Montreal International Games Summit

17 November 2009

Long-Tail
Game Design
Building Successful Games for Social Networks

Scott Jon Siegel

@numberless
http://numberless.net
scottjonsiegel@gmail.com
Hi! My name is Scott Jon Siegel and my topic is this: so-called “long-tail game design,” which will focus on
creating awesome games on social networks (Facebook in particular).
 A Brief Disclaimer

The opinions expressed here are those of the presenter, and do not
necessarily represent the views of his employer.
Just a teeny disclaimer. Nobody told me to place this here, but I’m doing it anyway. Just in case I say something
irrevocably stupid. Which I don’t plan on doing, by the way.
 but first...

A Brief History of
Our Topic

Before I begin, I want to do a very brief history lesson on my topic.

 March, 2003

In March of 2003, Friendster.com launched, and promised in bullet point form to help its users meet new people.
 August, 2003

August 2003, MySpace followed suit. Bigger bullet points, smiley pawns, now with the promise of *sharing*,
beyond simply *connecting*
 February, 2004

February 2004, TheFacebook.com launches exclusively for Harvard University students.

 October, 2006

and by October 2006 it was open to everyone.

 May, 2007

And in May of 2007 the Facebook Platform is launched, allowing for the development of applications.
Anyone know what the first game delivered on the platform was? Yeah, me neither, actually. I’d love to know
though.
 Jetman

Regardless, games started appearing. And a lot of them were bad, but some were good. But even the good ones
didn’t feel that substantial.
 Lexulo us
Scrabulous

But then a few appeared that felt a little more substantial.

 Parking Wars

And then Parking Wars appeared and all the game designers started paying attention because holy crap something
was happening. Something was actually solidly fun and *original.* And that was December of 2007, and that was
basically when I began writing this talk.
 This space intentionally left blank

A whole bunch of other stuff happened too, but this talk isn’t concerned with that.
 The Topic

SOCIAL GAMES

So, yes, two years since the launch of Parking Wars I’m here to discuss the now massively successful genre of
social games.
 The Topic

“ SOCIAL GAMES
”

And I might as well go ahead and throw the air-quotes on this right away. I don’t entirely love the term, but I’ll get
more into that in a moment.
 What We’re Talking About

> designing “Social Games”

> case studies for successful design

> game design disciplines and their role on

social networks

My talk today is going to cover game design, specifically as it applies to the new “social games” genre. I want to
focus on traditional design tropes and discuss what changes in this new territory, with a few key examples.
 What We’re NOT Talking About

> business

> numbers

> money

> Chris Anderson

There are a few things which I’m not really able to discuss. The business side of this industry is incredibly
nuanced, and there are people much more qualified than I to talk about it. My title might also be slightly
misleading. Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail served as a great inspiration for some of the game design principles I
discuss, but again, the numbers side of my industry is another talk entirely.
 Scott Jon Siegel

I’m really happy that you (all) are here for my talk, and I wanted to take a moment to let you know who you’re
listening to. I’m a game designer based in San Francisco, and probably one of the only people you’ll meet today
who started using their middle name for the purposes of search engine optimization.
 Scott Jon Siegel

WIN
before “Jon” after “Jon”

You really can’t argue with those results.

What brought me into this industry, and what really interests me about games is interaction -- what the emotional
effects of working within a game system are. And games are, in a lot of ways, an extension of the same ideas
expressed in user interface and user experience design.
Some of my favorite game design books actually have nothing to do with game design.
 Playdom

Zynga

The Escapist

area/code

As a result of this focus, a lot of the titles that I’ve worked on have really intense focus on the moment-to-
moment interactions that make an experience memorable.
 Unannounced Title (Lead Designer, 2010)

Café World (Contributing Designer, 2009)

Word Scramble for iPhone (Lead Designer, 2009)

omg hire me (Lead Designer, 2008)

The Filler (Lead Designer, 2007)
Magic Numbers (Lead Designer, 2007)

Chain Factor (Contributing Designer, 2007)

Sharkrunners (Contributing Designer, 2007)
Sopranos Connection (Contributing Designer, 2006)

And I’ve ended up working on these sorts of projects at various companies over the last several years.
area/code is a 15-person studio in New York City, and area/code’s focus has always been the interplay between
real space and virtual space. And I had the distinct pleasure of working with an incredible team, including game
designer Frank Lantz, on some really great products.
Sopranos featured real-time communication between your game board and televised episodes of The Sopranos on
A&E. Sharkrunners used real-world telemetry data from actual sharks in the ocean. So when you’re hunting Betty,
Betty’s real. Chain Factor was a casual game component of an alternate reality game developed for CBS’s
numb3rs. Built to converge the addictive nature of games like bejeweled and tetris with the compelling pseudo-
math of Sudoku. Chain Factor was so popular that it actually spun off into an iPhone game, called Drop 7.
The year following I worked in conjunction with Escapist Magazine, doing monthly non-digital titles for a column
called Game Design Friday.
The great thing about this gig was it let me step back and really focus on my two passions in game design: Rules
and interaction. And I used pre-existing game tools -- dice, scrabble tiles, more dice, cards, meeples -- to create
simple, hopefully fun, games.
The great thing about this gig was it let me step back and really focus on my two passions in game design: Rules
and interaction. And I used pre-existing game tools -- dice, scrabble tiles, more dice, cards, meeples -- to create
simple, hopefully fun, games.
The great thing about this gig was it let me step back and really focus on my two passions in game design: Rules
and interaction. And I used pre-existing game tools -- dice, scrabble tiles, more dice, cards, meeples -- to create
simple, hopefully fun, games.
The great thing about this gig was it let me step back and really focus on my two passions in game design: Rules
and interaction. And I used pre-existing game tools -- dice, scrabble tiles, more dice, cards, meeples -- to create
simple, hopefully fun, games.
The great thing about this gig was it let me step back and really focus on my two passions in game design: Rules
and interaction. And I used pre-existing game tools -- dice, scrabble tiles, more dice, cards, meeples -- to create
simple, hopefully fun, games.
These really let me get comfortable with compiling rule-sets, and each game drilled down on a particular theme
or moment in the interaction.
In 2008 I joined Zynga, where I worked on both iPhone and Facebook products. Word Scramble was an iPhone port
of Zynga’s popular Facebook word game -- and is still doing quite well, actually. Café World is a culinary-themed
title that to date is one of the fastest growing games in Facebook’s history.
 ...
Most recently, I’ve joined a great company called Playdom in Northern California. I’m working as Lead Designer on
something really great, that I can’t actually talk about yet. But I’m looking forward to discussing it when I can.
Playdom had a really incredible week last week -- announcing a significant and sizable first round of funding and
two major acquisitions -- and I can tell that this is really only the start of our success in this space.
 twitter.com/numberless
linkedin.com/in/numberless

del.icio.us/numberless
facebook.com/numberless

flickr.com/photos/numberless

foursquare.com/user/numberless

In addition to my fascination with games, I’m also a bit of a social media junkie. You can find me all over the
place, usually associated with the username “numberless”, which is intended as less of a handle and more of an
adjective. I don’t like numbers, which some might say makes me a bad game designer, but I say just makes me a
weird one.
 “ SOCIAL GAMES
”

So, let’s get back to “social games.” The biggest problem with the term, is that it kind of already existed well
before this Facebook thing happened. The word “social” referred to a very specific genre of games, defined by Eric
Zimmerman and Katie Salen back in 2004.
 Social Games are those
which evoke “emergent
social play”
- Zimmerman/Salen, 2004

In Rules of Play, Zimmerman and Salen define social games as those which evoke “emergent social play.” The
examples given aren’t computer games, but rather the seemingly trivial schoolyard exercises, or classroom
distractions.
 Red Rover

Benign at arm’s length, these are actually games in which the rules really push the players toward interesting
decisions with social implications. Red Rover is a fantastic examples, as the game is basically about natural
selection. Who’s the strongest of the bunch? Who is the weakest in the chain? Each decision carries with it this
element.
 Telephone

Telephone is about the fallibility of communication chains, and the breakdown of information where your only
conduit is subjective. A lot of times, there’s a sort of intimacy to these social games. Physical connection or
personal knowledge that often screws with the minds of adolescents.
 Seven Up

Nowhere is this more prevalent than in Seven Up, a schoolroom game about hidden information, physical
connection and intimate knowledge. Seven children are specially selected, while the rest put their heads down on
the desks and put their thumbs up, like this. While no one is watching, the seven quietly move around and each
touch one person’s thumb. When they’re finished, the seven stand up, and try to guess who their selector was. A
correct guess placed them in the seven. Incorrect guesses generally led to embarrassment.
 Mafia / Werewolf

Mafia and Werewolf are, in a lot of ways, the epitome of social games. The investigation and identification of the
various characters is rooted in the pre-existing social structures. The better you know Jerry, the easier it might be
to identity him as a Mafia member. Or, you know, a werewolf.
Even Poker is, in a lot of ways, a social game. Ignoring for a moment the probability engines at play, the biggest
moments in Poker come from the social “sizing up”.
 Mafia Poker

So, social, yes? The interesting thing that’s happened here is some of these motifs have actually carried over quite
directly to this new genre, but there’s an obvious disconnect between this....
 Mobsters 2 Poker Palace

And this.
 t w o rk
ne
SOCIAL^GAMES

Hence the problem. It’s not that social games aren’t social (because they are. Big time). But the title refers less to
this and more to the platform. A social game is a social game because of how it plays and interacts with its social
network. And it’s reconciling this misnomer which I see as fallacy number 1 in social game design.
And each of these social networks has a unique structure -- specific types of player behavior that have to be
considered in order to make a really great game. Though for the purposes of this talk, we’re going to focus on
Facebook.
 “ GAME DESIGN
”

(omg enough with the airquotes)

Before I get into the core of social game design I want to make sure we’re all on the same page in terms of what
game design entails, because I think I might approach it from a slightly different angle.
 Warning

Gonna get academic.

I’m really going to geek out here, so I want to apologize in advance. I’m a reformed academic, but sometimes the
hat comes back on.
 An imposition of rules onto
the chaos of play, in order
to elicit a desired player
behavior.

I mentioned rules earlier, and this is why. Game design to me is really about imposing rules and limitations, in
order to create something intentional out of a more chaotic form.
 game play

I’m betraying my anglo-saxon roots here, but the heart of this definition is a conscious divide between the terms
“game” and “play’ -- a differentiation that’s nonexistent in other languages like French and German.
 play

The idea here is that play has no structure. It’s defined as boundless interaction. But it’s not meaningless. Play is a
crucial part of development for children, and is notably a form of interaction that most species have in common.
Humans play just as much as dogs.
 game

But what separates us from the dogs is our ability to take play and give it structure. And we do so by imposing
limitations on the activity. And when play exists within pre-defined, agreed-upon limitations, it becomes game.
 play
is anarchic

Limitation doesn’t sound fun, but it actually is. Without rules governing interaction, the potential for play is
limitless. We’re inundated with choice. And we have so many decisions to make that we often make none at all. We
float.
 game
is rule-based

When rules are introduced, a ground is established. Perspective is defined, and interesting behaviors are then
allowed to emerge.
 </academics>
The role of the game designer then is to create rules. To take interaction and leverage it. In this way, as a craft it
bears actually less resemblance to alchemy, and more to sculpture. Carving away at formless mass to attain shape
and meaning.
Thus endeth my academic rant. Back to reality!
 SOCIAL GAME DESIGN

So we can extrapolate that the goal of social game design is to drive player behavior within the confines of the
platform. But what are our confines?
 reverse chronological order emphasizes new content

comment threads on each post

one-to-many “stream stories” share

content across entire social graph
Facebook is built to maximize social engagement in a relatively short period of time, but promise new content at
each visit. The site is extremely good at giving users new information, and encouraging them to take actions that
in turn generate new information for their friends and encourage those friends to take action as well.
 > check up on friends
> profiles
> news feed

> interact with friends

> comments on feed
> wall posts
> friend requests

> come back soon

> seeking updates
> alerted to updates

So interacting with this platform is largely focused around friends, and updates of information. And the
interesting behavior here is that a lot of this information loops around on itself. The passive experience of
checking information leads to interactions -- comments, wall posts, messages -- which drives messaging
encouraging other users to re-engage to address. Perhaps most interesting, all of this behavior can be nicely
contained within very short spurts of usage. This makes Facebook the ideal procrastination machine. Satisfying
experiences can be had in very short sessions.
 > play

> interact with friends

> keep coming back

So social games, then, need to integrate with the platform, and exploit these usage patterns. We, of course, want
players to play. But we also want them to have meaningful interactions with their friends, and we want them to
keep coming back. In short, we want our games to become part of their Facebook routine.
And in order to build our games as part of the social network routine, we need to adhere to the usage patterns.
And I also want to stress that for social games, all three of these are the concerns of the game designer.
 Single-Session Engagement

The first being the engagement of the user over a single session. And this is perhaps the biggest commonality
between traditional games and social games, and the most obvious focus for game designers. But the biggest
difference here is the ideal session length.
The Nielsen Company

Single-Session Engagement

31 minutes / session 80 minutes / session

Big-box console and PC titles, for instance, have been pushing longer total play times, and therefore longer play
sessions. A study released in August by The Nielsen Company clocked the average play session of casual gamers
at 31 minutes. Non-casual gamers, more than twice that at 80 minutes per session.
 Deeper single-session
engagement means more
friction for re-engagement.

The problem here is that demanding that level of high engagement from users means demanding that same high
level of engagement out of every session. And walking away from a title for a time makes it increasingly difficult
to return -- remembering the intricacies of the story, and the puzzles and elements to which you were engaged
proves troublesome.
 15 minutes 15 minutes

For social games, you’re probably looking at something closer to 15 minutes for an average session length. And if
you’ve designed intelligently, you’re ideally getting at least two sessions out of the average user every day. This is
low engagement by industry standards. And I think the concern here is, how can you entice a player to come back
after such a short session length?
 Case Study 1:
BEJEWELED BLITZ

Popcap Games, 2008

To answer that I want to bring up my first case study. My current favorite game on Facebook: Popcap’s Bejeweled
Blitz.
 developerAnalytics.com

Bejeweled Blitz is currently number 11 of all Facebook games, and commanding over 3 million unique users every
day (a metric we call DAU, or Daily Active Users). So, it’s a worthwhile case study, I feel.
 familiar gameplay persistent leaderboard

1 minute timer weekly score reset

Bejeweled Blitz is ostensibly a port of Bejeweled 2 to Facebook, with two key gameplay changes. The first is a few
score multipliers, rewarding players for chains and rapid play. The second is an aggressive time restriction of 1
minute, with no means of extending the time per round. Now THAT is potentially short session length. But the
core gameplay is only part of Bejeweled Blitz. The other parts are the ever-present leaderboard comparing you
and your friends’ top scores, and the weekly reset of said leaderboard, occurring every Tuesday morning.
 Scott just beat your
high score!

The leaderboard
has been reset.
User-to-User Notification
1:1 communication between two users. Play now!

App-to-User Notification
Dave just got Application communicates directly
with user.
over 125,000
points!

Adam’s playing
Bejeweled Blitz!
Stream Story
One-to-many communication between
user and social graph.

One-Liner
Appears on user’s profile page.

Alone, these additional features wouldn’t muster the traffic. But it goes beyond what’s simply on the screen.
Remember, communication is at the heart of the Facebook platform. And as a highly competitive game, Blitz
creates ample opportunities for users to be brought back in through significant social messaging. These are all
communication channels defined through the Facebook API, each serving their own purpose. (explanation of
channels)
 Retention

OFF ON

So the complement to short session length is heavy retention. Blitz provides this by creating ample opportunities
to broadcast to users via platform features. But another trend here is user-defined retention loops. Letting a user
decide when they will return to the game, just before ending their current session.
 Case Study 2:
MOUSEHUNT

HitGrab, 2008

And I want to use MouseHunt as an example of this user-generated retention. MouseHunt is the flagship product
of a small Ontario-based social games developer called HitGrab.
 developerAnalytics.com

Comparatively, MouseHunt’s not actually much to squeak at, though it is super significant to see the consistency
of their little horizontal blue line. Look at how long, and tail-like it is...
 developerAnalytics.com

expanding a bit, we see that there has been growth. But since March or so MouseHunt has hovered consistently in
the range of 130,000 users. And I feel fairly confident that this is a low churn situation. That this is the same
130,000 users, with few abandoning, and few coming on as new users.
 my trap mice I’ve caught

silly mascot
So MouseHunt is an interesting game. Riffing off the Pokemon “gotta catch ‘em all compulsion.” The fictional
concession is that you are a mouse hunter in a magical kingdom overrun with mice. The king’s orders are to hunt
and capture these mice, and pays handsomely for each mouse incarcerated.
The mice, adorably rendered, differ from region to region, and as the player progresses the mice become a bit
more... intense. The harder the mouse is to catch, the bigger the payout.
In order to catch the more hardcore rodents, the player will need to up the ante, so to speak -- using the money
they’ve earned to purchase fancier cheese, and increasingly elaborate, grandiose traps.
 15 minutes

The process of catching mice is actually entirely passive. The only action players take to catch mice is sounding
the “hunter’s horn,” this button/icon at the top of the screen which attracts mice to your trap. Each blow
immediately results in one mouse encounter, which either goes successfully or unsuccessfully. But here’s where it
gets interesting: the horn can only be sounded once every 15 minutes.
 MouseHunt Average Session

1) sound hunter’s horn

2) buy more cheese (if needed)

3) upgrade trap (if needed)

4) craft items (if possible)

5) kthxbai (see ya later)

Asking players to come back every 15 minutes would be unreasonable if the barrier to entry was high, but it’s
actually incredibly low. In fact, there really isn’t a whole lot for a player to do. So re-engaging in MouseHunt
essentially has around the same amount of friction as checking email or using Facebook. It’s a casual check and
click, and occasionally you need to take a modicum of additional action.
 I CAN HAZ LONG TAIL?

What’s happening is MouseHunt is caring less about the length of a single session, and more about the overall
lifespan of a player. Creating sticky gameplay and a guarantee of a mouse catch attempt every time you launch
the application -- as long as it’s been at least 15 minutes since your last fix. THIS is the long tail.
 X ^ too meta?

So finally, we’ve wound our way back around to the title of this talk. And we can see that it’s ended up as less of
an economic theory, and more of a game design theory.
 Session Length

Lifespan of User

We’re not concerning ourselves with sales or unit numbers, but instead time vs. retention. Again, lots of love to
Chris Anderson. Ironically, at 4pm there’s a talk that’s *actually* about the long tail business model, as it pertains
to micro-transactions and digital distribution.
 developerAnalytics.com

Let’s look at this chart again. I mentioned earlier how I feel confident that MouseHunt’s stability is owing little to
churn. The reason I feel this way is that I’m honestly not sure how new players would even find out about the
game, because for every thing MouseHunt does correctly, there’s one thing it does fairly poorly. And this is
virality.
 Dave just got
over 125,000
points!

Adam’s playing
Bejeweled Blitz!

Stream Story
One-to-many communication between
user and social graph.

One-Liner
Appears on user’s profile page.

Virality

For positive growth of social games, virality is an absolute must. This is a term that my spellcheck doesn’t even
recognize. My iPhone constantly confuses it with virility and vitality. And once upon a time this apparently
nonexistent term referred to offline “word of mouth” communication. Now, it’s a communication channel. Anytime
a player uses the application to communicate with uninstalled users, it’s viral.
 Invite

Stream Story

Request

One-Liner
The channels for this are obvious. Invites, Stream Stories, Requests, One-Liners. Explanations of these.
The design of these channels is actually quite crucial. Communication between users is not insignificant. A
compelling message -- one which carries either explicit or implicit social relevance -- is more likely to be
received favorably.
 retention engagement

virality

And that’s the sort of key takeaway of all this platform integration nonsense. If you’re a game designer building
social games, then these communication channels are inherently part of your design.
You should be considering how best to create significant interactions not just between the player and system, but
between the player and his social graph. Between these countless individuals with which the player has already
established a social rapport.
So we’re actually now closer to the original notion of social games than we once were. If you consider that a
primary motivator for gameplay in both is the perceived or sincere significance of interactions between players.
Receiving a gift in Treasure Madness could potentially carry the same social weight as touching my thumb in
seven up. Especially if that selection is designed to be valuable, and not simply throwaway. Even separated
virtually, we acknowledge on social nets that these same people exist on the other side. And that’s socially
significant design.
 Pro-Tips

Wrapping up, a few concluding pieces of advice for social game designers.
 Short sessions are not a
bad thing

> provide return incentives

> keep low friction

> social incentives for retention are strong

don’t be afraid of allowing users to walk away, as long as you provide reasons to return later. Just make sure your
friction for re-entry is low, and the compulsion is strong enough. Building social incentives for re-entry (needing
to beat a friend to an item, or responding to a friend’s request for help) will also help here.
 Know your platform
> notifications are being deprecated

> stream story platform policies changing

> 1:1 inbox messaging being introduced

> new “Games” page in Application Directory

> late 2009 / early 2010

http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Developer_Roadmap

Remember some of those platform features I talked about earlier? They’re going away.
 Design for communication

> think about platform early

> include platform integration in GDD

> assert ownership over all interaction

from day 1 of your design process, you should be thinking about the platform, and about the communication
channels and their role in your game mechanics. Be hands on about the process. It may feel like it’s not your
problem, but if you’re doing it correctly will only make your game stronger. Speccing out these touch-points and
writing preliminary copy will help you assert ownership.
 Seriously,
know your platform.
Lastly, it’s important enough I’m going to say it twice. Platform changes are coming. Be on top of them. Don’t rely
on product managers to design that part of your game. Design with platform in mind, and don’t be afraid to get
your hands dirty in the API. Write test applications. Do whatever you need to do to feel comfortable. But own this
responsibility.
 </presentation>

Questions?
and that’s all I have. Time for questions?
 Thanks!
Scott Jon Siegel
numberless.net
twitter.com/numberless
linkedin.com/in/numberless
foursquare.com/user/numberless
scottjonsiegel@gmail.com

...and I’m friendly and approachable!

photos I stole borrowed:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/diabetesisfun/2512910652/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/masterslate/2529062829/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulsid/617875096/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rckyhillsd/274116353/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/deadhorse/1413682138/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/swannman/462237433/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolves68450/3699568894/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/f1rwb/864680735/

that session length report I mentioned:

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/report-americans-serious-about-casual-game-play/