Two independent events have sort of collided for me on Facebook, resulting in something that’s sort of interesting, sort of annoying, and sort of disturbing.
The first event is that I started playing Mafia Wars this month (my excuse that I’m merely doing it to evaluate online gaming mechanics and explore ways to use them to influence real-world behavior is running out of credibility, since I’m up to level 57 now).
Now, Mafia Wars is notorious for transmitting lots of invitations and notifications to your Facebook network. I try to avoid burdening non-players with unsolicited invitations (after all, “Chronic Inviter” is one of CNN’s 12 most annoying types of Facebookers); however, sending notifications to fellow players is unavoidable, since it’s baked into gameplay and the only way to really avoid them is to stop playing.
The second event is an actual event… I’ve got a major milestone high school reunion coming up this year (20 years, for those keeping count), so I’ve recently experienced a lot of followed by/following activity involving folks with whom I’ve had little to no contact over the past few decades.
The convergence comes into play thusly: A bunch of those high school classmates, most of whom I haven’t talked with (or even thought about) for 10 or 20 years are now linked to me on Facebook, and are also part of my Mafia Wars “crew,” which means I’m getting a lot of their game status updates (and they’re getting mine).
This means that I’m constantly prompted to think about these folks, some of whom I’d forgotten, a few of whom I didn’t really know all that well in the first place, and maybe even a couple whom I’d actively suppressed memories of in the intervening years.
It’s very strange.
The nature of the Facebook Mafia Wars notification interaction is pretty lightweight in the first place, not to mention oftentimes very odd when looked at in a non-game context — a typical message will go something like, “Don Corleone needs your help on the Exterminate a Rival Family job.”
As an automatically-generated system notification, it’s depersonalized, so it’s different from other types of communications used in online social grooming behaviors (see more about Twitter chatter’s use in this role) — any other significance comes strictly from the recipient. The Mafia Wars notification just serves to keep bumping awareness of the sender back to the top.
In terms of generating other, more significant communications between participants — while the game notifications could theoretically serve as a conversation catalyst or icebreaker, it’s really incidental to gameplay, and I haven’t seen very much of it. In the Mafia Wars game context, deeper communications aren’t integrated into gameplay — they aren’t necessary, and might not even be desirable (looking at the kinds of trash-talking that comes up on other social gaming networks).
So, despite any additional baggage that I’m attaching to these interactions, they really are pretty compartmentalized into this separate Mafia Wars universe.
It’s still odd, though.
Anyway, if you’ve got a perspective on how in-game notifications or other game-related messaging influences your online and real-world social interactions (for instance, let’s hear from some of you Lexulous players), please leave a comment.
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