A few months ago, I discovered the fun off facebook. I have had an account for years, but I was never active. I was a big fan of hyves, so I didn’t really need facebook. I only used facebook to keep in contact with my friends from abroad. It wasn’t until two of my colleges asked me to join their mafia gang on the social game ‘mafia wars’, that I started using facebook daily.

At first I just joined mafia wars so Erik en Matthijs could come further in the game, but soon I started exploring what the game was all about, and I got hooked. .  After a while I got invites for other games too. I was invited to be a farmer in ‘Farmville’, to feed fish in ‘Happy Aquarium’ and to serve food in ‘Café World’.
I accepted the invite for Farmville and got hooked to this game as well. That’s when I decided not to try the other games, because I was sure I would like them all, and it would take too much time to keep up with all the different games. So Farmville and Mafia Wars was enough for me.

The stupid thing is that the games are so simple, you can hardly even call them a game at all. You can’t be good at it and there is no challenge what so ever. You just press some buttons each day, leveling a level or two. Actually when I really think about it, the games are really boring. But then why do we all do it?
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Is it because we ‘play’ it together? It must have something to do with it. Or at least that you can follow the scores your friends have, and see if you are ‘better’ than them. Maybe that’s the reason why I can’t stop. Amongst my friends I was one of the first playing Mafia Wars, so that’s why of course I have a higher level than they do.  So when I stop, they will outplay me, by getting a higher level, I can’t let that happen.

When you take a good look at these social games, it’s quite a brilliant concept. You have to work together, invite your friends, send gifts, trade game elements, and so on. And whenever you go doubting the boreness of the game, they come with a new feature that’s keeps it interesting to play until the next boreness and new feature comes.

I think facebook was really smart implementing these social games. I’m sure that it helps the popularity of this social network site. I hear students saying that Hyves is soooó 2009, and facebook is the next big thing. But still, numbers don’t lie. Hyves (7,6 million)  is still way bigger and more succesfull than Facebook in Holland (2,2 million). But I’m sure that we can say facebook is a threat, and I think these games have something to do with that. At least it worked for me, I hardly look at my hyves anymore, most of my friends are on facebook as well and more and more come every day. 

Will Facebook throw Hyves of his throne?                     

tagged with: mafia wars, social games, social network sites, hyves, facebook

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