Exchanging Social Information in Online Social Games

This chapter presents the phenomenon of social games analyzing the key concept of social information (SI), which is the primal material of the game interactions. It introduces first a classification of digital social games existing nowadays, then our understanding of SI and its presence in different games. Further, the chapter elaborates on three study cases (FarmVille, Pet Society, and Starcraft II) of social games in order to provide schemes of how SI is implemented and used in a digital gaming context, including the opportunity to exchange it. A model of SI exchange is introduced and developed at the level of scenarios, communication processes, and most relevant messages. Finally a discussion recaps the results of the authors′ exploration of SI in the online gaming landscape.