Like others, I have found the recent “social” game explosion to be rudimentary and lacking. When I log into Mafia Wars or 140Blood I do not see a game, I see a vending machine. Push a series of buttons and a tasty treat comes out. You are hanging out with your friends so why not have something sweet on the side, maybe you can coax a friend to have one too.

Don’t get me wrong, these type of social games are games (there are goals, actions, rules) and they can be seen as more of a critique on MMORPG gameplay as much as the Flash game “This is the Only Level” is for redundant level design.

However, I don’t see what is so social about Mafia Wars. I see my friends, I can place them in my mafia family and the game says they “help” me complete jobs, but this is all asynchronous gameplay; I am never actually helping my friends or playing with them. There’s a big difference here compared to other “social” games like Scrabble online which allow players to play each other right then and there.

The difference between these two types of social games is actually the age old division between communities and society (nature vs. modernity or tribal vs. systematic). This fight weighs the benefits/drawbacks of a small, local, egalitarian community verses the large, systematic, democratic society.

Many writers and theorists have written on the subject: which organizational structure is the natural human state, what properties of each should be cultivated, which is considered good or bad, etc.

Ferdinand Toennies is one sociologist that I believe does a wonderful job of separating the two distinctions in his published work “Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft” (meaning “community and society”) back in 1887.

Community

Toennies emphasizes the fact that humans in a community relate to one another based on their blood, neighborhood or common habits. Communities are often family oriented, in the same general location and everyone is friendly with each other, participating in common rituals and have similar likes/dislikes. In a community, members adjust to each other, understand and organize together, provide common support and promote ownership amongst all.

Society

A society is the artificial construction of community, according to Toennies, where individuality takes over and “everybody is by himself and isolated, and there exists a condition of tension against all others.” Everyone must rely on artificial means of currency and exchange in a society because there is no sense of shared worth, like in a community. Individuals are separated from the process of exchange and force (legal and governmental bodies) must be created in order to manage human interactions.

Not Social, Community and Society

There is a striking resemblance between the two types of social games I mentioned and Toennies’ distinction between communities and societies. Mafia Wars is defiantly an example of a “society game,” as players are isolated from one another and are always at ends with other players, trying to get more power or money. Scrabble online, on the other hand, is a “community game” where players have a chance to catch up and enjoy each other’s company.

I think this distinction is key in understanding where social gaming is going. It seems like the only community games that exist are re-hashed old boardgames that are digitally transformed. While the society games look more like the vending machine games, trying to get into everyone’s pocket book while appearing to connect the player to all their friends.

My worry is that these trends will continue unperturbed. We will not progress past the boardgame motif for community games and micro-transaction gameplay will plague the society games for years to come.

Perhaps some combination of the two may be reached and these two types of games do not need to stay separated. It is essentialist to think that only the properties of either communities or societies show up in a specific human organization, while in almost all cases a mixture of properties appear. The problem is that games are abstractions and have the ability to be essentialist, casting out the properties of one organizational structure or the other, and focusing on only a subset of properties.

My plea is thus not for Mafia War or 140Blood to disappear but for game developers to continue to push for community games too, besides the typical boardgames, and attempt to mix the two game styles together. There is a lot that can be done with Mafia Wars such as offering more real-time gameplay when friends are online, richer strategy/skill-based elements in the game, and communication between rival players other than just “attack me.”

We must foster what it means to actually be a part of a community online because we often get lost in the properties that make it more like a society.