I can't decide if I am fascinated by "social gaming" or appalled by "social gaming" or irritated that once again I feel this division of players into categories that just don't quite work for how I game: hardcore versus casual, social gamer versus lonely loser.

Maybe it's the term: "social gaming." That there is a specific genre of games that one plays alone ("Solitaire"), that we've long been prompted to add another quarter for a "multi-player" option in the arcade, that you look pretty stupid playing charades by yourself (even though it'd be a helluva lot easier to guess the answer)-- all this points the obvious: most gaming is in fact social gaming.

Even video-gaming, perhaps long stereotyped as the pastime of the isolated young man in his parents' basement, is recognized now as a group rather than an individual endeavor -- no longer hidden in his parents' basement, they all play the Wii in the living room.

And maybe this is part of my problem. I've been a gamer for a long time, and when I game, it's inevitably social. (Instead of one lonely loser, we're, like, four lonely losers -- Woo hoo D&D!) As an avid player of MMORPGs, a major part of my enjoyment of the gaming experience (OK, and sometimes the greatest annoyance) was the social interaction with other players: chatting with group and guildmates, working together to kill shit.

Notice there how I said "avid" -- neither hardcore nor casual?

Hardcore or casual -- those labels still irk me. Over the past five or so years, I've played MMOs a lot. As a graduate student I was on the computer all the time, and it may well be that many several chapters of my dissertation remain unwritten because of the dangers I had to tackle in Azeroth and Norrath. Despite playing daily, I insisted I was a casual player. I raided with some of the hardcore guilds from time to time, but not for long, unable to quite surrender my identity as a doctoral candidate and a single mom over to my identity as a dirge or a druid. (Well, admittedly, I did drop out of graduate school, but it wasn't to become a hardcore gamer. I SWEAR!) Despite self-identifying as "casual," I took my gaming pretty seriously, wanting to play well, proud of my skills, part of the gaming community. I took offense when "casual" was assumed to mean "bad player" and I didn't like it when "skilled player" meant "can I get your phone number so I can call you in the middle of the night to come raid a contested mob?"

So yes, admittedly, my experiences as a longtime gamer color my attitude towards "social games." I like the immersion in a fantasy world; I like the real-time action. I like the graphics. I like the complexity.

"Social games" do not offer this. (Yet.)

And I'm not sure they intend to. No doubt, the graphics of these games will undoubtedly get better, and the games will get more complex. But by design, I do not think they will provide the same real-time, immersive gaming action as MMORPGs or other traditional video games. "Social gaming" is "casual gaming" par excellence -- rather than the hour or so committed to running an instance in World of Warcraft, or to completing a mission in Call of Duty, or even to playing a game of Monopoly, social games require very brief and intermittent contact. Check your crops. Come back later.

It's not necessarily very "social" at all.