Playfish

Playing Your Network: Gaming in Social Network Sites

Luca Rossi's paper examines gaming within social network sites, focusing on Facebook as the dominant platform in most Western countries, and uses the UK-based company Playfish as its central case.

• Games on Facebook are built around existing social relationships, shifting gaming from a standalone or shared-passion activity toward one grounded in friendships, a distinct branch of online gaming the paper calls SNS gaming.
• The paper uses UK-based Playfish as its central case, observing a catalogue of about eight titles with over eleven million monthly players, and draws on qualitative, exploratory methods plus preliminary player interviews.
• Skill and knowledge games such as Who Has the Biggest Brain? and Geo Challenge rank players on friend, country, and global ladders, and players use these rankings to assert status within their social circles.