I have to admit that a large part of the reason why I went to the social games summit was because I don't really get the appeal of social games. I don't have particularly strong feelings against them, mind you, I've just never been able to understand the audience they appeal to. With that regard, I think Eric Zimmerman and Naomi Clark's talk on "The Fantasy of Labor" was by far the best attempt to explain the popularity of these games, and I should have some coverage up on it soon.
While I'm coming from a place of curiosity, I think the more general sentiment is contempt. For instance, during Patricia Pizer's talk on "Putting Social in Social Network Games", she asked the audience how many people in the room actually enjoyed Facebook games. There were about two hands, out of a few hundred people. [1] I think that's pretty telling. A similar experiment was conducted during the "Are Social Games Legitimate/Evil" debate with similar results.
Speaking of that debate... wow. The audience was quite packed with self-identified social game developers, but the vibe seemed distinctly against social games. I'm not sure if that's just because the anti-social (har!) crowd was more vocal, or if there's just a lot of dissent within the social ranks.
During that debate, Ian Bogost had an interesting metaphor. He compared social games with being similar to the situation we have with ADM and High Fructose Corn Syrup. Like HFCS, social games (and the relationships they encourage) are cheap, convenient, ubiquitous; but they're also a poor substitute for other activities that could be healthier. Evil? Probably an overstatement, but they don't seem to be doing much to make society (or relationships) healthier.
Another journalist suggested that perhaps part of the vitriol towards social games might be because of its perceived threat toward the current AAA model. The thinking is that if you can beat the sales of a $60 million dollar game with something far cheaper and more simple to make, even if the quality is vastly poorer, at some point people are going to question why we're working on these very big expensive games. I think that's an interesting point, but I disagree. The gulf between the audiences is huge, I can't think of many hardcore gamers that are also social gamers, or vice-versa, so it seems both can easily coexist. The attitude I've mostly gleaned from both the AAA developers and indies is more a feeling of contempt than actual anger. They don't like what the social crowd is doing because they think it's sketchy.
[1] An astute reader might point out that there might be other explanations, such as that they may have been distracted. During the Q&A someone brought up this exact point, and so the question was raised again. With a retally the numbers ended up being pretty much exactly the same. The base case question of "who here likes computer games in general" obviously got a much more favorable and unanimous response.
