While attending SIEGE in Atlanta over the weekend, I overheard that Frontierville was an evolution in the social game space. By evolution, it was meant that actual gameplay had been added. So, in the interest of my own continuing education, I decided to plunge into it.

My previous experience with social games was largely confined to a protracted length of time spent on Cafe World, where I found myself playing the game long past the point of irony, mainly because I was ranked number one among all my neighbors.

I even told my skeptical friends that my continued play was ethnographic, that I had to play these games for myself before I could really criticize them, and so forth. It was all a lie! I had to maintain my number one position. I even came up with methods to minimize my clicking and maximize my XP to time ratio. Finally, last Spring I spent a few days away from Cafe World and the spell was broken. I have not returned since.

When I unblocked and joined Frontierville, I was quickly reintroduced to the clicking madness of these games. I saw some crops, so I clicked on one. Immediately, a pile of treasure spilled out, like an overturned stocking on Christmas morning. I clicked on each item to add it to my inventory. 

Congratulations, the game told me, I had taken my first step in Frontierville... would I like to share these news with my neighbors? Of course I would! With Facebook's new rules keeping game related posts off of my main friends feed, I felt emboldened by sharing each new "achievement". This feeling quickly faded by the sheer number of them.

It seems so much of the compulsion of these games involves sharing these news feed items and reciprocating a click to get some reward. It's the engine that makes them run. Yet, every time I would be offered the chance to share my progress, it broke any flow that the game had managed to achieve by being a little less inane than its predecessors. The very mechanism that makes these games successful makes them less successful as games.

In an earlier comment I made on another social game that was written up here, this compulsion reminded me of a slot machine in a Vegas casino. I've hardly played them myself, usually walking briskly by them on my way to the poker tables. I don't think there are many people who would consider slot machines games. Certainly there are elements of chance, and incremental rewards, but does this fit with "games" as we have considered them? No. Yet, most social games do no more than this.

At any rate, after sharing six posts to my Wall in eleven minutes, I felt the slight pull to invite more neighbors so that my achievements could be clicked so that they would share in these trivial rewards. Thankfully, I have grown wiser, so I instead closed the window. I prefer the rewards that come from immersion and skillful play to the psychological tricks favored by your local casino.

No doubt there are people who would defend social gaming, largely due to their need to justify their existence. I would say to those people: tell me a game I should play that does not follow this model, and I will happily try it.

In the meantime, I think this model would be better served by a single post that could be shared at the end of each game play session. With limited stamina (or even time to play), this model would allow for the games to achieve some sort of flow. Of course, this assumes the game holds up to such scrutiny. I'm guessing it wouldn't.