Facebook introduces universal gift card that friends can reload for different retailers

Facebook today announced the Facebook Card, a resusable gift card that can be loaded with balances for different retailers when a user’s friends buy them gifts through Facebook.

The social network has added a number of new partners to its Gifts platform, including Target, Jamba Juice, Olive Garden and Sephora, who will offer gift cards to be purchased on Facebook. But instead of sending individual gift cards for each restaurant or retailer, or sending multiple gift cards for the same business, Facebook will send users one card that can maintain balances for several outlets.

For example, someone might receive a $50 gift card to Target. They’ll receive a Facebook Card in the mail. When another friend gifts them $10 to Jamba Juice, that amount will be automatically added to the same Facebook Card. Users will be able to view their different balances on Facebook.com and within the mobile app. Facebook says this option will roll out to U.S. users beginning today. Because Gifts are not available internationally, Facebook Card is also limited to the U.S. for now.

This seems to be a way for Facebook to bring in new options for its Gifts product without having to mail users a number of gift cards. However, this might not be intuitive for people who are used to throwing out gift cards once they’ve been used. It may also be confusing for people to understand that they have separate balances for each business, and that the Facebook Card does not offer a total balance that can be spent anywhere.

If Facebook Card does catch on among users, it gives Facebook new information about spending habits, though gift card spending might not be representative of users’ typical purchases. Still, being able to direct ads to users who have spent money — even if it was a gift — is valuable. Facebook did not share any details about its arrangement with Facebook Card partners, but the idea of using this information for ad targeting one day could have been a draw. Facebook could also expand the capability beyond gift redemption and allow the Facebook Card to be used more like a universal wallet, becoming much more of a competitor in the payments space. Interestingly, Facebook decided to begin with a physical card rather than mobile payments, which are a growing area but still require a smartphone and can be complicated for users.

Discover is the payment processing vendor for Facebook Card. The card seems to only apply to in-store purchases, not online. Starbucks, which sells digital gift cards through Facebook Gifts, is not a partner for the Facebook Card.

In 2010, Facebook got into the gift card business selling its own virtual currency Credits via gift cards at Target, Best Buy and other stores. Credits could be used toward virtual goods in games and other in-app purchases. Last year Facebook decided to phase out Credits in favor of a user’s local currency — dollars, pounds or yen, for example. This gives developers more flexibility and cleared the way for new products like Gifts, user promoted posts and paid messages, which can be bought with actual currency rather than the more complicated Credits system. Facebook continues to sell gift cards for games on its site, both in-stores and as a digital gift in its Gifts platform.

View the original article here

UC Santa Cruz’s Prom Week is a different kind of ‘social game’

Prom Week, a game developed by a team of students and faculty at the University of California Santa Cruz, is now available on Facebook. The game is a simulation of social interactions between high school students based on a sophisticated artificial intelligence system. None of the stories which the player can experience in the game are pre-scripted, leading to a wide variety of potential outcomes.

Prom Week’s gameplay initially seems very similar to The Sims Social, with players choosing various actions for the on-screen characters to perform and then watching the outcome. Unlike The Sims Social, however, all available activities involve interactions between two characters, and rather than simply playing a short animation, a short scene — complete with procedurally-generated text-based dialog — is played out in front of the player. The player is then given a summary of the outcome of the action, which may affect three “relationship” statistics tracking how characters feel about one another as well as providing more short term feelings.

The structured part of the game revolves around selecting a character and having to fulfill a series of goals by the end of the school’s prom night. The player has a limited number of “turns” in which to accomplish these goals, but they can be completed by taking command of any characters present in the scene, not just the one who is ostensibly the “protagonist” of the story. In fact, many characters’ goals require the subtle social manipulation of other characters in order to accomplish tasks — in the story where the “geek” character wants to become Prom King, for example, he doesn’t stand a chance of befriending the head of the Prom Royalty Committee unless he shows he is enemies with her big rival.

Prom Week is based on a set of 5,000 social considerations or “rules” that govern the characters’ behavior in various situations. The team at UC Santa Cruz studied social interactions in movies and television shows, so the game’s social model is skewed towards popular media’s depiction of what high school life is like, not necessarily reality. This does, however, mean that most players who have seen movies and TV shows such as “Mean Girls” or “Sex and the City” will be familiar with the way these situations work — and the game also includes an “energy” mechanic for predicting and manipulating characters’ responses to various interactions, allowing for scenes to play out in wildly different ways with a bit of nudging from the player.

The game is a fascinating demonstration of what is possible with the use of artificial intelligence. Despite being Facebook-based and revolving around the concept of social interactions, however, the game features no viral social features outside of posting to the Games news ticker when players are playing, and nor does it feature any monetization. It does, however, serve as a bold advertisement for the possibilities on offer at UC Santa Cruz’s Games and Playable Media and Expressive Intelligence Studio departments, both of whom display prominent logos on the game’s canvas.

Prom Week is unlikely to enjoy widespread, mainstream success or profitability for the reasons outlined above. However, what it does show is the exciting possibilities artificial intelligence provides to online games. There’s no reason why elements of Prom Week’s innovative mechanics couldn’t be incorporated into a properly monetized, virally promoted social game, and for that reason alone, it’s very much worth the time it takes to explore.

At the time of writing, Prom Week has just 200 monthly active users and 200 daily active users. It only launched on February 16, however, so it will be interesting to see how the general community takes to it. To follow the game’s progress and observe its usage trends, be sure to check out our AppData traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

A lack of monetization and social features mean Prom Week is unlikely to be profitable or find a wide audience, but it demonstrates some highly intriguing possibilities for possible implementation in future games.

View the original article here