About this book:

The explosive growth of social media has led to an entirely new style of play. “Social games” serve millions of players every day on Facebook and elsewhere, taking full advantage of their platforms to incite continued growth through gameplay mechanics that emphasize the value (and reevaluation) of players’ friends. Social games are also opening new doors for designers, with unprecedented emphasis on short session lengths and heavy return compulsions. In “Long-Tail Game Design,” Scott Jon Siegel will use his classical game design pedigree and experience at Playdom to form a vocabulary for designing — and dissecting — these social games.