Social Gaming, Part II

When some sort of glitch caused most of my livestock and about half the businesses in my town to reset to the point they would not produce food nor profit for more than 14,000 days -- for those of you counting, that's 38 1/3 years; I'd be a little old corporal by the time they were ready -- I decided it was time to part company with Oregon Trail: American Settler, on my Kindle Fire.

I've written about this game before, and of my mixed feelings on its addictive power and drive to push me into social gaming. I never spent a penny on this app nor in it, though the opportunities to buy virtual goods are limitless. I just never saw the point -- a bit of patience and a lot of time got me just about everything I wanted, and what I couldn't get I decided I didn't need. And when the glitch appeared, well, at first I was selling off the affected, blighted cattle and businesses and replacing them, but then I figured, meh, just pull the plug.

I think it also helped that I left my Kindle Fire at camp with my wife for a week, leaving me to find other things to do to fill the little idle minutes when I used to fire it up. Now that it's back and the game is gone, well, I'm sure I'll find other uses and distractions. But the biggie is gone.

The discovery of Sim City Social on Facebook may also have helped a smidge.

What makes that worse, one of my Facebook friends is also a fan of the game. She's sent virtual seagulls to poop all over my city. I, in turn, visited her parks and engaged in some pick-pocketing. Other shenanigans have also ensued in the week I discovered the game and we discovered our mutual obsession.

(fair use)

Though I have switched addictions -- and thankfully there's no companion app available for the Kindle -- I still don't see myself spending any cash in-game. The patience strategy may pay off, especially as squeakier wheels than I engage the publishers in drives to make things more open to freeloaders like myself.

Why am I freeloading if I get enjoyment out of the game? Well, bcause they're offering it as a free platform, hoping sometime in the future some gamers will pay for the extras.

Weak Connections = Strong JuJu

So it turns out that having a lot of friends on Facebook might actually be a good thing.

Farhad Manjoo, who is quickly becoming my go-to guy for current social media research, highlights a study released this week by Facebook’s research team that shows the personal echo chamber many worried about as this crazy Internet thing caught on isn’t as echoey or chambery as many feared it would be.

The echo chamber – for you troglodytes who have never heard the concept – is the feared phenomenon that the Internet would stratify society into groups of people who only shared or read news that already fits with their political or societal beliefs, while blocking out anything that might challenge their way of thinking.

According to Facebook’s study, that ain’t so.

Here’s what Manjoo says of the study:

But here’s Bakshy’s most crucial finding: Although we’re more likely to share information from our close friends, we still share stuff from our weak ties—and the links from those weak ties are the most novel links on the network. Those links from our weak ties, that is, are most likely to point to information that you would not have shared if you hadn’t seen it on Facebook. The links from your close ties, meanwhile, more likely contain information you would have seen elsewhere if a friend hadn’t posted it. These weak ties “are indispensible” to your network, Bakshy says. “They have access to different websites that you’re not necessarily visiting.”

Here’s a bit of explanation: Researcher Eytan Bakshy found – no surprises here – as he studied how people on Facebook share links that we tend to share links provided by those with whom we have strong ties, say co-workers, close friends, relatives, etc. He also discovered, as illustrated above, that we’re just as willing to share links from weak ties, and it’s from those weak ties that we’re most likely to read information that is outside our own echo chamber.

I’d be curious to read this study further, because I’ve got some strong-tie friends with whom I have widely differing beliefs, and I’m still as willing to read and share what they have to say as I am to share links from those whose beliefs are more like my own.

All of this shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anybody. The Internet has evolved into something that felt echo-chambery (in the early years of my own Internet delvings, I found lots of people interested in Watership Down or the Secret of NIMH as I built my own fan sites and such) at the beginning and now is changing into something that reflects society as a whole – a mish-mash of people connected by either weak or strong ties, sharing differing beliefs but united by at least some tenuous connection (that we graduated high school in the same year, that we like technology in that creepy Kip Dynamite fashion and such). Those weak ties keep us bound socially and, as a consequence, expose us to beliefs we may not hold dear. Of course, this doesn’t mean we’re reading and believing everything we see, but at least this research shows exposure to differing views, shattering once again the myth of the echo chamber.

So stock up on Facebook friends, even if they’re not near and dear to you – you’ll expand your view of the cosmos as you do it.

Social Interaction: SCARY

As a parent of an Asperger kid, you learn to take your victories when they come.

Last week, our son went to a scout meeting. He was there a bit early. Two other scouts were there early too, playing a round of Connect Four. The game ended and the champion wanted another opponent. He shouted to our son to come over and play.

Our son hesitated, of course. Social interaction. SCARY.

But with a little encouragement, he went over.

He’s played Connect Four before, of course. They launched into a game. And launched, awkwardly, herky-jerkily, into a social interaction that the other scout will likely never know how important is to our kid.

Our son started winning. “Wow, you’re good,” the other boy kept saying. And our son responded, nicely, thank heaven. The game went on, and with the click of the pieces, the social interaction went on.

Victory.

Thanks, in part, to some primitive technology and another kid not scared to reach out to another kid to play a game.

So reading things like this, about a robot being used in England to help autistic children with social interaction, I have to think there’s ways to use technology to teach social interaction.

I’m contemplating singing our son up for Second Life so we can interact together in that virtual world (I already have an avatar, if it’s still active, which I created for a class based in Second Life I took through Utah State a few years ago). I’m hoping that perhaps by going through simple interactions in a virtual world, our son can learn how to translate that activity into the real world. At least we can use Second Life as a practice space, once he gets over the newness of the whole thing.

And this isn’t far off the mark. Our school psychologist says there’s computer software out there that helps such kids in virtual social situations – but of course the district can’t afford it. Second Life is free – albeit fraught with other dangers; we’ll keep close rein on him while he’s there.

We’ll see what happens.