User:Deniseteo/sandbox

Social Games
Johan Huizinga defines play as :


 * "Summing up the formal characteristic of play, we might call it a free activity standing quite consciously outside 'ordinary' life as being 'not serious' but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings that tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress the difference from the common world by disguise or other means."

Note the mention of social groupings in Huizinga’s definition of play, indicating the importance of social factors in an environment of play. Social network games are games in essence, riding on some form of social network as the gaming platform. They follow the same game features as outlined by Jesper Juul :


 * 1) Rules: Games are based on rules.
 * 2) Variable, quantifiable outcomes: Games have variable, quantifiable outcomes.
 * 3) Values assigned to possible outcomes: Games have different values assigned to different potential outcomes.
 * 4) Player effort: The outcomes of games are influenced by the players’ effort.
 * 5) Player attached to outcome: Each player of a game is attached to the outcomes.
 * 6) Negotiable consequences: Games can be played according to the same rules with or without real-life consequences.

Characteristics
The following table outlines common characteristics of social games, mentioned by Björk at the 2010 GCO Games Convention Online :

Advertising
The following are common ways of advertising in social network games :

Banner Advertisements

As banner ads within social networks tend to be where ad response is low, they tend to be priced at bottom-of-the-barrel CPMs of around $2. However, because social games generate so many page views, they are the biggest part of advertising revenue for the social gaming industry.

Video Ads

Videos are the ad format with the most revenue per view. They tend to be higher-priced, either by CPMs ($35+ CPM in social games) or cost-per-completed-view. According to studies, video ads result in highest brand recall thus a good return on investment for advertisers. Video ads are shown either in in-game interstitials (e.g. when the game is loading a new screen) or through incentive-based advertising, i.e. you will get either an in-game reward or Facebook credits for watching an advertisement.

Product Placement

A brand or product will be injected in a game in some way. Due to the variety of ways in which product placement can be accomplished in any media, and because the category is nascent, this category is not standardized at all, but some examples include branded in-game goods or even in-game quests. For example, in a game where you run a restaurant, you might be asked to collect ingredients to make a Starbucks Frappuccino, and receive in-game rewards for doing so. As these product placement deals are non-standard, they are largely charged with a production fee, which can be $350,000 to $750,000 depending on the type of placement and the popularity of the game.