What the heck is social gaming?

Last night, I stumbled across an article about something called social gaming.  The phrase strikes me as somewhat tautological, because game-playing is, quite often, a social activity.  It's kind of (but not quite) like when people say software program.  Software and program mean the same thing.  No one would ever say, "You've got to try this program program I downloaded", or, "This software software really makes filing my taxes easier".  Likewise, you'd never hear someone say, "Scrabble is my favourite social game".  The game itself is necessarily social.  And while it's true that the term social gaming doesn't really suffer the same redundancy as the term software program, the inherent social aspect of many gaming endeavours does make me question what the term is supposed to mean.

Certainly, there are categories of games that can be described as antisocial.  Single-player video games are an obvious example.  Also, solitaire is antisocial by definition, because if you needed two players, it would no longer be a solitary activity.  Social and antisocial gaming has been around since the invention of free time, so why the sudden need to make the distinction?  The most probable explanation stems from the advent of social networking, which, if understood in strictly human terms, is a definite tautology.  Networking would be impossible if people didn't come together to socialize.  In computer terms, however, social networking does describe a new phenomenon: the integration of computer networking into human relationships to create, maintain, and facilitate said relationships.

The advent of social networking may partly explain where the term social gaming came from, but it does nothing to justify its existence.  Once upon a time I had a high school teacher ask me if Street Fighter II was interactive.  Uhhhhh, yeah...  If I was 15 years younger and that same teacher was similarly curious today, he would probably ask, "Is Call of Duty: Black Ops going to be social?"  The questions may come from different centuries, but they are similarly retarded. 

All that being said, it's fairly safe to assume that I'm missing the point somewhere.  Though a quick search of the internet basically confirms my suspicions that the term social gaming is just a buzzword that came about as the result of a broader social trend, a discussion with my friend and colleague produced some food for thought: we decided that the games some might consider to be social (e.g., Farmville, World of Warcraft), seem to have one common characteristic: they don't draw to any natural conclusion.  You could potentially play these games your whole life.  As such, you're given the opportunity to add a new dimension to what might otherwise be considered a conventional human relationship.  That is, you might have a friend with whom you interact through conventional human means like meeting for dinner or chatting over coffee, but you also engage via the relationship defined by the game in which you share a common interest.  But I'm still left to wonder if this really is any different than people who would only otherwise associate because they enjoy playing Chess or Hungry Hungry Hippos.  I'm not sure about this, but there is one thing of which I'm certain: the only way to win at the game of life is to stop playing Farmville.