When you think of casual gaming, you think of games like Bejeweled, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja and Doodle Jump. They're simple games that are easy to pick up, play and put down, yet most people don't even consider them a video game. On the social gaming front, games like Mafia Wars and Farmville vie for our attention on Facebook by giving us the opportunity to gift items to friends, visit their virtual home and create small micro-economies. Hardcore gaming is generally considered the complete opposite. Games have complex controls, require several hours of play to beat and usually involve some form of violent activity. Now, the fine line between gaming types are beginning to merge. Game designers are making hardcore games more casual and social. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood from Ubisoft is a prime example of a hardcore game that takes its queues from social and casual gaming success.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood takes gamers back to renaissance Italy in the ongoing story of Ezio Auditore's fight against Borgia tyranny and the Templars. The game begins where Assassin's Creed II left off. However, Cesare Borgia is none to happy with Ezio's family and decides to attack Ezio's home village of Monteriggioni. After Cesare steals an artifact known as the Apple of Eden and kills several members of Ezio's family, Ezio must venture to Rome to face off against the Borgias. That's the plot. The game goes back and forth between renaissance Italy and the present day, where we follow Ezio's ancestor Desmond Miles.

Aside from the core platforming game, where Ezio uses his assassin prowess to scale buildings like Spider-Man, Brotherhood is about three things: exploration, economy building and community. Much like Assassin's Creed II in 2009, Brotherhood is probably one of the most picture perfect games of the year. The 20+ hours of gameplay isn't just about fighting your way through Borgias influence, stealth attacks and hiding in crowds to shake those troublesome guards who saw you kill someone. It's simply about enjoying the experience of being in Italy.

There are 12 districts in Rome, each dominated by a Borgia tower. While you need not take down every tower, the game asks you why not? One of the things that's appealing about games like Farmville is the ability to travel to other farms. It's cool to sit and stare at your farm, but seeing how other people manage their own farms always piques your curiosity. That's the casual starting point in Brotherhood. Think of each district as a farm, and each farm with its own unique set of crops. Only in this game, the crops come in the form of unique architecture that begs to be explored and climbed. Instead of just clicking over to another farm, you can whistle for a horse and ride there. You can even jump from horse to horse. It's like a mini vacation expedition, where you can even check out the Coliseum without ever leaving your home.

Now, keep in mind that every expedition has costs. You can't just go on an expedition without supplies. This is where Brotherhood really starts to take its queue from economy building games like The Sims and more-or-less every Facebook game. Gamers can't just buy a horse; they have to buy a stable first and renovate it. You can't setup a stable in a Borgias controlled area, without taking down the Borgias influence first. Every time you take down a Borgias tower, it's like expanding the reach of your farm or Sim City. The byproduct is that you also "free" the people who were under Borgia tyranny. You also need to buy and renovate blacksmith shops in freed areas so that you can upgrade your weapons and armor cache. Of course, the more you add to and upgrade your stockade of storefronts, the more money you make - giving you access to better items. The only thing that's missing is the ability to gift items to other gamers. Wouldn't that be something?

There is also a social element that is beginning to arise in Brotherhood. Once you defeat a Borgia tower, you can recruit Roman citizens to your infamous league of assassins. Then, like a master puppeteer, you can send your assassins out on missions. Consider it social assassination. This is the essence of Facebook gaming. Facebook gamers love to add gang members to their mafia or doctors to their hospital. The only difference is that you can't actually have a human friend in your in-game mafia in Assassin's Creed. Yet. Maybe, that will come in Assassin's Creed III. Think about it: when you're not there to watch your farm, you want someone else watching it for you. In the future, if the game had some form of active influence meter, you're online friends could visit your districts and help maintain influence or manage the upkeep of your stables and storefronts. Just a thought.

While casual and social games slowly become more complex, we also see that hardcore games are abstracting out successful principals from their less complicated counterparts. As the these types of games begin to overlap, we should start to see creative new ways for game designers to increase a game's replayability and interaction by adding in more community elements.