Social gaming and iPhone: The orchard in Apple's backyard

Like an orchard ripe for the picking, iPhone gaming has blossomed with the potential for socially connected experiences. Local social networks stand as individual trees in a field, but the work to coalesce these into an orchard, a more relevant gaming network promises to bear the fruit of a new generation of mobile gaming. Beyond local wireless play and contacts lists, iPhone brings new appeal to social gaming that has the potential to rewrite what we demand of our portable games.

"iPhone represents the best social gaming platform," proclaims Mark Pincus, Founder and CEO of Zynga. Pincus's company has been at the crest of a new wave of socially connected games on the device, which has spurred interest from other casual gaming outfits and traditional publishers alike. From popular Facebook games maker Playfish to heavyweight EA Mobile, the industry is starting to take an interest in the burgeoning social gaming landscape.

The iPhone, according to Pincus, is uniquely ideal for social gaming due to its constantly connected nature and intuitive use. Both qualities have been repeatedly hailed by developers, yet few actually take advantage of these striking features. Pincus argues, "iPhone simply hasn't had the plumbing to make social gaming possible." Pincus wants "standardised game recommendations, friend invites, chat, and more." He's not alone in these desires.

Efforts to craft a unified program that brings ease of use and an array of social features into iPhone games are well underway, but the challenges are enormous. Developers are forced to implement basic components on their own, the lack of a unified platform making the push to social gaming that much harder. Apple hasn't expressed any interest in addressing the call for unifying the platform around games, leaving it to third parties to figure it out.

Demiforce's Steve Demeter recently abandoned work on his network solution, Onyx. ngmoco continues to plug away at its own online platform, although no release date has been set. Open Feint, coded by the creators of the online-enabled puzzler Aurora Feint, is the one of only two viable programs available for right now for social connectivity.

The second is Facebook Connect, which has enabled a smattering titles to feature cross-platform play and a variety of basic social elements. That, however, is far from the vision Pincus has for the wider scope of socially connected entertainment. "Quite honestly, I wish there was more cooperation and collaboration between Apple and Facebook."

To be certain, Pincus raises a valid point: Facebook Connect begins the process, but a number of critical features still need implementation for social gaming to gain relevance on iPhone. Real-time chat, for example, remains a feature that individual developers must work on themselves. During a presentation during last month's Game Developers Conference, EA Mobile VP Worldwide Studios Travis Boatman hinted at the labour necessary to get synchronous communication functional in Scrabble, which recently added support for Facebook Connect.

Due to the resources needed for incorporating the most fundamental features, developers that decided to invest in these elements are compelled to focus on them. The result are games that emphasise sociability to the detriment of gameplay. Rare is the game that balances the two.

In the mobile space, Reset Generation – an N-Gage title, not iPhone – is perhaps the best example of combining compelling gameplay with meaningful social connectivity. Dr Mark Ollila of Nokia highlighted the groundbreaking title as indicative of a greater trend toward social gaming features. "Ubiquity will be a hallmark of socially-minded gaming." In other words, it's more about incorporating social feature sets and less about a discrete genre.

Neil Young, CEO of ngmoco, echoes Dr Ollila's assertion. "Social games aren't a category, it's a set of features. For Young and others in the industry, the focus is being placed on drafting compelling experiences that leverage social connectivity instead of the other way around. "We as developers need to manifest social elements in a richer way," says Young.

Even Pincus, whose work on titles that Young would likely label as part of the loosely-defined social genre, agrees that core features must be utilised in more meaningful ways. Pincus sees games as a whole adopting social elements at varying degrees, moving away from the concept of a dedicated genre. "We'll evolve as an entire industry with a variety of social network gradations. Initially it's a fad, but it can be so much more. These games can become part of the social fabric."