Best Social Game Finals

[This Old Neon]

The “Best Social Game” side-event finals consist of 1 poll of 5 games.

• You can only vote for one (1) game in the finals.
• The top game will be the official “BEST SOCIAL GAME EVER!!!”
• You can’t change your votes once they’ve been submitted, so click carefully. Voting closes on Saturday at 11:59 P.M. ADT.

VOTE HERE

Best Social Game Ever:

Minecraft (2011, Multiplatform)
Pokémon Go (2016, Mobile)
Super Smash Bros Ultimate (2018, NS)
Team Fortress 2 (2007, Multiplatform)
Wii Sports (2006, Wii)

[Kong Wen]

I'm pretty happy about the variety of games that ended up here.

Minecraft is the quintessential toy box game. Dive in and just inhabit the world with your friends. Fortnite successfully picked up this thread.

Pokémon Go is the "get out into the community" social game. All of the mechanics and events centre on interfacing with other people in some way.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Team Fortress 2 are the "engage in jolly competition with your friends" games.

Wii Sports is kind of the same social experience as VR or Rock Band in the sense that you're getting together with friends and looking like fools but it's part of the fun, kind of like when my friends try to play Frisbee®.

The social games I've had the most fun with and spent the most time with (Destiny, Monster Hunter World) probably fall into the first category, but I never got into Minecraft, so I can't vote for it here.

Instead, Pokémon Go gets my vote. It has been a good impetus for some of my real-life friends to stage actual hangouts and adventures, and we've actually met several new acquaintances along the way. Niantic does a good job of keeping tightly-scheduled community events on a regular basis (Wednesday night from 6-7 is a legendary raid hour), so lots of people end up bumping into each other, which makes the game feel quite lively.

[SkyPikachu]

Wii Sports. It's the one and only game I think I can say my whole family has played. My cousins and basically everyone but my grandparents played it with us. I can't say the same about any other game. Basically back in 2006-08 everyone had played Wii Sports it really brought my family and friends together.

Minecraft I played mainly solo and wasn't really that amazing compared to other games.

Pokemon Go literally encourages people to be on their phone in public instead of actually being social something I struggled with since I always was walking my dogs so felt like an asshole telling people to stop so I can catch a pokemon so this is by far the opposite of social imo. Especially at launch when you basically couldn't battle or anything.

Smash Ultimate feels like the wrong game to be here I feel like Melee or 64 should be here those games actually brought people together.

Team Fortress 2. Never played kinda hard to judge

[MerlinDrazziw]

I have to choose Pokémon Go .. as I experienced it through my nephew (a more serious player) strangers (at first) will meet up to do raids together. First they wait on each other and socialize for a bit, do the raid encouraging each other and afterwards socialize a bit more and go to the next raid of say their goodbyes. At events where there's a Pokémon Go competition players will socialize with each other. That makes it more social to me than playing Wii Sports with family. The only thing I can think of that's not social about Pokémon Go is that noone has bothered to create a Pokéstop next to where I live

[Kong Wen]

I have to choose Pokémon Go .. as I experienced it through my nephew (a more serious player) strangers (at first) will meet up to do raids together. First they wait on each other and socialize for a bit, do the raid encouraging each other and afterwards socialize a bit more and go to the next raid of say their goodbyes. At events where there's a Pokémon Go competition players will socialize with each other. That makes it more social to me than playing Wii Sports with family. The only thing I can think of that's not social about Pokémon Go is that noone has bothered to create a Pokéstop next to where I live

Yep, Pokémon Go is incredibly social. People who are really into it will even plan out their raid groups and routes, getting together as a big group and walking from place to place to get as many tasks and challenges done as possible. Being on their phones while they're doing this is no different from friends being on their phones at a restaurant together. People also give each other advice on what Pokémon to power up, call out nearby Pokémon with good stats to people who happen to be nearby, etc.

[This Old Neon]

The official "BEST SOCIAL GAME EVER!!!" is Pokémon Go (2016, Mobile).

[SkyPikachu]

Find it funny that the game that won was (maybe still is) a single player game. Everyone's explained why they voted for it and they seem like fair reasons but I still find it funny.

[Kong Wen]

Find it funny that the game that won was (maybe still is) a single player game.

It's not a single player game tho.

[SkyPikachu]

Find it funny that the game that won was (maybe still is) a single player game.

It's not a single player game tho.

When I played all you could do was catch pokemon and battle gyms and go to poke stops. I'm aware a lot has change but the original release was very much a single player game. I'm pretty sure they added battling and trading right?

Looking back I worded it wrong I meant to say "the game launched as a single player experience"

[Kong Wen]

When I played all you could do was catch pokemon and battle gyms and go to poke stops. I'm aware a lot has change but the original release was very much a single player game. I'm pretty sure they added battling and trading right?

Looking back I worded it wrong I meant to say "the game launched as a single player experience"

They added trading, player-vs-player battles, gym battles (playing against other players AI-controller monsters), raids (team multiplayer vs. huge AI enemies), and friendship levels & perks (send gifts, raid, trade etc. to level up and get rewards). If you're not doing multiplayer stuff, you're playing about 10-20% of the game.