Braid Creator Calls Social Games "Evil"

[twaddle]

Most of them force you to add hundreds of strangers to your friend list that you will never meet or talk to in game. I can't stand that.

 

[itsausernamewhatofit]

gonna have to agree with him, completely evil.

 

[V8 Ninja]

It's hard to argue with his logic. Casual games usually don't add any experiences to the player and they suck money out of said player.

 

[Danish rage]

I don´t know anything about social games, but i do know it is at least as evil to flood the market with overprized crappy artsy fartsy indie games and the 800´th incanation of some tower defence game.
If i want art i go to a museum, if i want to game i turn on the PS3 or Xbox. I don´t need them to be the same.
And that brings me to what i really dislike indie dev´s for. Thinking they are better than everyone else. Smells like envy.

 

[The Great JT]

Yes, because social interaction isn't part of the human experience!

Wait, what?

 

[The_Emperor]

The monetary system is intrinsically exploitative. Anything created to make money is intrinsically exploitative.

true story.

 

[boholikeu]

I love how people are saying the games aren't evil because "some people have fun playing them." People having fun playing the games doesn't automatically make his claim that they are evil invalid. Evil can be fun. If it weren't fun, it wouldn't exist.

These games, though, are completely mindless entertainment. They tell no story, develop no skills, encourage no growth, and thus have no redeeming value. They are a mind-melting time waster, like twiddling your thumbs or masturbation.

And if someone you knew spent as much time masturbating as most of these people spend playing social games, you'd probably be concerned, wouldn't you?

So he's right. These companies have created a socially acceptable way for people to mentally masturbate, for several hours a day, in public. Rather than do something constructive, informative, or at least actually pleasurable, they're doing this. Productivity decreases, and stupidity expands.

Both the player and the human race are worse off, all because someone figured out how to use psychology to make a game that would make people continue to play, and continue to pay, because damn it, they can almost reach that carrot.

Evil.

Meh there's good games and bad games. Many people here like Echo Bazaar, which is actually a pretty good social game.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Right first time. Evil. They take friendship and pervert it to another resource to be mined. If you don't count all the sock-puppets that help.

Or they CAN be...

Farmville: Evil. Any game that rewards you due to how many "friends" you have? Evil.

Anything that lets you play with friends and doesn't judge/waylay you. Good.

See Valentine's Day, Xmas and other "SOCIAL" festivals.

Games lie FarmVille are incredibly well designed;

By people other than the ones actually making money from them now.

 

[boholikeu]

If i want art i go to a museum, if i want to game i turn on the PS3 or Xbox. I don´t need them to be the same.

If i want art i go to a museum, if i want to listen to music i turn on my CC player.

If i want art i go to a museum, if i want to see a movie i pop in a DVD.

I hope you see where I'm going here

 

[Chani07]

Evil? Very problematic word right there.

I wouldn't go as far as saying that "social games" are evil, but it is very correct to say that they don't improve the social contact and the connections between people. But then again, i would say they're just a replica of modern society.
So yeah, they're not ethical, but they sure as hell make a lot of money.

Anyway, i'm more inclined to agree with Mr. Blow.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

Jesus fucking Christ.

So things are only social now if you can use them to meet new people? Even as crazy one-sentence definitions of words like "social" go, that's pretty goddamn absurd. I would hazard a guess that the overwhelming majority of social situations people find themselves in involve established friends and few, if any, strangers.

But don't worry guys, even though you're idiots with no idea what's being done to you, this brilliant "auteur" is here to help you out of your dark and ignorant ways.

AND HORROR OF HORRORS IT TURNS OUT THE GAMES ARE DESIGNED TO MAKE MONEY. Because auteur developers always scorn money and real games should be commercial failures. And wanting to make money could never lead developers to make a good game because making good games is never something that crosses their minds as a way to make a commercially successful game.

TL;DR: Jonathan Blow remains an amazing designer with all of the pretentious bullshit that seems to go along with that quality.

 

[Sion_Barzahd]

He ain't wrong though is he? They do just make you use friends as resources to further your tiny greedy little farms.

 

[HentMas]

wow, thats exactly what i think

seriously, the damn things are too stupid to be considered anything other than money grabing scams, i mean, i have being playing City Ville and whilst its not really challenging, i like the way i can make my city grow more and more given enough time, i can move around the city and stuff, and with the help of my friends i can grow faster

(so on so forth)

but i also know that whenever i want, if i am tired of waiting to lvl up to unlock something in my inventory, i can buy it with real money

AND THEY MAKE SURE YOU KNOW THIS, everytime you run out of coins "would you like to buy more coins?" energy "would you like to buy more energy" stuff like that, its a scam, i know it.

have you guys played it? it takes you 30 min before you run out of energy / money / materials / watever, in the end its just a 30 min commercial for things you dont really need in a game you shouldnt really care.

but... if you dont want to buy anything, then dont!

 

[Verlander]

snip

It's also about having standards. You can have fun watching the latest Cliche Derivative Romantic Comedy No.2391, doesn't mean it's not exploiting people who don't know any better.

And have you read what the guy said? It's bad because it's an effortless money grab. It's bad because it's exploitive. It's bad because it appeals to the wrong human, how shall I say, attributes. It's bad because it doesn't add anything.

Hell, you can have fun with anything, enough of this bloody apologetic nonsense.

Everything in business is exploitive to a certain extent-that's the point. People get out what they put in. "Social" games require little investment, either intellectually or monetarily. Just because some people prefer them, only means that that they have exposed and filled a gap in the market. Nothing more.

Argue all you want about how much better films like The Godfather or Citizen Kane are then the latest installment of Jennifer Aniston's flailing career, there are people out there who will prefer to watch the latter than the "classics" because that is their honest, personal opinion. That's not over-exploitation, that's good business sense. Jonathon Blow overestimates how important his media is

 

[mb16]

All true. Although I wouldn't exactly say social games are "evil"- that suggests they can make moral choices.

In related news...

"Hey there having fun playing farmville?"
look man i dont like farmville
wow i actually..."LOVE IT"
FUC.."FONDLY"

that probably makes no sense

 

[LostintheWick]

And he's right.

Second that notion.

As far as Facebook games go, they have absolutely no redeeming values, and the friend exploiting mechanic that ranges from pretentious to cruel (depending on the amount of friends you have) is just icing on the cake.

Thirded.

Fourthed Calling the design evil isn't an overstatement. Does anybody else see capitalism? lol

 

[Nikki_Viper]

You get all these people bashing social games for this, and that, and the next thing. Someone finally hit the nail on the head. EVIL might not be the best word, but everything else he says is undeniable