There's a great article over at GIgaom that cover 'What Makes Gaming Social?'

In case we needed proof that social gaming is hot, look no further than the not one but two Silicon Valley conferences being held this month that are dedicated to the space. Yet with representatives at Interplay and the Social Gaming Summit from companies as far afield as Meebo, IMVU and Kongregate, it makes you wonder if there is anything linking these companies together at all. It's time to define what we mean by social gaming, so that we can better focus on the actual value we are creating for the players themselves and avoid the trap of slapping a sparkly new phrase on any gaming startup that wanders onto the scene.

Just as social networking is a tag applied to just about anything community-related on the web, it is temping to lump every game that has chat or a shared leaderboard under the social gaming umbrella. But to do so muddies the water of a category that just may be the natural progression from social networking. While social networking is focused on connecting people together, we should expect the best of social gaming to be about creating and building relationships with those friends. Not every multiplayer game is a social game, and by looking at it this way we can see that social gaming has a lot more in common with Wii Sports, Rock Band and Monopoly than it does with single-player casual games like Bejeweled or Bloons.

Texas Hold'em Poker is a great example of a synchronous social game. Playing a game of Texas Hold'em Poker with a friend tells me a host of things that last far longer than the game, including their level of aggression, willingness to bluff, and proclivity for risk. It's also in the camp of games designed to rely on fast feedback in order to give a sense of being "there" with your fellow players. This real-time nature ties Texas Hold'em to synchronous communities that include Kart Rider, World of Warcraft and Club Penguin.

Synchronous social games feel like real-time card games at their lightest, and like Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games at their deepest. The unifier for synchronous startups such as I'minlikewithyou, Three Rings, and Habbo Hotel, is that in an increasingly "always on" world in which we are overwhelmed with choices, the high-value online communities of tomorrow will be the ones that get users past the "snacking phase" of browsing and asynchronous interactions to a place where they are engaged with each other.

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News Original From: Curse