May 2010:

This year’s San Francisco Game Developers Conference, the largest annual game developers conference in the world, was marked by a notable focus on player-centered and social game play experiences. These trends began gaining momentum in years’ past, but with the breakthrough success of games such as Farmville on social networks like Facebook, the emphasis on player-centered design and social game play rang loud and clear in 2010. Game makers are tapping into the wealth of content and behaviors users share on social networks to craft personalized, customized play experiences that push the boundaries of how games have been traditionally defined in the past. Accordingly, developers are leveraging users’ networks to expand the reach of their games, and, consequently, have a renewed focus on offering more social and collaborative forms of game play.