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Facebook has emerged over the last several years as the dominant social space. Their
astronomical growth has made it the platform for social interaction on the web. Although
there have been some hiccups along the way with privacy concerns, Facebook
continues to grow and provide a space for users worldwide to interact with one another.
Facebook has also introduced a new breed of casual social gaming to the world.
Individuals who would never consider themselves gamers are suddenly spending real
money to play games such as Farmville, Mafia Wars, War Commander, and SpaLife. The
success of companies like Zynga and CrowdStar have made companies including
Electronic Arts take notice and start rethinking some of their games for social play.
If you are reading this book, you are undoubtedly interested in building social games.
Building games can be very rewarding, but getting started can be daunting. If you
haven’t had any experience with game design, the whole idea can seem quite
overwhelming. Even if you have a great idea for a game that you would like to share with
people on Facebook, you may find turning that idea into code and deploying it for
people to use can be a whole different story. How you design the interface, add motion,
build graphics, and interact with users can get confusing very quickly. The biggest piece
of advice I have is: don’t worry, we have all been there. And this book is, after all, a
place to break down and explore the process.
Building games is a complex endeavor no matter how you slice it. Don’t worry though, I
break it down into manageable steps. Before we start building games together, I
introduce you to some general game concepts and terminology, particularly as they
relate to building games to play in web browsers. In this first chapter, to help orient you
for your first foray into game design, I discuss some of the general concepts of game
design, common online gaming genres, their terminology, and the role the browser now
plays in the online game-development environment. |