In this new world of service-based, free-to-play games, the product manager may be the most important person in the company (second only to the game designer; in some cases more important.)

And no, a product manager is not a new term for a “game designer”. A game designer, traditionally at least, didn’t have to worry about the business objectives. They may have been the consumer champion but that was based on instinct and ego. A product manager needs to temper that instinct with data, the ambition with resource limitations, the game design with revenue requirements.

Nicholas Lovell writes about product management - principally I agree, yet the scope and importance of the PM role is entirely dependent on the company/studio structure. For example, I work in a studio where Product Managers report to Product Owners, whose role is similar to that of an Executive Producer; each production track has a PO, who is in effect the business owner of the project, and therefore also the one who sets requirements and constraints, and ultimately calls the shots. The PO is also in a key role when developing a concept and taking it from an idea into a product. In another studio, the PO/Executive Producer role might be supplanted by the Product Manager altogether.

Nevertheless, in case a product manager does not have such broader production responsibilities s/he can focus on optimizing the game to player (customer) needs, while staying true to the vision. And yes, it is a marketing role only in the sense that product management in the contemporary sense is; it is turning the bullhorn around and listening to the crowd rather than broadcasting to them how great our product or service is.

Also, a shift towards business constraints in the game designer role is evident. This is symptomatic of the current demands for the craft of game design, as more and more platforms embrace the free-to-play model. The bottom line is that one cannot really design games in the free to play context without taking the particular business model into account - free to play affects everything, more or less.

Finally, it is of utmost importance to a successful project and product that game designers and product managers work well together; as I've mentioned in some of my talks, it's like putting magicians and numerologists together: If the combination works, the result is like alchemy: Fun + Virtual goods = Revenue.

While previous years in Facebook gaming have been dominated by one genre (such as farming sims) or one company (such as Zynga), 2011′s most popular games suggest a growing diversity and sophistication of the market.

The above quote from Inside Social Games' summary of the year's most popular games - our Zombie Lane included! - is quite telling of how the market has matured.

Personally, 2011 ended with very hectic months of product ownership, supervision of game designers, and contributing to studio management while simultaneously creating a new concept; therefore my posting and tweeting has been minimal. Fast times at social game development, indeed.

Nevertheless, I wish my readers and followers Happy Holidays - another exciting and game-changing new year awaits, including awesome product releases from Digital Chocolate soon!

Towards the end of his talk, Begemann touched briefly on the development of social interaction between gamers and its future evolution. Begemann drew comparisons between asynchronous gameplay in social games with the interaction often witnessed between toddlers. "Social games are parallel play. People want to play for themselves. Sometimes, they may walk up to the other and either help or destroy what the other has been doing."

I'm glad Begemann has been paying attention while listening to me talk at Casual Connect ;) Of course it was Sulka Haro from Sulake who made the initial observation with respect to the notion of parallel play in studies of kids' play. The point is really about how parallel play creates a particular kind of social presence - asynchronous one, that is. All the outcries about introducing 'more social' into social games are essentially about making social presence more intense and acute, something that the audience Begemann is talking about is not ready for nor receptive to.

The way they engage their players is not through interesting gameplay, it's done through extrinsic rewards - basically bribes." These are badges, pats on the back, and so forth. As he explains; "I'm level two! That person over there, who started playing five minutes ago, is level one! I'm better!

Read the whole Gamasutra write-up, link above. Honestly, Cityville is not fun? Army Attack is not fun? Zombie Lane is not fun? Diamond Dash is not fun? What's wrong with these people, establishing some high-brow monopoly of fun?

In comparison with these timeless traditions, today’s social games are hardly social. First and foremost, the people we play games with are typically not our entire social graph as defined by Facebook and other social networks. Sure, you may want to share restaurant preferences or parenting tips with your college classmates, but they probably don’t care about your progress in Farmville. We mostly end up playing social games alone, occasionally (or frequently) pinging others who may or may not care. Compare this to a raid with your WoW guild, or a heated weekly poker game, and you catch my drift.

Another post calling for more social in social games - much less concrete than Greg Costikyan's recent feature at Gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6387/). Still, both are rallying for the school of social game design and development where the holy grail of 'truly' or 'more' social is sought via comparing the social exchanges of Facebook games to other forms of games.

I keep on insisting that you should not necessarily make that comparison to other 'more social' games (see last sentence in the quote above) - with Facebook in particular social is very much about the ambient social context, i.e. time and place, the concrete footings on where these games are played. If none of these games would not make money today, the rally for more social would be more relevant - for me, it always chimes as game developers wanting to mould a new game medium into the formats and idiosyncrasies they are comfortable with. People just don't get over the comparison compulsion I guess, or be able to bend their brains into seeing that sometimes, in a particular context, 'less' social can be more. It's a harder sell as well.

CivWorld is a game-changer for Facebook because it's truly social.

That sentence from the IGN writeup feels almost a parody of my earlier posts about the 'social' in social games, and the widely spread presumption that more 'games as we know them' social is better regardless of the platform and its context. Somebody should start tracking the list of social game failures based on this 'social envy' of game developers and gamers towards social games' (=Facebook games) superficial sociality. Nevertheless, hail the truism of truly social!

Another guy without a clue of the free to play model and social games business in general: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-05-11-social-gaming-will-crash-ver...

“The irony is that the future of social gaming will actually be social,” Shumaker said. “The evolution of social games is about game content and the mechanics that make interesting social game experiences. Content will move from clicks to storylines. We may require people to think.”

This from a RockYou exec talk, reported at Inside Social Games. The piece continues to quote that 'as social games evolve toward actual social experience...'. Fine, but there is an inherent assumption that at present games are not 'actually' social. This is reasoned to not being synchronous. To me, synchronous spells non-casual. Non-casual to me spells relative failure in this space.

'Actual' social seems to be the holy grail of game developers, but for me it smells like a trap, something game developers would like to see, without consulting the motivation and practices of social games audiences. If you want a more elaborate take on why I see that less social can be more, check out my recent Casual Connect talk here: http://casualconnect.org/lectures/community-social/state-of-social-in-social-...