ABSTRACT
Facebook’s release of its development platform in January 2007 resulted in an explosion of games, amusements, and general entertainment applications, soon followed by the proliferation of application platforms on other social networks. For the first time, social networks provided ubiquitous gameplay via computers and handheld electronics and uniquely integrated a player’s own interpersonal relationships into a game’s core design. When I began research for this paper in 2009, social game applications for the mobile market had not yet reached a critical mass. With the advent of new forms of social gaming, including genres such as location-based gaming, alternative-reality gaming, and massively multiplayer games on mobile devices, web browsers, and social networks, we have witnessed considerable growth in the number of casual games within the game industry. 1
