Most gamers do not know what social media games are all about. It wasn’t until recently, with the improvement in technology in video game development that we have seen a surge in gaming.

Gaming is everywhere and in its addictive nature can now reach everybody irrespective of what you are doing or if you’re are a gamer or not. Let’s understand what social media gaming is all about.

What is social media gaming?

A social media game, also known as a social networking game, social gaming, social video game, or online social game, is a category of online game that is played through social networks or social media.

Social media gaming therefore reflects the act of playing video games using social media. 

Another name for Social Network Games is client-server software. The technologies used in this application include Flash, HTML5, PHP, JavaScript, Objective-C, Swift, and C++.

Based on the growing popularity of social networking services like Facebook, the number of users of online social networks has grown over the past few years. Their widespread use is encouraged by the simplicity with which non-players can participate in these games. The use of pre-existing social networks for these games’ social ties is one of its key characteristics. 

 Multiplayer gameplay mechanics are often present. The first iteration of social media games was a browser-based application. The games transferred to mobile as well as gaming on mobile took off. Social networking games frequently use additional features that set them apart from typical video games even though they have many of the same elements. They are typically focused on being sociable games and casual games.

Star Arcade, a Finnish business, created the first “Facebook-to-Mobile” social network game in 2011. Many goods with tens of millions of players are social network games, which are among the most played games worldwide.

Features of Social Media games

Social media games are are operable via web-browser and do not require especially powerful hardware. Therefore, any person, who is capable of accessing an online social media or network is a potential user of the social media games. This differs from conventional gaming, where playing requires possibly long-winded installation efforts.

Also, they predominantly offer asynchronous game mechanics, which further lower the requirements of playing video games. They can be used regardless of time and space. 

From a game developers point of view the client-server architecture of social media games shows remarkable characteristics. The game can be developed continuously: there is no need for explicit update procedures, the player is supplied with a current version. This enables game developers to ship early and adjust their games according to the feedback and the behaviour of the players

The design and architecture of social media games enables developers to deploy different version of the game to different groups of players and to monitor the success of each version

In social media games, individually a single-player can play without strict dependency on others. Still, there is the awareness of the activities of others and interplay with them e.g. based on item exchange, messaging, manipulation of the game world or shared game space.

There is also a beneficial Social Media Interaction characterizes to allow players interactions via the game. Such interactions are based on the four base interactions in social media: networking, publishing, sharing, and discussing.

In addition, multiplayer, Cooperation, and Collaboration are main features of social media games. This means that those games are never truly single player games, but multiplayer games with a strong focus on the social aspect. This social aspect can manifest in various ways. Some of those can be a focus on cooperation or collaboration, two elements which are fundamental to multiplayer games.

Challenges of Social Media Gaming

The most notable challenge of social media games is toxicity or toxic behaviour is a form of cybermobbing or cyberbullying with the goal of influencing fellow players negatively. It involves insulting or harassing fellow players or disrupting game play in a way such that it negatively impacts other players’ perceived fun. Different kinds of toxic behaviour can be experienced online:

The first is related to communication between players and contains insults and harassment (i.e. racism, sexism, death threats, etc.). The second is called griefing and contains negative behaviour which is related to how players intentionally disrupt a game through their behaviour. This involves steps to intentionally lose a game or help an opposing team to get an advancement over the own team

Also, the life-cycle of a social media game is clearly defined. When a developer shuts down the server, there is no chance to keep playing – a difference to locally installed games (This happened to the SNGs The Sims Social and SimCity Social on facebook in 2013

It has been demonstrated that social gaming increases spam and phishing on social media sites by 50%. This is made feasible by hackers using bots to send spam messages to other users using social gaming programs while generating false profiles. Many of the users who get the messages voluntarily add the phony profiles of the spammers to their friend list in order to rely on them for extra gaming support. As a result, a number of users are now more likely to experience data loss, identity theft, account takeover, and other problems.

Also, Players on social networking sites can incur unauthorized fees as well. For instance, several of these games reward players with virtual currency in exchange for surveys they complete. After finishing the survey, consumers are required to input their phone number. They must then wait for a text message with a PIN to enter on a website before receiving their results. They subscribe to a service—like those that offer horoscope forecasts—by entering their PIN into the website, are charged for it, and might not be aware of it until they carefully read the tiny print.

Games that mimic gambling activities, which are available through social networks and are free to play, are one of the more well-liked game types. But there is disagreement about whether social games should be regulated due to their resemblance to gambling.

Some of the popular social media games include:

1. Basketball FRVR (by FRVR)
2. Tap the Difference (by Lotum)
3. Peek a Who (by Nitro)
4. Pride Run (by Voodoo)
5. Influencer Run (by Voodoo)
6. Space Destroyer (by Nitro)
7. Mr. Aim Lab’s Nightmare (by Aim Lab) from. Tiktok
8. Farmville
9. Texan holdem poker
10. Mafia warz
11. Zuma blitz
12. Diamond dash

Thanks for reading!!!