Another buzz word, of course ;) Let me first say this: in the pre-home-entertainment-era entertainment always was social. You played board games, together – in Germany board games are called “Gesellschaftsspiele” and the meaning is games for a party; you went together to the theatre; you enjoyed sports together. Then came the radio, the television and the personal computer. People stayed at home and listened, watched or played with their own. Then came the Internet (okey, I’m shortening here a little bit) and some people started playing against each other online, mainly computer games and Poker. Finally, the Wii came and people started to organize wiivents, evenings with their friends to play Wii together. These people were not only gamers, these were normal people, like you, like everybody. The Wii is so popular, because it supports social gaming.

So what is social gaming?

In most online multiplayer games you play against each other. The focus is one gaming, not on socializing. The focus of social games is on socializing, meeting new people and cultivating your existing friendships. Most social games are casual games. Everybody can play them. You don’t have to study a handbook or hundreds of newsgroups to get a chance to win and to have fun.

What’s different to social entertainment?

Gaming is on the one side a very broad term – reaching from Tic Tac Toe to World Of Warcraft – and on the other side a very narrow term, e.g. Second Life is not a game, because there is no goal to achieve and this is a very important aspect of gaming. So not all forms of entertainment are games. Games are just one entertainment medium. Watching movies is another form – it’s at the other end of the activity spectrum. Gaming is active, watching TV is passive (at least most of the time if you don’t count channel-hopping as an activity). But don’t think there is nothing else. Take kids for example: they love to trade things like stickers. And they usually have no final goal in mind like “I want to become a millionaire”. They enjoy the social activity of trading (in fact, they are imitating their parents and so are growing in confidence).

Social entertainment is …

So finally social entertainment includes social gaming. Social entertainment is a form of entertainment focusing on social activities. That’s no definition, I’m not a scientist (I tried out to be one and wrote two scientific papers about bioinformatics, but this topic here is much more fun ;) ). It’s a description, my description. If you have a better one, let me know! And have a good time!