"Most ‘social games’—and I’m talking primarily about Facebook games here—pretend to be social. They…"

“Most ‘social games’—and I’m talking primarily about Facebook games here—pretend to be social. They take your list of friends who are also playing the game and turn it into another in-game resource. You do things that can help your friends, your friends do things that help you, but you don’t interact in any real or meaningful way. You exchange pre-written messages that say either ‘Here’s some stuff’ or ‘Can I have stuff?’ or ‘Here’s some stuff, can I have stuff?’, you can visit their playfield, sometimes you can get a few points for helping them out with a problem that they’re never notified about, and you can’t actually, you know, play together at all.”

– Social games aren’t | Hypergame