Social games creating core gamers?

November 1 2011, 3:05pm

In #AltDevBlogADay article this week Tyler Coleman explores the evolution of social games and how their evolution could create a core gaming audience. Coleman states that many of today’s social games are actually management/typcoon strategy games. Zynga’s Cityville and Empires & Allies share many characteristics with city building games like Tropico and Utopia. Due to the social nature of Empire and Cityville, they are not traditionally categorized as strategy or management games like their predecessors. Coleman argues that in order to bridge this gap (both in categorization and complexity of game player), game developers are evolving. Coleman states: “Do a comparison of FarmVille to the more recent popular social games. There is a definite growth in complexity over the past 3 years. And, it seems as if that growth is at a faster rate than the original growth within these genres. Looking at the change of complexity from the original Sim City to Sim City 4, it took 14 years and 3 sequels for Maxis to reach the complexity found in Sim City 4. Zynga and their competitors have released games on a yearly basis, with small increases in complexity. The increase per game is much smaller, but given 14 years, will social games be as complex as their “core” counterparts?” To continue reading and see more examples of the shift in social games, visit Coleman’s post on #AltDevBlogADay.