And if the managers of baseball teams were looking at Little League games for tips, and if hardcore fishing aficionado were suddenly seeing a revolution in hook-a-duck stands, it would be remiss for publications to not cover them because they're "beneath" them.
So this is about journalistic integrity? Okay, sure.
Its remiss to act as if zygna's popularity or success is good for the industry, relevant to the industry, or otherwise meaningful in any way, shape, or form.
Les look to another browser game with a similar (read: identical) design. Outwar is the oldest I can remember, but even it wasn't the first. Outwar, like zygna products, reward (present tense, as its still up and running) users for spamming links. The reason outwar is such an obscure name is because no one wanted its spam on their networks. No one wanted it in their irc channels, their forums, their aol chatrooms. No one wanted it anywhere. Most moderators wrote automated scripts to instantly ban outwar links. Even this site likely has a few outwar bans. Hell, outwar is probably a big reason signatures are disabled in the forums. The internet in general did everything it could to keep outwar from propegating, for the internet, as it existed then, recognized outwar as a cancerous mass.
So why is zygna so successful then? Facebook. Zygna's success is facebook's success. Except with less actual effort on zygna's part. They didn't have any new ideas, they didn't even try to come up with any, they simply aligned themselves with a mostly unregulated social network that would become insanely popular. Their spam is free to propagate as much as possible, forcing people to block it on a per-user basis. Which solves nothing, as the spam is still there, you just can't see it.
So, imagine, if Live or PSN or Steam started consenting (through inaction) to that level of spam for in-game rewards for meta-game actions.
Znyga's success is not good for the industry. I would even say its a very bad thing. These kind of tactics are horrible should should not be looked at as "revolutionary" but rather "vulgar" or even "criminal". Facebook is why this got so popular and hopefully facebook is where this stays and dies.
I agree that other game companies could start looking at Zynga for ideas and that is a very scary thought. Like with what you said about steam or PSN. Do you really want the same companies who are already pushing terrible DRM down our thoughts to get more bad ideas???
How bout, whenever a friend of yours plays a game you don't have while you are connected to the internet, Xbox live or PSN sends you an add for that game. Or how about instead of the Assassin's Creed DRM we get that but along with the game constantly freezing every 10 minutes to advertise other games?
You cannot tell us that Zynga's shady dealings are "irrelevant" but their success somehow is.
The article was well written but it was pretty uninteresting. I would like to combine two phrases here, "Why are you writing about this?" "This isn't news." All this article is really doing is fueling what is essentially the console war of online gaming. Also this article doesn't argue any opinion that hasn't been stated already, or even an opinion that needs to be argued, but hey even though you pulled a crap story out your ass at least you made it look good.
It's not that there's a "huge barrier to entry" for mainstream games it's that social gamers want to jump into gaming like noobs because they're not used to actually having to learn how to play games. The funny thing is that the only thing that really separates these games from MMORPGs is the visuals.
This whole complex controller thing I'll agree with, yeah someone new to games may have trouble with the controllers but it's not because of time spent gaming that makes the controllers seem easier to use to a gamer, it's because most of the people here built up their skills from the nes, snes, gameboy, etc. If someone would rather suffer through trying to learn the basic controls with modern controllers, rather than work their way up from the basics, then so be it and I hope they promptly give up.
If I had the time I would probably argue against every individual sentence in this article but I'm done for now.
Man, Twitter sucks so hard, I can't imagine a single good use for it, and don't understand why someone would want to spend any time on it at all. It's just so... useless.
And if the managers of baseball teams were looking at Little League games for tips, and if hardcore fishing aficionado were suddenly seeing a revolution in hook-a-duck stands, it would be remiss for publications to not cover them because they're "beneath" them.
So this is about journalistic integrity? Okay, sure.
Its remiss to act as if zygna's popularity or success is good for the industry, relevant to the industry, or otherwise meaningful in any way, shape, or form.
Les look to another browser game with a similar (read: identical) design. Outwar is the oldest I can remember, but even it wasn't the first. Outwar, like zygna products, reward (present tense, as its still up and running) users for spamming links. The reason outwar is such an obscure name is because no one wanted its spam on their networks. No one wanted it in their irc channels, their forums, their aol chatrooms. No one wanted it anywhere. Most moderators wrote automated scripts to instantly ban outwar links. Even this site likely has a few outwar bans. Hell, outwar is probably a big reason signatures are disabled in the forums. The internet in general did everything it could to keep outwar from propegating, for the internet, as it existed then, recognized outwar as a cancerous mass.
So why is zygna so successful then? Facebook. Zygna's success is facebook's success. Except with less actual effort on zygna's part. They didn't have any new ideas, they didn't even try to come up with any, they simply aligned themselves with a mostly unregulated social network that would become insanely popular. Their spam is free to propagate as much as possible, forcing people to block it on a per-user basis. Which solves nothing, as the spam is still there, you just can't see it.
So, imagine, if Live or PSN or Steam started consenting (through inaction) to that level of spam for in-game rewards for meta-game actions.
No they aren't because most of them will never eventually play real games, the number of people playing Zynga games is only due to facebook, these people want something to do while browsing their social networking site and will never come around to buying a console or gaming PC.
Go visit their forum by the way. They think of us real gamers pretty poorly. Bunch of violence loving retards we all are apparently. Thats another thing, they hate and don't understand real gaming. They think of real games the same way the media does.
This whole barrier of entry thing confuses me. True the need to learn to use a controller or to buy hardware is a major hurdle for getting new people into the hobby. What I don't get is how Zynga's games are different in that aspect from other flash games except for the part where they are hosted on facebook and spam to everyone? Kongregate, newgrounds, armor games, etc. are full of games with no barrier of entry. If someone tells me that robot unicorn attack is too complicated for most human being, I think I will lose faith in humanity... I bet that if that game did the same things that farmville does (facebook and spam), it would be played by millions more people.
It's as simple as that, really. Those games are not on a social network, and don't use the pyramid structure and grind/greed/envy conditioning-driven formula to boost their numbers. But to be honest though, for a game such as that to conform to that kind of formulaic design, it would have to be fundamentally different:
- it would have to incorporate a lvl system (grind), with shiny new fluff being available as you level up (greed, and by comparison with what your friends/neighbors have, envy).
- it would have to incorporate 2 means of gaining an upper hand (the desire for which stems from the points made above): direct money investment (profit), and getting more people to play via gifts/invites/spam/etc. (more direct profit through ads, and indirect potential for profit through previous point).
- ok, this one is a bit harder to explain, but bare with me here: that game is fun, the gameplay itself is intrinsically rewarding. You can pretty much play for as long as you want, when you want, and you can stop whenever you feel like it. If you analyze most traditional games in the light of behavioral Psychology, reinforcement (the increase of a certain behavior) and punishment (the decrease of a certain behavior) are usually present within the gameplay itself - if you succeed at a problem, positive reinforcement, and if you fail at that problem, positive punishment (wrong behavior, unwelcome outcome). Zynga's games, for instance, employ a lot more external motivators. The gameplay itself isn't what's rewarding, it's the long-term benefits (y'know, the bling-bling and all that) that generate positive reinforcement. Plus, positive punishment is swapped for negative punishment (right behavior, wrong outcome). What i mean by this is the crop withering, food spoiling, etc mechanism: if you perform your action, have to wait, but if for some reason you fail to be there on time, the benefits are stripped away for you. You still performed the right action (intrinsically, the time factor is extrinsic), but you don't get your reward, being punished instead.
This same mechanism also touches another concept: that of satiation vs deprivation: in a regular game, like robot unicorn attack, like i said before, you play when and for as long as you want. Since you become satiated a lot quicker, the effectiveness of the consequence for generating positive reinforcement is lower. Deprivation, however, like in Zynga's games, makes you come back for more over and over again: the more you are deprived of the stimulus you crave, the more effective that stimulus will be. In a classic skinner's box model, if the mouse can press the pedal anytime he wants, he'll rest easy, knowing it's there, and spend most of it's time sitting on it's ass with a full stomach. If, however, the pedal only gives the reward at a certain time, he'll anxiously await for that time to come, and press the pedal with fervor during that time window.
And there you have it. This, coupled with how to strip your design elements to the simplest to lower the entry barrier, how to analyze user data to know what most people want or don't want, and how to appeal to the lowest common denominator in the population at large, is what Zynga has to teach the industry.
When you think about it, this is not even new. In almost all forms of art and entertainment, marketing, etc, the initial approach is usually a creative one. When people start realizing the monetary potential and what works more and less profitably, hard and cold data starts to take precedence over creativity. It was already happening, of course, but it took the boom of social networking and a founder and CEO from an economy field instead of a creative or technical field, to really crank that concept up, and break down game design to a honed formula.
Gildan Bladeborn said:
aemroth said:
Gildan Bladeborn said:
That's as may be Funk, but lots of things are significant and yet go unremarked upon by specialist gaming websites, and a world significantly shaped by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Zynga is one I dread with every fiber of my being egad, and judging by the fact you felt this article was needed, I'm not really in the minority here.
Why do we prefer to cover our ears and shout "La la la I can't hear you la la la"? Zynga doesn't make games, that's why. Somebody is going to take umbrage with that (possibly you), but allow me to elaborate - what they make are games in the sense that a slot machine is a game. Clearly, its not - it's a system designed to make you pull a lever over and over in the hopes of randomly receiving a reward, engineered as such precisely to make you hopelessly addicted until you give it all your money. Likewise, when you 'play' the lottery you are not actually playing a game (unless you want to qualify "give the government all your money because you suck at math" as a game).
A lot of people don't like MMOs because they all resort to those sorts of tactics to keep their players paying forever and ever, but generally there's still some gameplay layered over top the Machiavellian addiction-triggering underpinnings - the good MMOs can actually muster up some fun that isn't just your brain being rewired to associate your shiny new addiction with happiness. The titles Zynga releases are what you get when you strip all those 'extraneous' trappings of gameplay away, leaving only the slot machine that punishes you when you try to stop pulling it's handle.
They aren't even slightly fun, but they are very addictive, so it doesn't matter that they're criminally boring and lack any real entertainment value - pulling a damn lever over and over is every bit as unfun and yet there's Vegas. The ridiculous success of these thinly disguised digital slot machines is a sign we should be deeply afraid for the future of games development.
Because those aren't games, and treating Zynga as if they were a legitimate purveyor of entertainment software is an insult to developers of casual games everywhere.
This, i commend you for this post, really. Behavioral conditioning, coupled with a viral progression of users that functions like a pyramid scheme or multi-level marketing. It's behavioral Psychology at it's most profitably refined formula.
Well that made my night, commendation happily accepted.
Up till recently I was content to ignore the likes of Zynga forever, as I don't use the Facebook or muck about with half-assed browser games... and then it came to light that several members of my D&D group are Mafia Wars addicts, guys who are certainly not the stereotypical target audience. Really made me wonder why avid gamers (console, PC, tabletop, you name it) would be wasting their time with crappy looking games that appear to offer no gameplay of any substance to my jaded eyes.
A closer examination confirmed my gut reaction that the 'games' were worthless as games, but that didn't actually matter as they objectively knew Mafia Wars was a terrible game and yet played it anyways - the success of Zynga goes to show that fun isn't a necessary component so long as you design your title to rewire the player's brains to feel pleasure when what they're doing is really pointless drudgery.
Like yourself, I feel I'm pretty much obligated to be as firmly opposed to that trend as I possibly can be.
John Funk said:
The fact of the matter is, people who call the shots in the industry think that there are things that can be learned from what Zynga does.
What I can't fathom is why you don't seem to find that statement as horrifying as I do - what could those industry bigwigs possibly learn from Zynga that would be to our sub-culture's benefit? The very thought of Zynga influencing the future of games design in any way other than to serve as an example of what you should never ever strive to be like, to me, is as loathsome a concept as an announcement tomorrow that Ubisoft's new DRM is slated to become the new industry standard.
There are some companies you really shouldn't emulate.
You are quite welcome. I know how it sucks to make an educated effort to provide a valid point, only to get the "tldr" treatment. And i believe constructive opinions must be pointed up and built upon.
Anyway, yes, i know full well what your friends are going through. I've been there. It's not like i don't have any experience with Zynga's games, no, i spent too many hours in them than i'd like to admit, and regret every second of it. It's a bloody trap, and as addictive as a drug. I won't elongate on this much longer, i've done so above already, but an analogy with a drug distribution ring is quite an adequate one. Most drug peddlers are also addicts, and the guys up top know this works well. Zynga's games are no different: once you get addicted, the most effective way to feed your addiction is to become a seller, and peddle drugs to the most people possible. Cycle repeats, many addicts, and massive profit ensues. Pyramid model based on addiction. More effective, actually, drugs aren't free. Cute, huh?
rossatdi said:
At the very least it will act as a gateway to better games. After all, bring on Civ-Book! http://www.facebook.com/civnetwork
Really, i don't believe so. But in this case, it's pretty much a matter of guessing and personal opinion. If a social network game doesn't adhere to the formula and standards of Zynga's games, for instance, it will never be able to compete with them. And if it resembles a more complex game, akin more to the core gamer crowd, such crowd will prefer the real thing. Such games risk being in that niches middle ground that doesn't appeal to one audience or the other all that much. But let's see... Anyway, i'll also refer to my other post on this:
aemroth said:
Delock said:
I actually think that Farmville and the like are actually a good thing for gaming, and before I get flamed for that I'd like to explain.
I'd like to use my experience with Runescape as an example. Sure, I was a gamer before that, but I really had no experience with online games and MMOs due to the whole start up fee (buying the game and getting a month or so of subscription time), so Runescape was a new experience for me. It was interesting to interact with other players and some what opened my eyes to the possiblity of online play. That being said, I slowly came to recognize it as less and less of what I'd consider a game, and consequentially, had less and less fun with it. It also had the whole thing that still goes on today about having to pay to get the true experience and to be at an advantage in the game. However, before I actually sunk low enough to be a premium member, I decided to pick up City of Heroes and try it out, since it looked like it had the whole social aspect that I liked about Runescape, as well as actually gameplay. In a nutshell, the free game opened me up to another branch of gaming.
Similarly, I also disregarded Point-and-click adventure games until I played a few on Newgrounds and found I loved the genre.
Putting these free games up on a popular social networking site actually could turn out to be benefitial to potential gamers as it helps them feel confident about investing in a console or gaming PC, as well as gets them to look for what games they know they're interested in and help decide on which console is right for them based on that rather than just randomly choosing and hating their decision. I think that gaming needs to take another look at these free games as not only does it allow for a fanbase that would ordinarily not be included, but it also helps ease in people that just need the extra help.
That being said, I know there are people who still pay to become premium members in Runescape, or buy extra content from Zynga that never move up from there, but I have no problems with those people. I myself hate most RTS games and yet I don't get up in arms over Starcraft 2's huge amoung of publicity right now, so I don't see why so many people are so upset that news is being given out about facebook games on this site. It's in its own category of games that some people enjoy and want to know about, so let them hear about it in peace. So long as it only fills a niche of gaming rather than takes over completely, there's no real issue here.
Also, like some people have said, Zynga just happens to have figured out how to tap into this market the best (ie, facebook). I don't know if this will supply them the loyal fanbase they need or if they'll be uprooted since most of the general public doesn't really care who made the game or not (I'd like to remind you all of your own past where I'm betting most of you had favorite games/movies where you didn't know the names of the actors/directors/producers/etc. but rather only really cared about the whole product). Only time will tell.
As for social networking, if anything, I'd say it will grow stronger as time goes on. Hell, just looking at human history could probably give you that general idea as you notice that as time goes on, technology evolves so that we become more connected to each other (letters -> telegraph -> telephone -> email -> social sites). It will be interesting to see where things go from here.
This theory could work out, if it wasn't for a few pesky but relevant little details: first, the gap is too big. Social games are extremely simple for accessibility, even when compared to Runescape, Dofus, browers MMO's, the Wii, etc. The gap is still a bit large to bridge easily. During the course of MM, i even tried to politely tell a few Zynga fans to try kongregate, armor games, etc, and they simply didn't want to. Second, they won't do anything to bridge that gap, or at least not much in a foreseeable future. Why? Because metrics take precedence in game design decisions, and every bit of complexity they put in has to be carefully weighed not to become an entrance barrier. Plus, they have a much more effective mechanism to generate user numbers than actually making the games interesting: your friends list, their respective friends lists, and so forth, ad infinitum. Well, actually not infinitum, six steps at an ideal setting, if you consider the Six degrees of separation [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation] theory. So you see, this aspect provides a much much bigger potential for growth than the actual quality of the game and advertisement.
However, I get mad when people put Zynga on a pedestal because they are some revolution in "gaming for non-gamers".
If Farmville wasn't on facebook - would it be as successful? If the game didn't have neighbour reliance, provoking a sense of duty to continue playing would people still continue with it? Zynga are pumping a cheap gaming drug in a high availability channel that is all.
These games work on habit, reliance and objectives that are always slightly out of reach. They create animated instances of behavioural control.
Is this an avenue of gaming that you want to be associated with? Are you happy to propogate the myth that games are 'too hard for normal people'? Is it ok for 'non-gamers' to have sub-standard, addictive and, more concerning, *unfair* products because they are only 'non-gamers'?
I feel sad if that is genuinely the point of view of the escapist editors. In your position you should be pushing the industry to embrace non-gamers, not to stand by and watch them being exploited.
Most of my opinions, exactly, only a lot more concise (yeah, i have an unhealthy obsession of over-explaining myself too much).
Just pointing out what needs to be read and heard.
Xanthious said:
Zynga is to gaming what the fucking Macarena was to music. Sure it's absolutely huge now but in five years everyone will be scratching their heads going "What in the blue Hell were we thinking?"
Objectively, I see it more like a worrisome paradigm shift in the industry than a passing fad, sadly. Or such is my opinion. But by the gods, a small corner in the back of my mind desperately wishes you're somehow right.
junkmanuk said:
Susan Arendt said:
...I'm sure I could learn how to take apart my car's engine if I really wanted to, but I just don't see the value in that. (Or, more specifically, the effort required far outweighs the perceived value, so I don't bother.) Am I lazy? Most certainly not, I've just made a decision based on the priorities in my life.
Do you feel the effort required to play Zynga games is reflected in the entertainment value received in return? What about when the effort required increases as you progress into the game? Is the constant monitoring of your crops on farmville, or scheduling of your meals on cafe world around your real life worth the slim rewards the game provides in return? Especially when the addiction of the game can (and has in the case of several of my wife's friends) consumed their daily life to a degree often synonymous with hardcore gamers.
It seems to me Zynga are providing a lot of the negative aspects of 'game' to non-gamers with very few of the benefits...
Worse, actually. There are multiple reports of people spending thousands of dollars in the game, of people consuming time endlessly (some have already been in Dr. Phil, for crying out loud, lol). Ok, the userbase is a lot more massive, so proportionally, it's still not as relevant. But when it's still a recent and rapidly growing phenomenon, and when it's still being polished from an unrefined drug to a designer one, such signs are troublesome, indeed.
Xanthious said:
Zynga is growing I admit. But you know what else grows and grows? Cancer, and that is what Zynga is. It is a cancer to the gaming industry.
Funny, my medical experience shows that as a rule of thumb, anything that grows too quickly is a sign of malignancy... Except perhaps for babies, but even those are what my teachers lovingly call "physiologicall tumors", with quite a few potential health implications for the mommy.
Susan Arendt said:
Me personally? No, not really, but that's why I don't play Farmville. But other people enjoy the grind of it, so clearly they're getting enough value out of the effort.
Well, drugs also provide value out of the effort. In fact, they operate on the same psychological principles of operant conditioning (positive reinforcement when the drug is used, negative punishment when no drug is available, and deprivation over satiation to increase the positive reinforcement generated by the stimuli), as Zynga's games do. Doesn't mean it's a good thing, does it?
Of course, people who play Zynga's games say it's fun, but so do drug addicts say being high is fun, and will be enraged at anyone saying otherwise. But hey, if a drug is legal, there's nothing one can do about it, right?
John Funk said:
DLC *can* be awesome, and it's a fact of life going forward - if you don't want to pay for it, don't pay for it. It's that simple, dude. And my personal adoration for Blizzard (you know, the reason these are "opinion editorials") has nothing to do with anything
Well, it's quite obvious it's here to stay. Doesn't mean it's a particularly good thing, though. Of course everybody will want the DLC when the experience is not complete without it. So, in a way, you end up paying more for the same amount of content as before. There is only an illusion of it being easier on your wallet in the short-term. Like paying for something on installments with an interest rate. Would anyone buy a book one chapter at a time, for instance? Of course, there were sequels and expansions before, but the size was different, the games were whole without them, and the price was more adequate.
"How amazing casual games/gamers are"? Hardly. How important they are to the future of the industry, and we core gamers (yes, I am a core gamer as well) need to understand that, and need to understand that for our industry as a whole to survive it needs to branch out? The currently state of the games industry, where maybe 20 big-budget games a year are hits and turn a profit, is completely untenable. Which is why smaller-budget games that are cheaper to produce and maintain - like casual games - are important to the industry's health and survival.
(...)
And I'm sorry, man, you're being absolutely ridiculous. Are you suggesting it's a bad thing for people to want to be able their employees and keep the lights on? Are you suggesting it's a bad thing for said employees from the lowest of QA to the highest of Lead Designers, to want to be able to put food on the table for their family?
Developers need to make money. Many of them make games for the love and the craft - and that's great - but they need to be able to do it and make a living. This is not a bad thing, and the sooner you understand this the wiser you will be. But, then again, the fact that you refer to Nintendo broadening its horizons as "selling out" says quite a bit about your stance on things.
Big-budget games are very hard to make money on, even when by all accounts the game isn't bad at all - it's just not great. The "tentpole" paradigm of the industry today, where a handful of games actually make lots of money a year but they are few and between? It can't support itself. It's *going* to change. Now, core games aren't going away; you'll still see the big blockbusters, but the other games are going to change.
I am not opposed to the industry making money, and being able to sustain itself, by all means, that would be naive. But it still feels like you're saying it's rightful that we are being penalized for supporting the industry from the start, with many years and money invested, only to make it grow to the point of saturation, and suddenly being told "sorry guys, it's been a good run, but your money is not enough anymore". Are we to blame for being good costumers? Should we pirate everything instead?
Second, casual games and social games are two different beasts altogether. I have no problem with casual games whatsoever, Nintendo pioneered it brilliantly and with careful calculation, and everybody seems to miss the point, the casual phenomenon has turned into some kind of blind gold rush (as explained in the article i linked to in my previous post). But it was inevitable that someone went back to grab those lower tiers again, the hole had been in the making for many years, now. And i see no conceivable threat to the gaming industry from that, Nintendo will, in time, press their market upwards, leaving Microsoft and Sony with a very difficult competition at hand (disruption... again, i stress the article to understand this concept).
But social gaming? Totally different platform, totally different design focus, and very different target market (overlaps a bit, specially with the casual market, but the bulk of it is different). And that massive difference, that makes it a phenomenon that overlaps very little with traditional games, meaning it's very very difficult to bridge the gap, plus the potential for growth, high profit vs. investment rates, and consequent interest it's sparking in the gaming industry is what is worrisome.
Yes, i feel there is a potential danger to core gaming as we know it. The question now is, what would the alternatives be? Or so i imagine you'd ask. Well, a bigger focus on quality would perhaps work. Instead of a developer churning out a large number of mediocre copy-pasted games, they could divert their efforts and budgets into less frequent but more polished games. Since you seem to like Blizzard, it works for them, doesn't it? I realize it's naive to assume this is always feasible, and that's not what i'm claiming. But it certainly could be a good step forward, or so i assume, but then again, i'm not an industry insider.
Curiously enough, i just gazed my eyes through my girlfriend's computer and she was reading an article about how much money developers make, and came across a curious aspect. Who makes the most money? Lead designers? Art department? Audio? No... Executives, and PR closely behind. It's all about the marketing and business side of things. Mind you, this is not at all surprising, and it would be a pipe dream to imagine that this situation could be flipped around. But it's always a sad thing to acknowledge that the people who actually creatively build the experiences we so love and crave, are crushed under the boots of the guys in the suits. And yes, even people working for Zynga would somewhat like a bit more artistic freedom, i reckon, but metrics are the new shiny golden egg chicken, and it's a sad realization it's here to stay and shake the foundations of the industry. But sorry, i can't cross my arms and not be vocal against it.
A few months back my wife would come home and tell me about her day. Without fail this would always lead into who was screwing who or who was doing what underhanded thing at the office. I've told her time and again that I really don't care about that garbage but most days she insists on telling me anyway. The Escapists has seemingly became the journalistic equal to my wife.
The Escapist users keep on saying "Yeah, that's nice but we don't care about Zynga". Without fail however, there is another news story or another article explaining why Zynga shits icecream and pisses liquid gold and that we need to accept and love these thieves and scam artists. Honestly, how hard is it to grasp that your core audience loathes most everything that Zynga stands for? We get that there is money to be made through social media. We get Zynga is huge. We get they probably make more money than god. We simply don't want to hear about it.
Sometimes things just aren't destined to mix well. Hardcore gamers and the Zynga crowd are two of those things. We think they are a bunch of ignorant dolts that would be as amused by shaking a set of keys in their face as they would playing Farmville and they think we are a lot who basks in violence and destruction. Maybe the correct course of action, if The Escapist is going to keep shoving Zynga down our throats, would be to make a whole separate section of the site dedicated to nothing but social gaming. That way your loyal fans wouldn't have to see or hear about it and these new people you are obviously trying to draw in wouldn't be subject to our harsh words.
I know, I knowww... it just sucks. People getting angry and yelling about things like Farmville and Twitter... maybe it's in the blind hope that saying something will make it go away?
^this. I'll admit that I'm only on here from time to time, but it seems there's always some article on the front page (Usually in the regular columns, rather than the magazine issues) about how amazing casual games/gamers are, and how rubbish core games/gamers are and that casual games are exempt from all kinds of criticism forever.
Does the music press do this same level of hand-wringing when some alternative music site pans the latest American Idol winner? Or when a film magazine gives a summer blockbuster anything less than eleven out of ten?
No, no they don't- and while I'm usually the first person to jump on people for hating on popular stuff purely because it's popular, the games press- The Escapist especially- need to get over people occasionally saying something negative about casual games.
"How amazing casual games/gamers are"? Hardly. How important they are to the future of the industry, and we core gamers (yes, I am a core gamer as well) need to understand that, and need to understand that for our industry as a whole to survive it needs to branch out? The currently state of the games industry, where maybe 20 big-budget games a year are hits and turn a profit, is completely untenable. Which is why smaller-budget games that are cheaper to produce and maintain - like casual games - are important to the industry's health and survival.
Nobody's arguing that point, as such (or at least, I'm not- and that's mostly because it's a conclusion that most of us accepted about four years ago. Welcome to the party.), but that it's the same article again. Look- here is the exact same article [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/context-sensitive/7048-Yes-Theyre-Gamers-Too] from January, except instead it's Susan Arendt doing "OMG SOMEONE SAID SOMETHING NEGATIVE ABOUT FARMVILLE AND THAT'S NOT ALLOWED!!1!!"
Not only is it a nasty case of deja vu, it's hypocritical and misses its own point.
The message from the article is, fundamentally, that this group of people (casual gamers) like their games (casual games), because our games (core games) that we (core gamers) play don't appeal to them for whatever reason, and that's OK. However, their games do not appeal to us- again, for whatever reason- and that's aparrently wrong.
(And I know you put a tokenistic bit in about how we "are perfectly within [our] rights to dislike these games", but the fact that you've written the article at all kinda takes the edge off that one, what with it being about giving people a load of grief for disliking Farmville and all)
The part in your reply about how "for our industry as a whole to survive it needs to branch out" ultimately makes sense, but "branch out" doesn't mean "travel exclusively in one direction, because that direction is The Right One", that's probably what got it into trouble in the first place. It means catering for a number of different markets- and that means accepting that different markets might not be compatible and stop with the hand-wringing.
To labour my initial point: this sort of article doesn't appear in the music press when some rock fan says they don't like some random pop act. (In fact, this behaviour seems to be acceptable and considered A Good Thing, if the coverage Rage Against The Machine got in the UK before Christmas is anything to go by) Nobody in TV journalism complains when someone says they don't like reality shows. (Staying in the UK, it seems that Charlie Brooker has built his entire career on doing so.) It doesn't happen in the film press when a Hollywood blockbuster gets a panning by some more arbitrarily discerning group of people.
So why is it such a big upset when it happens with games?
This isn't an issue with gamers as a whole, who have largely accepted casual gaming, at least as much as music fans have accepted manufactured pop and so on. It's an issue with its media, specifically that which just can't deal with the idea that Farmville (or Super Guide [http://kotaku.com/5422254/no-non+gamers-allowed], or the Wii as a whole) might legitimately simply not appeal to someone, somewhere, and that it can only be due to elitism and is wrong and Must Be Stamped Out Now.
^this. I'll admit that I'm only on here from time to time, but it seems there's always some article on the front page (Usually in the regular columns, rather than the magazine issues) about how amazing casual games/gamers are, and how rubbish core games/gamers are and that casual games are exempt from all kinds of criticism forever.
Does the music press do this same level of hand-wringing when some alternative music site pans the latest American Idol winner? Or when a film magazine gives a summer blockbuster anything less than eleven out of ten?
No, no they don't- and while I'm usually the first person to jump on people for hating on popular stuff purely because it's popular, the games press- The Escapist especially- need to get over people occasionally saying something negative about casual games.
"How amazing casual games/gamers are"? Hardly. How important they are to the future of the industry, and we core gamers (yes, I am a core gamer as well) need to understand that, and need to understand that for our industry as a whole to survive it needs to branch out? The currently state of the games industry, where maybe 20 big-budget games a year are hits and turn a profit, is completely untenable. Which is why smaller-budget games that are cheaper to produce and maintain - like casual games - are important to the industry's health and survival.
Nobody's arguing that point, as such (or at least, I'm not- and that's mostly because it's a conclusion that most of us accepted about four years ago. Welcome to the party.), but that it's the same article again. Look- here is the exact same article [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/context-sensitive/7048-Yes-Theyre-Gamers-Too] from January, except instead it's Susan Arendt doing "OMG SOMEONE SAID SOMETHING NEGATIVE ABOUT FARMVILLE AND THAT'S NOT ALLOWED!!1!!"
Not only is it a nasty case of deja vu, it's hypocritical and misses its own point.
The message from the article is, fundamentally, that this group of people (casual gamers) like their games (casual games), because our games (core games) that we (core gamers) play don't appeal to them for whatever reason, and that's OK. However, their games do not appeal to us- again, for whatever reason- and that's aparrently wrong.
(And I know you put a tokenistic bit in about how we "are perfectly within [our] rights to dislike these games", but the fact that you've written the article at all kinda takes the edge off that one, what with it being about giving people a load of grief for disliking Farmville and all)
The part in your reply about how "for our industry as a whole to survive it needs to branch out" ultimately makes sense, but "branch out" doesn't mean "travel exclusively in one direction, because that direction is The Right One", that's probably what got it into trouble in the first place. It means catering for a number of different markets- and that means accepting that different markets might not be compatible and stop with the hand-wringing.
To labour my initial point: this sort of article doesn't appear in the music press when some rock fan says they don't like some random pop act. (In fact, this behaviour seems to be acceptable and considered A Good Thing, if the coverage Rage Against The Machine got in the UK before Christmas is anything to go by) Nobody in TV journalism complains when someone says they don't like reality shows. (Staying in the UK, it seems that Charlie Brooker has built his entire career on doing so.) It doesn't happen in the film press when a Hollywood blockbuster gets a panning by some more arbitrarily discerning group of people.
So why is it such a big upset when it happens with games?
This isn't an issue with gamers as a whole, who have largely accepted casual gaming, at least as much as music fans have accepted manufactured pop and so on. It's an issue with its media, specifically that which just can't deal with the idea that Farmville (or Super Guide [http://kotaku.com/5422254/no-non+gamers-allowed], or the Wii as a whole) might legitimately simply not appeal to someone, somewhere, and that it can only be due to elitism and is wrong and Must Be Stamped Out Now.
You're missing the point. I'm not saying that people can't dislike Facebook games. I'm not saying that people can't criticize them or the people who play them.
I'm saying that people need to stop being surprised/angry at the games being considered noteworthy by press and developers alike.
Nobody's arguing that point, as such (or at least, I'm not- and that's mostly because it's a conclusion that most of us accepted about four years ago. Welcome to the party.), but that it's the same article again. Look- here is the exact same article [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/context-sensitive/7048-Yes-Theyre-Gamers-Too] from January, except instead it's Susan Arendt doing "OMG SOMEONE SAID SOMETHING NEGATIVE ABOUT FARMVILLE AND THAT'S NOT ALLOWED!!1!!"
Thank you for pointing out that article. The aspect i extract from it, only confirms what i've been saying: why the hell are "casual" games and social games banded together? Fundamentally, there's a bigger difference between them, than between "casual" and "core" games. Social games belong in a whole new pigeonhole.
John Funk said:
beemoh said:
John Funk said:
beemoh said:
^this. I'll admit that I'm only on here from time to time, but it seems there's always some article on the front page (Usually in the regular columns, rather than the magazine issues) about how amazing casual games/gamers are, and how rubbish core games/gamers are and that casual games are exempt from all kinds of criticism forever.
Does the music press do this same level of hand-wringing when some alternative music site pans the latest American Idol winner? Or when a film magazine gives a summer blockbuster anything less than eleven out of ten?
No, no they don't- and while I'm usually the first person to jump on people for hating on popular stuff purely because it's popular, the games press- The Escapist especially- need to get over people occasionally saying something negative about casual games.
"How amazing casual games/gamers are"? Hardly. How important they are to the future of the industry, and we core gamers (yes, I am a core gamer as well) need to understand that, and need to understand that for our industry as a whole to survive it needs to branch out? The currently state of the games industry, where maybe 20 big-budget games a year are hits and turn a profit, is completely untenable. Which is why smaller-budget games that are cheaper to produce and maintain - like casual games - are important to the industry's health and survival.
Nobody's arguing that point, as such (or at least, I'm not- and that's mostly because it's a conclusion that most of us accepted about four years ago. Welcome to the party.), but that it's the same article again. Look- here is the exact same article [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/context-sensitive/7048-Yes-Theyre-Gamers-Too] from January, except instead it's Susan Arendt doing "OMG SOMEONE SAID SOMETHING NEGATIVE ABOUT FARMVILLE AND THAT'S NOT ALLOWED!!1!!"
Not only is it a nasty case of deja vu, it's hypocritical and misses its own point.
The message from the article is, fundamentally, that this group of people (casual gamers) like their games (casual games), because our games (core games) that we (core gamers) play don't appeal to them for whatever reason, and that's OK. However, their games do not appeal to us- again, for whatever reason- and that's aparrently wrong.
(And I know you put a tokenistic bit in about how we "are perfectly within [our] rights to dislike these games", but the fact that you've written the article at all kinda takes the edge off that one, what with it being about giving people a load of grief for disliking Farmville and all)
The part in your reply about how "for our industry as a whole to survive it needs to branch out" ultimately makes sense, but "branch out" doesn't mean "travel exclusively in one direction, because that direction is The Right One", that's probably what got it into trouble in the first place. It means catering for a number of different markets- and that means accepting that different markets might not be compatible and stop with the hand-wringing.
To labour my initial point: this sort of article doesn't appear in the music press when some rock fan says they don't like some random pop act. (In fact, this behaviour seems to be acceptable and considered A Good Thing, if the coverage Rage Against The Machine got in the UK before Christmas is anything to go by) Nobody in TV journalism complains when someone says they don't like reality shows. (Staying in the UK, it seems that Charlie Brooker has built his entire career on doing so.) It doesn't happen in the film press when a Hollywood blockbuster gets a panning by some more arbitrarily discerning group of people.
So why is it such a big upset when it happens with games?
This isn't an issue with gamers as a whole, who have largely accepted casual gaming, at least as much as music fans have accepted manufactured pop and so on. It's an issue with its media, specifically that which just can't deal with the idea that Farmville (or Super Guide [http://kotaku.com/5422254/no-non+gamers-allowed], or the Wii as a whole) might legitimately simply not appeal to someone, somewhere, and that it can only be due to elitism and is wrong and Must Be Stamped Out Now.
You're missing the point. I'm not saying that people can't dislike Facebook games. I'm not saying that people can't criticize them or the people who play them.
I'm saying that people need to stop being surprised/angry at the games being considered noteworthy by press and developers alike.
But if one criticizes them, it is because one believes their impact in the industry is something one does not wish. Ergo, one does not wish them to succeed, and by extent, does not wish to see them get attention from their peers or the press. Isn't it rational then, to say that if one has the right to criticize them, one also has the right to criticize the attention they get?
I think what people are most upset about is that I would wager the vast majority of your core audience wants nothing to do with Zynga in any way shape or form yet The Escapist continues to hang off of Zynga's sack singing their praises in spite of what your audience thinks. I challenge you to open a poll to find out exactly how your base audience feels about Zynga getting the promotion it does by this site. I bet you'd find the numbers to be very slanted against it.
I understand why you would want to report on Zynga but your presenting it to an audience that doesn't want to hear about it and doesn't care. A month or so back you had a "news" story up that Zynga was releasing prepaid retail cards. Honestly, how many of the regular Escapist members do you believe gave two rotten pieces of monkey crap about that? I don't know why the Escapist has made it their life goal to give legitimacy to Zynga but your users and fans aren't buying it and are largely tired of hearing about it.
I think what people are most upset about is that I would wager the vast majority of your core audience wants nothing to do with Zynga in any way shape or form yet The Escapist continues to hang off of Zynga's sack singing their praises in spite of what your audience thinks. I challenge you to open a poll to find out exactly how your base audience feels about Zynga getting the promotion it does by this site. I bet you'd find the numbers to be very slanted against it.
I understand why you would want to report on Zynga but your presenting it to an audience that doesn't want to hear about it and doesn't care. A month or so back you had a "news" story up that Zynga was releasing prepaid retail cards. Honestly, how many of the regular Escapist members do you believe gave two rotten pieces of monkey crap about that? I don't know why the Escapist has made it their life goal to give legitimacy to Zynga but your users and fans aren't buying it and are largely tired of hearing about it.
Are we singing Zynga's praises? Absolutely not; I said in the column itself that you couldn't get me to touch Farmville unless you literally paid me. I don't *like* the games, but I see how they - and social media in general - are relevant.
The story about Farmville cards showing up in Gamestop WAS newsworthy, because it's about the interaction between social games and actual enthusiast/speciality retailers. If Armor Games started selling stuff in gamestop it'd be equally newsworthy.
It isn't about Zynga. It isn't about Farmville. Yes, Zynga is incredibly shady; that's completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand right now. Zynga will not be around forever, nor will FarmVille - but games LIKE them, that find good ways of engaging non-gamers and making them care about things that are essentially computer games by interfacing them with their friends lists and social media? Those games WILL be around. Those games ARE important to the future of our industry, Zynga or whoever else.
Fine, you don't like FarmVille or Zynga? Neither do I. I think it's crap. But what about, say, Civilization on Facebook? Are you going to tell me that CIV isn't a game? Really?
There's a reason EA bought Playfish for $300m, you know. You're focusing way too much on it being Zynga & FarmVille and not enough on the real lessons here at hand.
No, Facebook will turn into zombie website that hides in the tubes and infects other packets as they go by, slowly turning the entire internet into a mass of websites sending you requests to join your friends.
...Anyways, I wonder what will kill Facebook, another site or an internal collapse. I'm going to say the later, but I am curious as to what would replace it.
Look I have said this before and I will say it again there are no massive barriers to gaming. There are plenty of easy introductory games out there like Crash that are perfect to help new gamers along. The problem is not high entry the problem is people being lazy that is why things like Farmville work. There is little to no effort required on the users part.
It is like learning an instrument if you want to get into you will stick at it. If you are going to be one of those twats who is in it to be cool you will lose interest and drop it. That is the problem with this apparent gaming barrier people are lazy nowdays simple as that.
Uh, wrong. While you're absolutely right that if someone tries hard enough, long enough, they'll eventually learn just about anything you put in front of them, there isn't enough immediate reward for many folks to bother putting the time and effort into gaming. If you're trying to balance a job, your family, and other real life activities, the promise that you maybe will eventually have fun in a month just isn't good enough to put up with the difficulty -- especially with just a few clicks you can be having fun now.
The financial barriers are also very, very real. Most families already have a computer, because it's useful for so very much. Spending $400 on a gaming console is no small decision, not when there's the mortgage and whatnot to consider.
It's not that people are lazy, they simply don't share your priorities.
You're spot on there.
Besides, like it or not, learning an instrument is much more productive use of your time, whatever way you look at it. You gain a much greater understanding and appreciation of music, and I'll be damned if it's not a chick magnet.
Gaming is for instant gratification, especially for those unfamiliar with it. Why would people completely new to games want to spend a lot of time learning nuances and put up with difficult controls when they want fun right now? We may not like casual games, but putting controllers in the hands of people who would never have touched it otherwise is a good thing, no two ways about it. The only way for gaming to be taken seriously is for it to become so commonplace that it's stupid to make uninformed remarks about it.
Actually, I adore casual games. More often than not, when I get home from work, I spend an hour or so playing something from Playfirst or Big Fish Games. And you need look no further than my beloved Peggle mug to know how I feel about anything from PopCap.
Those are all, admittedly, more complex, more "game"y casual games than just about anything you'll find on Facebook, but still.
Fine, you don't like FarmVille or Zynga? Neither do I. I think it's crap. But what about, say, Civilization on Facebook? Are you going to tell me that CIV isn't a game? Really?
There's a reason EA bought Playfish for $300m, you know. You're focusing way too much on it being Zynga & FarmVille and not enough on the real lessons here at hand.
Really, i don't believe so. But in this case, it's pretty much a matter of guessing and personal opinion. If a social network game doesn't adhere to the formula and standards of Zynga's games, for instance, it will never be able to compete with them. And if it resembles a more complex game, akin more to the core gamer crowd, such crowd will prefer the real thing. Such games risk being in that niches middle ground that doesn't appeal to one audience or the other all that much. But let's see... Anyway, i'll also refer to my other post on this:
aemroth said:
Delock said:
I actually think that Farmville and the like are actually a good thing for gaming, and before I get flamed for that I'd like to explain.
I'd like to use my experience with Runescape as an example. Sure, I was a gamer before that, but I really had no experience with online games and MMOs due to the whole start up fee (buying the game and getting a month or so of subscription time), so Runescape was a new experience for me. It was interesting to interact with other players and some what opened my eyes to the possiblity of online play. That being said, I slowly came to recognize it as less and less of what I'd consider a game, and consequentially, had less and less fun with it. It also had the whole thing that still goes on today about having to pay to get the true experience and to be at an advantage in the game. However, before I actually sunk low enough to be a premium member, I decided to pick up City of Heroes and try it out, since it looked like it had the whole social aspect that I liked about Runescape, as well as actually gameplay. In a nutshell, the free game opened me up to another branch of gaming.
Similarly, I also disregarded Point-and-click adventure games until I played a few on Newgrounds and found I loved the genre.
Putting these free games up on a popular social networking site actually could turn out to be benefitial to potential gamers as it helps them feel confident about investing in a console or gaming PC, as well as gets them to look for what games they know they're interested in and help decide on which console is right for them based on that rather than just randomly choosing and hating their decision. I think that gaming needs to take another look at these free games as not only does it allow for a fanbase that would ordinarily not be included, but it also helps ease in people that just need the extra help.
That being said, I know there are people who still pay to become premium members in Runescape, or buy extra content from Zynga that never move up from there, but I have no problems with those people. I myself hate most RTS games and yet I don't get up in arms over Starcraft 2's huge amoung of publicity right now, so I don't see why so many people are so upset that news is being given out about facebook games on this site. It's in its own category of games that some people enjoy and want to know about, so let them hear about it in peace. So long as it only fills a niche of gaming rather than takes over completely, there's no real issue here.
Also, like some people have said, Zynga just happens to have figured out how to tap into this market the best (ie, facebook). I don't know if this will supply them the loyal fanbase they need or if they'll be uprooted since most of the general public doesn't really care who made the game or not (I'd like to remind you all of your own past where I'm betting most of you had favorite games/movies where you didn't know the names of the actors/directors/producers/etc. but rather only really cared about the whole product). Only time will tell.
As for social networking, if anything, I'd say it will grow stronger as time goes on. Hell, just looking at human history could probably give you that general idea as you notice that as time goes on, technology evolves so that we become more connected to each other (letters -> telegraph -> telephone -> email -> social sites). It will be interesting to see where things go from here.
This theory could work out, if it wasn't for a few pesky but relevant little details: first, the gap is too big. Social games are extremely simple for accessibility, even when compared to Runescape, Dofus, browers MMO's, the Wii, etc. The gap is still a bit large to bridge easily. During the course of MM, i even tried to politely tell a few Zynga fans to try kongregate, armor games, etc, and they simply didn't want to. Second, they won't do anything to bridge that gap, or at least not much in a foreseeable future. Why? Because metrics take precedence in game design decisions, and every bit of complexity they put in has to be carefully weighed not to become an entrance barrier. Plus, they have a much more effective mechanism to generate user numbers than actually making the games interesting: your friends list, their respective friends lists, and so forth, ad infinitum. Well, actually not infinitum, six steps at an ideal setting, if you consider the Six degrees of separation [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation] theory. So you see, this aspect provides a much much bigger potential for growth than the actual quality of the game and advertisement.
I guess the big question is if it's possible to bridge the gap. the way i see it, this is a very difficult thing to happen. From my experience, a lot of social gamers don't even care about flash websites like kongregate or armor games, nor the Wii, nor PopCap, etc. I say this from experience with real life acquaintances, and through the course of MM, i posted a few of these links, but all the responses i got were "not interested" and even "tried Peggle... meh..." I keep striking this key, i know, but casual =/= social. An interesting game like Bejeweled Blitz on facebook goes largely unnoticed compared to the staggering success of Zynga. There is a big difference, and it seems very hard to pull social gamers into even casual ones. With games like Civ network and The Witcher announced, there are 3 possible scenarios:
1) They follow Zynga's model. Dead end, nothing new, our worst fears take another step.
2) They build games that resemble a lot the traditional games: facebook users at large will ignore, portion of core gamer crowd likely to adhere for the free aspect, other portion prefers the real deal, and it's probably not profitable enough to sustain itself.
3) Something in between, using some aspects provided by the nature of the platform, but with the feel of a traditional game, if a bit toned down.
The third point is likely the one with the potential to bridge the gap, to make a few social gamers hop over to traditional games. But sitting on a middle niche, will it be profitable enough to sustain? If it is, social gaming will become the lower tier of game complexity, and enter the disruption wave that pushes gamers up the complexity ladder. This is the good scenario. If it fails, developers will have to mimic Zynga, and the whole phenomenon will be isolated, and siphon a large chunk of the traditional game industry into the social gaming industry. Bad scenario.
*sigh* Thoughts? Please, i get the feeling my posts have been getting the "tldr" treatment here
Actually, I adore casual games. More often than not, when I get home from work, I spend an hour or so playing something from Playfirst or Big Fish Games. And you need look no further than my beloved Peggle mug to know how I feel about anything from PopCap.
Those are all, admittedly, more complex, more "game"y casual games than just about anything you'll find on Facebook, but still.
Heretic!
Ah, seriously though, I'm not saying all casual games are inherently bad, just the majority of facebook's, and the shovelware that clogs up the wii's library.
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