at least 10 years, but I don’t play
with real life friends. I know some guys in clans who do.

The last one, regular serendipitous interaction seems a hard fail. Basically
what this means for friendships and community is that you run in to people you
know unintentionally. In real life, I finally started feeling a part of my new
community when I started to run into people in knew at the grocery store. I’ve
started to recognize some user names on HN, which thrills me (including
identifying an old college buddy I hadn’t talked to in years.) My gaming
experience? I’m tossed into an experience full of 20-100 random people from
all over the world, and then 15 minutes later (or at best the next day) it’s
the same all over again.

A game looking to increase the social aspect of their wares should look to
this third of interaction- repeatedly seeing the same people over and over
again. Interestingly, back in the early days of multiplayer the constraints
made this better- you had to pick a server to play on one your own, and there
was generally only a dozen or so with great latency for your computer. You got
to know the user names of people playing there, and technical limitations kept
everything human scale (16-32 players at a time, so maybe a couple hundred
regular players at most.)

~~~
danielscrubs
I know I'm narrow-minded, but the only way I'd ever consider playing online
games with strangers is if there was a age-filter that let's me play with
30-somethings that have a mortgage, and I've never seen that.

~~~
topkai22
I largely agree, but the flip side of the coin is that if there is an
environment where you repeatdly play with the same individuals over and over
again, they stop being strangers.

I'm really starting to feel there is possibility to innovate in this space.
Not so much in creating the games themselves, but in the matchmaking systems
they use and the comms to enable the building up of interpersonal
relationships and positives social norms within a "game" context.

------
troughway
Sure, I agree with the basic premise of the article but we already had that,
and it’s more complicated than the article suggests it to be.

What the article wants are more MMOs where your identity is more closely tied
with your in-game avatar, akin to a character in Ultima Online that you spent
months working on so that you have enough of a personalization applied to bond
with it, and also with the people you’re playing with as a result of having
spent a long enough period of time doing things with them (quests, raids,
RPing events, etc).

Would VR help? Potentially. But the delivery mechanism is for a lot of people
excruciating at first - headaches, dizziness, inability to sleep, etc. A
normal computer screen usually doesn’t cause these issues so blatantly.

As I have mentioned, I agree with this article. Although I think this is a
solved problem that is simply dormant. MMOs shut down quickly because they
don’t make money. This economic crisis will only make this more apparent.

A non-insignificant number of people have grown up in early 2000s on MMOs, so
they can understand through experience the psychological power of both healing
and destruction (mostly through bullying, griefing) that these games hold. But
I am not sure if the contemporary world of gamers can step back in time to a
more innocent period of the Internet where it was more about communicating
with people you’d see every day on forums, MSN/AIM/ICQ and less about random
sniping comments on Reddit and Xbox.

I also want to make it apparent to the slightly older HN crowd that we are the
last generation of people who had a childhood without internet and always-
connected computers, and an adult life being surrounded in technological
marvel from them. Our perspective and experience is alien to most gamers
today, so any commentary around this subject should keep this in mind.

------
rs23296008n1
Shouldn't games be games first and social second? Multiplayer merges
gaming/social already. Or is that too much orientated towards actual fun?

I'm wondering just how bad games will get when the focus is social first and
gameplay second. Usually the actual fun element starts to fade and they just
become clicky/time grinders.

I've seen plenty of games on facebook and their core mechanic seems to be:
spread amongst all your friends, punish single players, microtransact as much
as possible, collect as much personal data as possible, apply psychological
manipulations, profit!

One of my earlier hobbies was automating various facebook games. This meta-
gaming was definitely more fun than the actual games themselves. A few of us
even set up competitions on the least amount of actual game time spent.

------
slx26
Kind of a side note, but let's be honest here: games are extremely hard,
online multiplayer is extremely hard, and social spaces and organization are
even way harder than the previous. You can spend a whole life thinking about
any of them and you won't reach any comfortable solution / theory. I'm
confident that many of us think about all these issues and are interested in
making... well, worlds where as much people as possible can have as much fun
as possible (and hopefully without developing addictions). So, I don't believe
the problem is a lack of will. Minecraft, Fortnite, Animal Crossing, WoW...
might be ok, but they leave a lot to be desired. At the end of the day, they
still feel very limited and dead. Some people just severely underestimate how
hard it is to make lively and diverse worlds, keep them alive and fresh... and
have people collaborate (as opposed of killing each other) all at the same
time. Barely any game manages to do _a single one of those_ properly for a
reasonably broad group of people. Can we do much better? Yeah. Will we do much
better? Definitely. Do we already have people around working on "better"? You
can be sure of it. But it's so damn hard.

------
officemonkey
Y'all just need to load up a fresh Realms server in Minecraft. The tweens in
my house figured this out weeks ago.

------
A4ET8a8uTh0
I hesitated to comment since my initial reaction was more emotional than I
anticipated. Then I re-read it. I still disagree. But maybe I understand where
it seems to be coming from. Games used to be a somewhat solitary experience (
unless your family or friends were nearby, but even then the game was designed
for the person playing ). Gaming was looked down upon. I am trying to think
who was lower on the totem pole of social acceptance. Hippies?

But today games are not just main stream; they are effectively a big
businesses encompassing multiple age groups, some of which include wives
playing Candy Crush variation on FB or phone. And that is cool. I think it is
stupid and pointless, but my wife thinks XCOM is stupid and pointless. That is
ok. We don't have to like the same things.

But someone clearly thinks we should have a 'platform' in place of a 'game'. A
place where micro transactions, loot boxes and Altana knows what else yet
undiscovered abomination is allowed not only to exist, but to spread. I like
games over platforms. Maybe I do not want to be social or pay extra for what
should have been included in the original game.

But to be perfectly honest, I would be more upset 10 years ago, when all those
things were slowly being rolled out. Today, I still have games I want to
eventually play ( and they are waiting in queue for their time -- though I
actually have to schedule my game time now ), but if time will come where
games are platforms first and games 2nd I will move on to something else.

It feels kinda sad. I lived the online experience ( MMO ) and it has its
moments ( there is something about doing something hard as a team ). It is
simply not the same as single player experience.

Social aspect has its place, but it should not be usurping actual game
position.

------
phnofive
Sky is a great example of this as well. The only way to connect with people
you know is to scan a QR code, implying you’d need to have been in proximity
to link up.

~~~
cosmojg
You can also send your friends a screenshot of your QR code. That's worked for
me in the past.

------
verdverm
I was doing some research yesterday and was surprised to learn that this is
essentially what QAnon is and why they have been successful in reaching beyond
your typical conspiracy theory believers. More or less they have created a
LARPing community.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/07/qanon-
isn...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/07/qanon-isnt-just-
conspiracy-theory-its-highly-effective-game/)

[https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/psychology-qanon-
why-d...](https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/psychology-qanon-why-do-
seemingly-sane-people-believe-bizarre-conspiracy-ncna900171)

[https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-
unseen/201911/...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-
unseen/201911/the-qanon-conspiracy-theory-mistrust-and-mass-appeal)

~~~
VectorLock
Could QAnon just be an ARG?

~~~
verdverm
Totally, that's almost the point, and other groups are now adopting their
methods and patterns, which is really the bigger concern

------
iphone_elegance
Something about this just screams out of touch

~~~
haunter
You are downvoted but I have this feeling as well.

When people bring up Animal Crossing as an example... I mean the game has one
of the worst online system ever + basically 0 social functions. It's an OK
sandbox game but I wouldn't call it as a social platform.

MMOs solved this problem years ago but instant gratification is the king now.
Love me some FFXIV but I can see people why don't want to play a game where
you have to invest hundreds of hours to reach anything. But for a lot of us
that's the main appeal of it.

~~~
freehunter
I think the idea isn’t that Animal Crossing has the best online experience but
rather that it’s a game you can play with zero skills, with no pressure to
keep buying new things, and you can play it for very short periods of time and
still accomplish something.

I tried Fortnite the other day and could hardly get into a game trying to
navigate past all the “buy this” and “buy that” buttons. It’s a sales platform
that encourages you to buy buy buy. A lot of MMOs are the same way. Even the
latest Assassins Creed (which is a decidedly single player game) has to check
their servers every time you open the game to see if there is anything new
they want to ask you to buy.

There aren’t a lot of big name games these days where you can just buy the
game and play the game. They all need billboards and micro transactions and
DLC and season passes and worst of all as you get older: they all need plenty
of skill and free time.

There is a huge lack of games that respect your free time. Animal Crossing is
one of the few.

~~~
Hamuko
> _There is a huge lack of games that respect your free time._

Sure, they respect your free time as long as you're willing to pay for it.

GTA Online for example is massively grindy if you want to get anything since
they sell the in-game currency for pretty bonkers prices. Want to save
yourself a hundred hours of grinding? Just buy in-game currency with $100
American.

------
iheartblocks
I'm actually making a game with a heavy emphasis on socialization. One of the
big inspirations that I haven't seen mentioned yet is TTT, specifically the
TTT mode in Pavlov VR. In that game mode, there are 1) 1-3 traitors who know
who the other traitors are and can buy certain weapons 2) a detective who can
buy helpful items and a scanner to test people in close proximity 3) innocents
who can't buy anything, and are just trying to stay alive

Players need to work together to win, while deciding whom to trust and
convincing other players that you're trustworthy. It's been a remarkable way
to socialize with people while having a shared goal. I actually find it to be
the most intellectually stimulating game that I play, with the possible
exception of chess.

~~~
jfim
Space station 13 has that mechanic in certain game modes, and has a lot of
things to do for the non traitor players.

It's pretty interesting, even though the BYOND engine is really janky.

------
Zenst
This only works for some game types and with that, they become their own
social eco-system. To limit and curtail that to the realms of social network
first would only see a raft of disparious networks being game developer
driven. With respective and their own flavour of what is and what isn't
allowed in their social world, laying down the law.

But then the whole social network model is still not perfect, so to enforce an
imperfect model and way of interacting upon games would be an api too far for
many games and curtail creativity.

Also look at what games people play on social networks - #1 trolling - enough
said.

------
dwighttk
How about more video games that don't have a social platform at all or where
it is at least entirely optional, but I would prefer the former because I
don't want people wasting time supporting a social platform?

------
MarcScott
I've been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 for the past couple of weeks on
Stadia. I love just roaming around the countryside, hunting, meeting strangers
with missions for me, and all of that. It's been a great distraction and I was
sad when I finished the main story, as there are so few of these types of game
out there (I've done Skyrim, Fallout, GTA etc)

For social gaming I set up a CS:GO server on a cheap VPS, to play with just
friends and family. We chat on Discord while playing, and it's great fun. I
don't want to game with strangers, so this fits the bill perfectly.

------
MivLives
One of the big changes I've noticed with games is that it's harder to have a
conversation during them.

What do I mean? I used to play a lot of Team Fortress 2, twelve people to a
team, all talk on, a conversation happening while the game is being played.

Now compare that to what's been popular the last few years.

Overwatch, 6 people a team no all talk

League of Legends, no voice (at least when I played)

PUBG, all talk but sure as hell not for public conversation

Valorant, 5 player teams no all talk

The small team size means that match making works, but it also means there's a
lot less wiggle room for casual conversation.

------
sambull
Games like Fortnite are quickly morphing into a more social first style.

~~~
dathinab
Not really IMHO, they use the _social pressure_ to make people spend money
with them. But they are much to limited to be a "social platform". There just
a topic you speak about when you are one a "social platform" (or meet in real
live).

~~~
pugworthy
What is your take on their brand new "Party Royale" island that is mentioned
in the article?

------
papermachete
Those fail. Battlelog failed, Autolog failed, Second life is a disaster, VR
Chats are great for memes. So no, the market has decided we don't need more
but better such games.

------
jackcosgrove
Among online communities, YouTube comment threads are definitely different
than most because people are talking about a shared experience that you can
share along with them.

A mini-game element to a social network would have the same effect.

I don't think social networks built around quest games would be as relevant,
as they would be biased in favor of intense players and that would be
offputting to casual players. It would also be harder to understand what was
being talked about.

------
Romanulus
It seems they forgot Second Life... I'm still trying.

------
dabockster
So I guess we need more World of Warcraft then.

~~~
runawaybottle
There hasn’t been a major MMO released in awhile, and the only one that is
anticipated is Amazon’s own attempt hitting Early Access this month:

[https://www.newworld.com/en-us](https://www.newworld.com/en-us)

Other than that, Phantasy Star Online 2 is out on Xbox, and later this month
on PC:

[https://pso2.com/landing](https://pso2.com/landing)

Few developers are attempting ambitious MMOs now days sadly.

~~~
freehunter
Few developers ever made ambitious MMOs. A lot of developers made big-budget
WoW clones which failed because the market doesn’t want WoW clones.

Very few MMO developers have tried something new beyond “quest, grind, loot,
repeat”.

------
briandear
If the lockdowns were going to last forever, this might be true. But
personally, I think we have enough “online” addictions.

------
pugworthy
With Burning Man canceled this year, there is talk of online events or
experiences that might take place instead. The article specifically talks
about the new Fortnite Party Royale island, and the description of it doesn't
sound too far off Burning Man in some respects.

------
ouchjars
There was a unique social quality to public player-run servers at their
height. They have not been surpassed as the closest virtual equivalents to
bars.

I miss talking to strangers and mild acquaintances more than I thought I
would, in that way online and now IRL.

------
TuringNYC
Sounds like the plot of "Halt and Catch Fire"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(TV_series...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_\(TV_series\))

------
33a
Sounds like the project I am working on right now
[https://box3.codemao.cn/](https://box3.codemao.cn/)

------
dlahoda
I am working on one of these
[https://www.playcrey.com/](https://www.playcrey.com/)

------
diebeforei485
World of Warcraft and Runescape had this aspect where you could just be mining
or fishing or whatever while chatting with other people.

------
itsajoke
As I read this, all I could think of was Facebook circa 2009 and Farmville. Be
very careful what you wish for.

------
valerij
nah, we need more stuff like doom ethernal, deus ex 1, portal . polished to
absolute shine and very good in each regard.

