Social games - Digital games

Social Games History - Digital Games

I have been tasked with researching the history of social games as a part of a group which will then lead to the creation of a poster presentation on the history and progression of social games throughout history.

      Social games are games in which more than one player exists at any given time, even to the point of the game requires more than one player for the game to work well sufficiently; although most social games boardgame or otherwise mostly make the players act competitvly, they will still be socialising whilst in the midst of playing the game. With this in mind, this gives my group an extremly large assignment as most games are social as a basis which makes them a popular choice for various groups of people.

      After our first group discussion it was decided that we will categorise the workload into three managable groups; social boardgames, social physical games and finally social digital games. After deciding on which group each of us will be persuing I was chosen to look up Social Digital games; I personally find this to be the most simple of the three groups as it is the group that I am most familiar with as well as I have a lot of experience playing social digital games.

Diablo

Diablo was one of the first games to appear on the PC that had access to "network play", this allowed players from anywhere to access an online world wherein they would be able to play with other players, battle them or otherwise just converse with others.
     Diablo was developed by Blizzard North, who have also brought out the world renown World of Warcraft title.
     Diablo was released to the European market on December 31st 1997, just a year after its first release in the US.
     The initial reactions to Diablo was exceptional as it recieved near perfect scoring from all critics; the main parts that were enjoyed were the almost endless amounts of weapons, armour, items, etc. the player could obtain by playing through multiple times, also th replaybility was appluaded because of how addictive the game became. Finally the multiplayer option was a huge success as critics "for anyone who enjoys a good multiplayer dungeon crawl, Diablo can’t be beat"

World of Warcraft

World of warcraft was the game that started a long lasting craze for MMORPG games as its hertiage to the well known Warcraft franchise gave it a good grounding as familiar players of the Warcraft games would be intrigued by this new game. Although it wasn't the first MMO to be released to the public it was extremley well recieved and was seen as the "the best-selling PC game of 2005 and 2006".
     World of warcraft was developed by Blizzard Entertainment and then released in the UK in 2005.
     As stated previously World of warcraft recieved world wide acclaim for itself as it was the winner of many awards and critics had practically nothing significant to complain about, as practically all aspects of the game were appealing and inviting to all players.

Farmville

Farmville was once an online phenomenon as in 2010 it recieved an award from "the Game Developers Conference as The Best New/Social Online Game of 2010". The game is recent years has been in decline due to lowering interest from players. A big reason as to its success was due to the fact that it was released primarily on the social networking website Facebook in 2009, but it was later released as an app for the Ipod touch and Ipad in 2011.
     Farmville was one of the more popular Facebook games that used a social style gameplay, as players would be able to achieve more far quicker if they had more of their friends on Facebook playing as well, this made players request more and more of their friends to start playing on it just so that they would be able to get far more out of the game without having to wait as long as others would have to.

Angry Birds

First released in December 2009, Angry birds was and still is a very well known and recognised game; having stayed at the top position of the Apple App Store for about 275 days in 2011. The game is indirectly social as it uses a scoring system which gives it large replayability for an app game; the scoring system has allows the players to get a score out of three stars and this makes players want to to compete to see how many start they can achieve throughout the game in comparison to other games.

Wii Sports

Wii sports is one of the most successful Wii games to come out since the consoles release; Wii sports includes five separate games that all require the players to use the Wii remotes in some way. All of the sports that the player can choose from are simplified to the point that any age group can get to grips with the controls with ease, this has given the Wii sports games a large boost in reputation as it has become known as one of the most sociable video games in recent years due to its flexibility in the age of its players.
     Wii sports was first released in November 19th 2006 in North America, and then released across the world a month later.