Could the Time Sink that is Facebook Help LFG?

Jesus, but you can spend a lot of time on Facebook these days. It's the incredible exploding social network. On Facebook now I can attack friends with my zombie army or my pirate army or my hero, Penny Century; I can leave a scribble on a friend's Fun Wall. I can add to my list of books read, films watched, and cities visited around the world. I can join groups with fanciful names like "I judge you when you use poor grammar." I can poke and superpoke and pwn. I can send cocktails and gifts with secret messages. Dear lord! I'm embarrassed to say that I even *bought* a gift, for $1, to send someone. One REAL dollar, people! USD! Why did I do this?

Who says micro-transactions don't work?

In any case, the brilliance of Facebook is that unlike Friendster, Orkut (ugh, remember that one? Overrun by Brazilians?), Myspace, et al., it is both clean-designed and chock full of optional applications that add extreme stickiness to the application. There are games here, and not just the game of who has the most friends - it's, how can you upgrade your account and what novel ways can you find every day to interact with your friends?

Is there anything here that Xbox Live or Playstation Home can gracefully co-opt? Would they be well-served by doing so? Would increased social interaction enhance gaming experiences? I believe so.

The number one problem with online gaming is the LFG (Looking for Group) problem. It's not just a logistic problem - that is slowly starting to be solved, with ways to match people up by experience, for example; but for me the far more important problem is the Trust issue.

(Yes, I have trust issues, so what?)

My problem is this: I want to play a game to have fun; therefore I want to play with people who are fun, and whose notions of fun align with mine. What's not fun to me: sore losers, angry players, stupid players, homophobic, racist, or misogynistic players, players who overindulge in smacktalk of the bordering-on-cruel variety, players who have no sense of manners. This holds pretty much true for me across all multiplayer games, from chess to Halo to WoW to online Scrabble.

So what's the solution? Well, play only with people you actually know in RL - that's pretty much been my solution so far. But that can really decrease the available pool of players and add to the logistics problem, creating situations in WoW, for example, when we are waiting for a friend to log out and log in as his mage and come meet us at Scarlet Monastery all the way from Darnassus. Or something. And surely there are other players out there who are like me, or with whom I would have fun playing. So how do I find them using the criteria that are important *to me*?

Friends of friends is one interesting way to go, I think. So maybe your usual buddies aren't online, but what if you could take a look at their friends' lists and invite some of them? Even better, what if they had profiles online so that you could check out a little more detail and get a sense of what this person's play style was like? Beyond just the rough monikers "Family" "Recreation" and "Underground" that currently exist on Xbox Live. Furthermore, what if you could actively be working to create friends and strengthen bonds out of game, by using a web app like Facebook to continually re-inforce, through relatively simple and low-level interactions, social connections? You'd be building up a trust network, and increasing the amount of trust you have between yourselves. Also, if you are connected in that sort of network, you are less likely to want to break the bonds of it by acting like an utter ass. These effects would then enhance the play experience the next time you played with people in your network.

Hm. I need to think more about this. I'd welcome your thoughts, too.

Comments

[bowler]

I think real names would help immensely. I know a lot of people like the anonymity of the nick, but we all know of the John Gabriel theory of internet anonymity.

Without the anonymity, you are tied back to "real life," and therefore can't behave like an ass. Well, you CAN behave like an ass, but there are instant real world repercussions for doing so.

[Girl_from_Mars]

i havent played XBL, so i will refer to WoW. The friends of friends thing works to an extent (like ICQ), but i know that i have ppl on my friends list that i added cuz we had a group that wasnt awful, and then they have been awful at a later date. I wouldnt want a friend to go thru my list, be referred to this person, and then have a bad time, cuz then i look bad. So then i was thinking, maybe you could review/rank people you play with - but then, someone gets kicked and pwns everyone's rating. Or maybe accomplishments (successful run, unsuccessful?) I dont know. Cuz people sure are jerks.
I try to stay w/in my guild, just because USUALLY you arent rude to your guildies (i am in a large guild cuz i couldnt find people to do stuff with).
It really is problematic tho, you can spend time putting a group together, and then have one person act like a jerk.
The rating system is all i can think of - so that you review and are reviewed. But again, i am concerned by idiots ruining people's reviews - and then i am sure when people sell their accounts (wait, that doesnt really happen, right *eyeroll*) you'll end up buying rating... it's problematic.

[kpallist]

>Is there anything here that Xbox Live or Playstation Home can gracefully co-opt?

You can imagine there are lots of good discussions about this happing inside both companies right now :-)

Oh, and how come you aren't playing Scrabulous!? Enjoy it while you can because I'm sure hasbro is going to stomp them at some point.

[Brinstar]

GuildCafe is considering implementing a sort of online gaming CV/resume, which players can look at to see another player's experience and whether others recommend this player (to group with or whatever).

I use the GuildCafe Facebook app to display my Guild Wars characters, but it's never been anything but something cool (albeit nerdy) on my profile.

I find groups either in-game or through friends I know online or IRL. And yeah, it's difficult to co-ordinate playing times so that you have a bunch of cool, fun people to play with, since time zones and others' schedules make meeting up difficult at times.

[Troy Goodfellow]

Funny. I just posted a comment today about how Facebook was driving me crazy with all the extra apps.

[Trachalio]

I already have this happening a bit on Xbox Live because of the people I play with. About 2 years ago I started frequenting Gamerswithjobs.com and was amazed at how cordial everyone was in the forums! They had a major impact on my choice to buy a 360 because I knew I'd have a fun and friendly group of people to play with right away.

Now that I've had my 360 for a few months, my friend list has a few people on it that I met via friends on Xbox Live in games like Carcassonne and Catan. So I'd definitely have to agree with you that a friend of a friend kinda function on home or XBL would be a great addition.

[joshlee]

The key to building a trust network is going to be the ability to track someone's trustworthiness around different games, sites, etc. What happens if you can see WoW players on FB, but LotRO only connects to MySpace and XBL to MSN? There are efforts underway to bridge the gaps between social networks, but it's an uphill battle.

OTOH, if you were able to track people across all these networks, how would we balance trustworthiness/disclosure against privacy? A panoptic meta-über-social-net would probably help to reduce jerky play, but it would make us all that much more stalkable, as well.

[fish]

First, the iTunes of games
Then, the YouTube of games.
Now, the Facebook of games.

(and we still dont have the first one)

[starwed]

Orkut actually seems to be the social network of choice for almost all the Indians I've met in grad school, so it's not just Brazilians anymore. (Data mentioned on this blog backs up my anecdotal observation. :) )

[Scypher]

Wizards of the Coast is actually attempting a similar idea, sort of a MySpace for tabletop gamers, called Gleemax. The basic idea is that their traditional web forums are expanded by giving each member a personal profile and blog space, plus the search tools to find other tabletop gamers in your area, size them up, and potentially meet up for a few games. Gleemax isn't open yet (I think it's in closed beta?), but the merging of social networking with gaming makes it worth watching for.

Of course, there is a fundamental, functional difference between a networking site for tabletop games and another for online games: there's no rush in looking for people to play cards with if you're only going to meet up in a day or two, but if you're looking for a new Tank, you probably need him/her right now.

So I think that, for an LFG-type social networking site to be successful, the networking will either have to be integrated into the game by devs, or otherwise the third-party site will have to be really, REALLY streamlined. But I do think this kind of thing will become the industry norm some day, and a site like Gleemax sounds like a step in that direction.

[cesarano]

Pretty nice ideas, but there have been numerous times where a friend of a friend has been someone I hated. In fact, very many times I don't get along with the friends of my friends.

I can, however, recommend Shadowrun when it comes to the sorts of people playing it. I can only imagine that all the jerks spend their time playing Halo and Gears of War, leaving Shadowrun to a community where the worst people to play with are the ones who DON'T talk.