Social Games?

before we begin, its quite obvious this blog has been neglected for a while. ironical considering it counts towards the grade.

topic of the day: games with the social premise...

today our friendly neighbourhood gamer presents his long-overdue viewpoints on the phenomenon known as social games (more specifically, Little Max and mafia). incidentally both games are variations of existing ones (but aren't all games?) - little max is the dice version of bluff, and mafia's just another version of polar bear.

but anyway... back to observations and viewpoints. our gamer noticed that social games (such as little max and polar bear) have elements of social interaction (which somehow brings to mind a question - don't ALL games involve social interaction?). The whole premise behind mafia and little max is the idea of deception - in mafia trying to convince people that you're not who they think you are, and in little max basically whether you're just bluffing to survive.

so what happens in the whole process of social interaction? you tend to start to make judgements about people, based on how they interact with others involved in the game (like how everyone has associated wei ren with being a good liar to the point they don't want to believe him anymore - even when he's telling the truth).

and since the nature of both games depends on how well you can convince others of a particular viewpoint (in order to ensure your survival in the game), "people skills" become important. the ones who have more are better at it, the ones who have less (and don't speak up to defend themselves during accusations) are more easily eliminated (and when they make the mistake of wrongly eliminating a quiet person, one question that never fails to arise is : why you never defend yourself?!). but that's what social games are about right? interacting actively with other game participants.

here's a thought about gamer classification - gamers in little max and mafia probably fit the standard player type (then again it really depends what you deem to be 'standard' player type), since everyone more or less plays the same style (especially for little max, considering there's only 1 way to play the game. unlike bluff you can't resort to telling the truth all the time - the dice rolls don't allow for it). but i guess maybe cos we're playing among friends (or at least people who we're somewhat familiar with).

here's another thought (this one about mods): what if you modified little max such that you HAD to tell the truth? like say we had an "immunity" thing. then whoever had it die-die had to tell the truth and show his dice roll (but wouldn't get eliminated since it was immunity), and the value was reset from there? what effect would that have on the game do you think? of course it could be good or bad depending on what happened, but most likely it'd be a help than a hindrance (unless of course the guy with immunity called a double-6 - then the next guy would be really in for it). would be interesting don't you think?

this is your friendly neighbourhood gamer signing off...