Trends with Benefits: Puzzle Species

Take a swing at this week’s Trends with Benefits, the weekly brainteaser from your friends at TriplePoint! TWB appears every week in our news round-up, Points of Interest, and offers terrific prizes to readers who can puzzle their way through the challenge du jour. First crack at the prizes go to Points of Interest subscribers when the newsletter goes out on Fridays, but we’ll be sharing each week’s challenge here on our website, as well.

This week’s challenge is for a lovely new RockYou t-shirt! Read on for your chance to claim it.

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Frisky Mongoose: Why Do We Play Social Games?

I think it’s a bit harsh to say that social gamers are “weird”, as Newsweek recently put it… But you have to dig a little deeper than face(book) value to understand the attraction of playing casual games with actual friends on the (social) web.

In the end, it all boils down to the fact that people like playing games with their friends, and the Facebook platform allows new audiences to enjoy a “gaming community” atmosphere in a familiar setting (Facebook) with people they know, and games they can learn to play easily and that don’t require a large time investment to enjoy (social gamers are busy)!

It’s more fun to beat your friends than strangers, and social games can even lead to better connections with Facebook friends you don’t know very well, or otherwise wouldn’t have a chance/reason to interact with on a regular basis.

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