Social Network

Hit or Not is a social network game on Facebook. It works like this: You listen to a clip of music from a band, and rate it. You lose or score points by how close your rating is to the average rating of other users. If you like, you can "sign" the band (the fantasy being that you're running a label), and if the band "does well" (rises in ranking) you gain additional game money. You can also "sell" acts you have "bought" for a one-time gain, a "predictions market" effect.

Justin Hall's company, GameLayers has apparently giving up on its "passive MMO" and jumped on the social network game bandwagon. Dictator Wars is the result. While there's nothing particularly original from a design perspective idea here -- it's a classic social network RPG, like all the Mafia and Vampire-like games you've undoubtedly been spammed on Facebook or MySpace about -- the theme is amusing and interesting.

Like, I suppose, a substantial plurality of Americans, I've spent a fair amount of time playing Poker with friends. Some people take it very seriously as a gambling game, of course, and I find gambling, at least in its commercial form, repulsive -- yet I've always viewed Poker as a pretty good game, with, admittedly, some gambling attached. As opposed to, say, Roulette, which is a brain-dead game that survives only because there's gambling attached.

Overdrive is another MySpace social game designed by Steve Meretzky (who also contributed to Nightfall: Bloodlines and is, of course, famous for his text and graphic adventure work). It's similar to other games of the style, with energy and health regenerating slowly, missions to level up and attacks on other players, an incentive to invite others to the game, and optional payment for faster advancement.

So a game I designed with Steve Meretzky launched today. It's a "social network" game, developed by You Plus, and is currently available on MySpace. A Facebook version is now live will follow later.