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. The author argues that games on Facebook are built around the social relationships between players, shifting gaming from a standalone or shared-passion activity toward one grounded in existing friendships. The paper draws on observation of Playfish's catalogue, which by the paper's account includes around eight titles and over eleven million monthly players, along with preliminary interviews with players. Its methodology is qualitative and exploratory, and the author explicitly cautions that the findings should not be generalized to other SNSs before comparative research is conducted.

The analysis separates Playfish's games into two categories. 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. Truly social games, such as Pet Society and Restaurant City, reward players for visiting and interacting with friends' virtual pets or restaurants, making the network a strategic resource. Players in these games often add acquaintances solely to advance, but the author finds that these new connections are managed as separate, weak, and utilitarian ties rather than as genuine expansion of social capital.

The paper concludes that SNS gaming should be understood as a distinct branch of online gaming, one in which bounding practices (strengthening existing relationships) and bridging practices (expanding networks) take unusual forms. Relationships are both the motive for play and a mechanism for it, and the author suggests these dynamics offer new directions for both game designers and SNS researchers.