Ratchet & Clank maker Insomniac Games reveals social games division

With the way things are going, you'd think the next big E3 console reveal will be Facebook 2. Yet another console developer, Insomniac Games, plans to open a social games division called Insomniac Click, Gamasutra reports. The minds behind the Ratchet & Clank and Resistance series will open Insomniac Click as what Insomniac CCO Brian Hastings calls a "pragmatic necessity" in a blog post. While the company will always create "core" games, Hastings is looking to attract a new audience.

Of course, that new audience is the legion of casual and social gamers that seem to be all but dominating the industry these days. It's almost silly for traditional game studios not to get involved. However, Insomniac and Hastings seem to be approaching this relatively "new frontier," as he calls it, with the expectation to create deeper social games. Hastings lays out what appears to be Insomniac Click's mission statement, though he calls it his "Contract with the Audience." While a focus on making social interaction fun and reducing the disruptive nature of increasing user retention is exciting, we found this most intriguing:

    Gameplay Depth. We want to create worlds to explore, challenges to master and a continuing story to discover. We promise to deliver the richness of gameplay content that you would expect from a console game, but freely playable online.

If Hastings and his team can deliver on what every traditional game designer has promised upon entering the space, that would certainly set a new standard for the genre. Hastings says that the five-person strong (including Hastings) studio division will have more information in the coming months, which would lead one to believe that their first Facebook game will launch in 2011.

What type of social game do you guess Insomniac Click is working on? How do you think this new venture from a traditional developer will fare against the giants?

'Zynga is making games for accidental gamers,' studio VP says

Look, nobody gets hooked on FarmVille by accident--there's always that friend. Zynga studio VP Bill Mooney (pictured) recently spoke to students at The University of California at Santa Cruz during its Research Review Day about the company's design philosophy. During his talk, titled "Social Games: An Overview and Exploration," Mooney said, "Zynga is making games for accidental gamers," according to IndustryGamers.

The studio head was implying that Zynga doesn't create video games for hardcore or traditional gamers. Sure, that's stating the obvious, but it's vitally important to remember when looking at Zynga's games. They're not exactly technological marvels, accessible to those who just don't get the complexity of controllers and traversing 3D space. But as players progress, they become well-versed in increasingly complex interfaces, thus becoming, well, gamers.

Regardless, social gamers still aren't the same as traditional game fans, and probably never will be. (At least until another friend introduces them to something new.) And because of these "accidental gamers" have a different understanding of what a game should be, Zynga says it caters to that understanding. "You're not shipping a product, you're running an amusement park," Mooney told the students.

And traditional game companies are trying to keep up with that philosophy, wary that even hardcore gamers might yearn for that experience. (Just look at Activision Blizzard's Call of Duty Elite.) "Don't be like work, don't ask too much, be social, help me connect," Mooney said. That, ironically enough, might be the burgeoning industry's greatest challenge, if you ask the right folks.

[Image Credit: Josh Lowensohn (CNET)]

What do you expect from your social games these days? Have you come to expect this level of "connectedness" from other games or services, too?