I'm surprised the article states "Before social gaming, older women were an entirely untapped gaming market, and one that had both time and money to spend on games that could capture their interest." This is patently false. Anyone familiar with the casual gaming industry would know that. For example Big Fish Games and Popcap both had mostly women players. I say had, because social gaming has greatly reduced that market.

Ah, well I definitely missed that when doing my research, but I did build my assumptions into my language (ie using the word "untapped" versus "untouched", implying that it existed but wasn't fully utilized). That said, I think the word "entirely" is misplaced. I'm going to take it out and use "mostly" instead, if that helps :)

Also, if you can shoot me an article about the demographics of those games that you mentioned, I will include it in my article. Thanks for pointing that out.

Some anecdotal references to it in this article from 2006 http://www.gamezebo.com/news/2006/05/26/interview-paul-thele... I'll let you know if I come up with more.

Not surprising.

Also, if you haven't read the article/story/blog "Who killed videogames: a ghost story", then you should check it out: http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-g...

It talks a lot about the behavior mindsets of social video games.

This article makes me want to become a psychomatheconometrician mastermind developer.

Great article, thanks for sharing :)

The article is written by someone in marketing for a company that provides real-money gambling services to video game companies. That their conclusion is "This is why real-money play is such a great fit for social games." is hardly a surprise.

Interesting, I always saw the uprise of social games as quite confusing, since myself as a gamer saw no need for these games. It makes sense that these Farmville/Social City/Zynga games then be targeted towards this new, untapped group. I find the Zynga numbers to be interesting, but the correlation confuses me. Is it completely out of left field to follow the 81% gambling figure to correlate that that number of women are visiting casinos/e-casinos and gambling? That seems like a HUGE number.

Hey nik, thanks for the comment. So you know, the number is that 81% of women prefer to play slots when they go to casinos. This doesn't mean that they are 81% of slot machine players (the actual ratio is closer to 52% male, 48% female).

That makes far more sense :) Thanks for the clarification, I didn't read the data closely enough.

It's definitely true that different demographics crave different types of competition!

A casino or other social-gaming company is often A/B testing variants to 'increase engagement'. However, such engagement is arguably against the mental/physical health interests of the test subjects.

Is A/B optimization in such a case thus an illegal/unethical experiment on human subjects without their informed consent? (Can Zynga 'Whales', that minority of their users contributing most of their revenues via payments of hundreds of dollars a month, actually give informed consent? Or are they on a binge?)

Tobacco companies lost giant class-action lawsuits because they (A) hid known harmful effects of their products; and (B) engineered their products to be more addictive. Could companies pushing gamification no matter the cost become the tobacco-company-pariahs of the mid-21st-century?

That seems unlikely. It is kinda hard to know what people have put in your cigarets. It is easy to know what they show you on a screen.

Lacking a psychology degree or something similar, I don't think that it is easy to fully understand what you are being shown on your screen.

I don't think the secrecy of the manufacturing formula was a big factor in the tobacco judgements. Everyone knew cigarettes had tobacco, flavorings, and preservatives, and delivered a bunch of nicotine/tar/smoke to the lungs.

You can see what's on the screen in Farmville, but do the players understand the effects of periodicity and random reinforcement on the dopaminergic motivational system? The power of well-crafted images and sounds or emotionally manipulative language? Viral loops?

We in the industry know these things; for a layperson it's as obscure as the chemistry of physical addiction.

But where do you draw the line?

Arguably Diablo, WoW, etc. are all about pointless clicking for pointless reward.

Some people call it fun, some people call it manipulation. One has little farms and the other Sword of Wonder +101.

Speaking of Diablo... Diablo 3 will have a new in-game marketplace which some people think is a step closer to gambling. The reason being that you can actually earn money playing the game now. Put enough hours into it and you can make a few bucks in the market.

I guess the connection is, you buy some loot to get better at the game to play against random monsters to hopefully make some cash from the stuff you find.

^ This. I don't think government intervention is the answer. In respect to tobacco companies, the government only intervened when public outcry became deafening, but the public interest in the abuse was what drove their involvement.

Also, cigarrettes contribute to lung cancer, which kills thousands of people per year. Social games do not directly cause any significant social issues, and even if they may indirectly cause some problems, it won't be as serious as death.

We stepped in to stop misleading advertising, and several other non lethal behaviors because of their derogatory effect on the lives of others.

We don't have to have games kill people to recognize that they are designed to manipulate and addict/engage its audience in a manner inimical to the interests of people.

Unfortunately, once we agree on the above points, we reach the real defense of social gaming, the slippery slope argument.

I believe that in due course of time, people will leave social games, after getting bored of them. The gaming market is not static.

At the same time that doesn't mean we stand back and let evolution go on its merry way. At the very least, we should be able to agree that there are some metrics we can analyze, perhaps the risk reward schedules and payout schemes, and compare them to their ability to create repeat behaviors/addiction in a percentage of the population.

(Heck even if we did wait for games to kill, we would have to work through the defence which will say: "well those people couldn't control themselves, so its just an outlier, or a freak case." )

Still looks a sleasy way to make money. Don't make it feel like gambling and before you know it your broke.

Also They fly under regulation radar. Most casino's online/real life have to give back a fixed percentage in winnings. Just looks to me it's a hidden form of gambling and because it's a game they don't have to follow regulations...

I wonder if social gaming will kill casinos and slot machines? If so, I might think it's a little less evil.

Wouldn't that just change the form factor of gambling? just... with cuter animals to prey on younger targets?

It might also lower the financial costs to addicts. It still wastes their time, but I think that's what they want. :/

Yes but it will also pull gambling out of the "Sin City" mentality, which is a good thing for both the industry and players

I'm a little bit confused.

Gambling, no matter what the form factor is, is still gambling.

Sin City or not, I doubt it'll change the attitude of people within the gambling industry. They are still the same kind/type of people.

But what is gambling compared to a virtual currency social game? They both employ same mechanics, and with gambling you can win real money, and with virtual currency you can only sink money in. There are differences in the amount of money, but the underlying system is largely the same.

Also, the American gambling industry is stereotyped to be that "Sin City" type of person, but I would argue that this stereotype isn't the case here or worldwide. Look at the blog post by Josh Hannah, former founder of Betfair and VC at Matrix Partner) on the recent US gambling DOJ ruling: http://www.joshhannah.com/2012/01/us-gambling-goes-online/

There's a page not found for your link in the article to Exposing Social Gaming's Hidden Lever. The link under You may also like works. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3165365

ACK! Fixed it, thanks for the heads up