Braid Creator Calls Social Games "Evil"

[Void(null)]

It's impossible to deny that social games are designed to make money out of their players - Zynga's recent multi-billion dollar is a testament to how effective that design is - but to call them evil seems a little excessive. Blow might not like social games, but to say that they degrade the people who play them is verging on hyperbole.

No, he is exactly right.

What else do you call games where the developers hired a psychologist to assist them in playing off peoples compulsions so that they are as addictive and predatory as humanly possible?

 

[DracoSuave]

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.

Social pretty much is defined by interpersonal interaction, if something does not involve interpersonal interaction, then it can't be described as social. Your point has nothing to do with his argument. Two people who know each other playing Resident Evil 5 (online or not) are engaged in a social behavior, thusly the game they are playing can be described as a social game, because it IS a social activity. Playing farmville by yourself is not social, it is an asocial activity because you are not interacting with other players. Ergo, it is a misnomer to call it a social game.

If it had you playing and interacting with another player, either cooperatively, or competitively, then it would be a social activity, and therefore, it is a social game. That's his point. And the more possibility of those interactions, the more social a game is. Hense, CoD(multiplayer) and WoW. Both of those necessitate interaction with other players, and therefore can be described as social games... it's an inherent part of what they are at their core.

Farmville just looks for invites into farmville. This is not a social interaction on your part.

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.

This also has nothing to do with his points.

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.

He never claimed that making money was the problem. He said that making money as a game design goal rather than improving people's lives as a game design goal is what is bad.

He's not against them making games to make money. He's against designing games with the intent of being a cash cow, rather than designing games to be good games.

Take Magic: The Gathering. Is it a cash cow? Yes. Does it require investment of time and money to become proficient at it? Yes. Is it a well designed game, and is that quality of design as a game the central focus of the game? Yes.

FarmVille, and most games of that stripe, are not designed to be good games. They are designed to be good revenue engines, with the game design itself of secondary importance. Look at games like most of those on Facebook, and yes, even Echo Bazaar. They are simply 'push button to get xp/key items to get a different button to push'. They're not actually deep games. The only difference between Echo Bazaar and the others is Echo Bazaar has differently named buttons and differently named key items and differently named progress bars. Well named progress bars. Other than the -names- of things, its no different than Bitefight, or that game 'Outland' that was so pervasive years ago before there was a facebook.

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

'Pretentious' means that they put on an air that is different than who they really are. In this case, he makes some very valid points that you've chosen to ignore to make an 'anti-elitist' statement towards someone who doesn't even have the pretense of being an elitist.

If you're going to criticize someone's views, make sure you actually understand what they are saying first. You clearly have not.

 

[Bloodstain]

I could write a whole essay about social gaming and the problem of dehumanizing and objectifying your friends as well as the idea of "possessing and having friends", with influences by Erich Fromm and Meister Eckhart.

Instead, I am just going to ask: Well, who didn't think they're evil?

 

[Xanthious]

It's impossible to deny that social games are designed to make money out of their players - Zynga's recent multi-billion dollar is a testament to how effective that design is - but to call them evil seems a little excessive. Blow might not like social games, but to say that they degrade the people who play them is verging on hyperbole.

So does calling someone evil who openly admits to "DOING EVERY HORRIBLE THING IN THE BOOK" just to make quick revenue seem excessive too? What about a company that tells their employees things like "I don't fucking want innovation" and "You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers"? Would you consider calling that evil a "little excessive" as well? Do you want me to actually go dig up all the videos, stories etc outlining what kind of horrible company Zynga is?

I get that The Escapist as a whole is comprised of largely Zynga apologists. However, the fact of the matter is Mark Pincus and his company are responsible for doing absolutely reprehensible things all for a quick buck and this company is the flagship for social gaming. So it's not a hard leap to say that social gaming as a whole is evil when the company leading the way for them is lead by scum like Pincus. If you can't see this you are either in denial or soft in the head.

 

[emion]

LMAO I agree, they are sickly addictive... THATS evil >v< thanks god I havnt facebook O.<

 

[FoolKiller]

First Braid, and now this. The guy just keeps coming out with brilliant things.

 

[Logan Westbrook]

(cut for length)

You're aware that your argument makes no sense at all, right? It's like saying that FPS games are evil because you don't like the way that Activision handles the Call of Duty series. The fact that Zynga is provably unscrupulous - a fact that you seem to have assumed I think is untrue - does not mean that social gaming as a whole is evil.

 

[tautologico]

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.

You realize some people say things almost exactly like that about video games in general, don't you? "They bring no value to society". These things are subjective, and it'd be a good idea to check on your prejudices.

 

[teknoarcanist]

Lemme just sum this all up:

Advertising a game as having been designed primarily for your enjoyment,
and then offering a game that has IN FACT been designed primarily to subtly addict and exploit you, for the purposes of profit,
is not morally right,

by my own definition -- and, it would seem, by the definitions of Mr. Blow and the majority of people commenting in this thread. It's a deceptive, predatory use of both game design and human psychology.

If it is 'evil', it is no more or less so than a film which purports to offer an entertaining piece of narrative art, but which actually offers carefully-crafted propaganda.

I myself would consider such to constitute an artistically-based 'evil', depending on the scope and severity. Others might settle for 'wrong', 'bad', or simply 'misguided'.

I repeat again that most of the addictive methods employed by these games (WoW requiring ten-hour timesinks for farming, TCGs and freeware MMOs offering better 'equipment' for paying players) would typically be considered terrible design in and of themselves. Inserting them into an otherwise well-designed and addictive framework, and then linking them to monetary imperative, is pretty fucking shady.

 

[Andy Chalk]

So it's not a hard leap to say that social gaming as a whole is evil when the company leading the way for them is lead by scum like Pincus.

Anybody - ANYBODY - who says that social gaming is "evil" has no idea what evil is.

Shady, scummy, sleazy, greasy - sure. But evil? Come on.

 

[Xanthious]

(cut for length)

You're aware that your argument makes no sense at all, right? It's like saying that FPS games are evil because you don't like the way that Activision handles the Call of Duty series. The fact that Zynga is provably unscrupulous - a fact that you seem to have assumed I think is untrue - does not mean that social gaming as a whole is evil.

So do you think Mark Pincus and Zynga are not evil then?

Beyond that though my argument makes perfect sense. Zynga admits to making games designed to rip people off, install malware on their PCs etc. Any game designed to intentionally do those things is evil. So I'd say it's fair to say that Zynga does evil things to people via their games. I'd even wager that the vast majority of social gaming is done via Zynga products. So if a large percentage of social gaming is being done on games designed to do evil things by a company that is evil how does it make no sense to say that social gaming in some way shape or form is evil. Or at the very least that a large percentage of social games being played are evil.

Anybody - ANYBODY - who says that social gaming is "evil" has no idea what evil is.

Shady, scummy, sleazy, greasy - sure. But evil? Come on.

Evil is defined as being morally bad or wrong. So please tell me how intentionally stealing other people's work isn't evil. Then tell me how intentionally ripping off customers and installing harmful programs on their computers isn't evil either. Sure it's not on the same level as killing babies but it sure the hell isn't good. Just because there may be worse things they could do doesn't diminish the fact that those are indeed evil and selfish acts by the very definition of the word.

 

[smithy1234]

I sort of agree with him there, his definition of evil certainly fits the profile of most "social games" as they seek only to exploit and don't give anything back to the individual being exploited.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

I first read the article rather skeptically, as I have seen Mr. Blow take rather pretentious stands in the past, but upon reading I think he has this right.

There's no value-added in Zynga-type games, and they're certainly not "social" in that there really is no social interaction. (Not even the minimal social reaction required to "teabag" an opponent, which is saying something.) The only social component comes from recruiting others into the games... it's multi-level marketing more than social experience.

Moral of the story; don't let sociopaths design your social games for you.

-- Steve

 

[Vrach]

Can't really disagree with the man, he's right. And the pleasure derived from those games is probably solely the Skinner box Extra Credits recently talked on. I wouldn't call them evil per se, but yeah, I get what he means by it.

 

[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.

Social pretty much is defined by interpersonal interaction, if something does not involve interpersonal interaction, then it can't be described as social. Your point has nothing to do with his argument. Two people who know each other playing Resident Evil 5 (online or not) are engaged in a social behavior, thusly the game they are playing can be described as a social game, because it IS a social activity. Playing farmville by yourself is not social, it is an asocial activity because you are not interacting with other players. Ergo, it is a misnomer to call it a social game.

If it had you playing and interacting with another player, either cooperatively, or competitively, then it would be a social activity, and therefore, it is a social game. That's his point. And the more possibility of those interactions, the more social a game is. Hense, CoD(multiplayer) and WoW. Both of those necessitate interaction with other players, and therefore can be described as social games... it's an inherent part of what they are at their core.

Farmville just looks for invites into farmville. This is not a social interaction on your part.

"Blow though[sic] that name "social games" is actually something of a misnomer, because players usually couldn't meet anyone new."

I'm just going off of what was said. This very, very clearly states that a requirement of social games is that they allow you to meet someone new.

Further, FarmVille does have social aspects: it has a sort of gallery aspect to it and it does have the ability to work cooperatively (unless that's mysteriously been taken out since I last saw the game).

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.

This also has nothing to do with his points.

Right, it has to do with my point about his points.

"Interestingly, he said that the players weren't really to blame for letting themselves be taken advantage of, as he didn't think that they were aware that it was happening."

There's always the possibility that he's right (I don't think he is in this case), but there's no doubt that he's saying "you guys probably don't realise the evil you're involved with, but I'm here to help explain it to you so you can be saved".

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.

He never claimed that making money was the problem. He said that making money as a game design goal rather than improving people's lives as a game design goal is what is bad.

He's not against them making games to make money. He's against designing games with the intent of being a cash cow, rather than designing games to be good games.

The last bit is where I have a problem. Game design doesn't have to have one goal. It's very possible to set out to design a game with the intention that it be both good and commercially successful. The idea that these two goals are mutually exclusive is silly and pretentious, just as it is in so many areas outside of games.

Take Magic: The Gathering. Is it a cash cow? Yes. Does it require investment of time and money to become proficient at it? Yes. Is it a well designed game, and is that quality of design as a game the central focus of the game? Yes.

Do you think that they focused only on making a good game and it just accidentally happened to be profitable? Of course you don't. My point isn't that it isn't bad to make games SOLELY to cash in, but rather that it's wrong to assume that you can't ALSO attempt to build something profitable while building a good game.

FarmVille, and most games of that stripe, are not designed to be good games. They are designed to be good revenue engines, with the game design itself of secondary importance. Look at games like most of those on Facebook, and yes, even Echo Bazaar. They are simply 'push button to get xp/key items to get a different button to push'. They're not actually deep games. The only difference between Echo Bazaar and the others is Echo Bazaar has differently named buttons and differently named key items and differently named progress bars. Well named progress bars. Other than the -names- of things, its no different than Bitefight, or that game 'Outland' that was so pervasive years ago before there was a facebook.

If we want to go down that route, EVERY game is just "push button to get xp/key to get a different button to push". You just effectively described any interactive system possible (input, change of state, new input). For the moment, I'll agree that they don't have the depth (fewer inputs, fewer states), but I'm not convinced that there isn't a place for games without depth. Games don't have to be about simply pleasure, but that doesn't mean they can't be.

Also, I'm not sure I'm even on board regarding a lack of depth. Take FarmVille. You have complete control over where to place things, what to buy, how to lay things out. Where you put your farmhouse may not have any impact numerically, but it's exactly the sort of thing people play FarmVille for. Those sort of aesthetic sandbox aspects to casual games are often the most popular parts and they're definitely places where increased complexity can creep into the games. And that's ignoring the people who use the features of the game to make unintended scenes. I was sitting next to a friend who was playing some sort of casual game just last night when she ran into some sort of giant display someone had made in the game. She thought it looked neat and, upon closer inspection, discovered it was made of different-coloured umbrellas. People can add an enormous amount of complexity to a game even if the mechanics themselves seem fairly shallow.

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

'Pretentious' means that they put on an air that is different than who they really are.

In this case, he makes some very valid points that you've chosen to ignore to make an 'anti-elitist' statement towards someone who doesn't even have the pretense of being an elitist.

First, I'm not going to argue lexical semantics. If you don't want to use the word "pretentious", fine, substitute a word of your choosing.

I would argue that he is acting as an elitist (though I'm not really sure how one would "pretend" to be an elitist as pretending to be one makes you one). He's making a blanket negative statement about a genre that is generally considered to be "pandering to the base", his authority to speak on the matter derives from his status as an "auteur", he's suggesting that most people don't truly understand what's going on in the games they're playing (while he does understand it), and he's suggesting that the motivation of the involved designers is somehow impure.

If you're going to criticize someone's views, make sure you actually understand what they are saying first. You clearly have not.

Truly no Escapist post is complete without the "you just didn't understand it" rebuttal.

 

[PhiMed]

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.

You realize some people say things almost exactly like that about video games in general, don't you? "They bring no value to society". These things are subjective, and it'd be a good idea to check on your prejudices.

You realize some people say things almost exactly like that about puppies, right?

You don't have to jump to the defense of everything. I doubt Zynga, PopCap, or any other company cares what I think about this subject. Get off your horse, put your white armor away, and express an opinion on the OP rather than on a random post, because white knighting for social gaming is about the most purposeless activity imaginable (even more purposeless than social gaming itself!).

Having a negative opinion doesn't mean I'm "prejudiced". I've examined the situation, I've developed an opinion, and it's negative. That's still okay, last time I checked.

 

[AgentBJ09]

Actually I think he's right, and there is a lot of supporting evidence going by the words of the guys like Zynga executives.

So called "social games" are designed to prey on the lowest human denominator. They are designed to hit an odd sweet spot of low quality and addictiveness for the target audience. What's more there are subtle design elements incorporated into them to get people to spend money as they play more, or simply to waste the "free" points people get through intentionally bad menu design. What's more as we've seen in case of kids racking up bills worth thousands of dollars, they also seem to be designed with intentionally bad security so children can "accidentally" invest a ton of money without realizing what they are doing, or to simply exploit the stupid adults that make up the lowest human denominator.

It's kind of easy to be dismissive of morons when your smart enough to realize a problem, but honestly when I get past the elitism I don't think that there it's the fault of stupid people for being stupid, it's like discriminating against skin color on a lot of ways. There are limits to what you can do while maintaining freedom, but yeah... I think people DO need to be protected from their own stupidity, and this area is as out of control as various fine print/contract scams, or the gimmicks/deceptions that were being used to lure people into buying property they couldn't afford, causing a massive market crash. Heck, I'd even argue that in the USA at least our country is founded on the idea of protecting the stupid from themselves which is why we have inalienable rights that people can't sign away, even with a smarter elite pressuring them.

I'm in a place right now where I pretty much feel cash shops and social-gaming "virtual property" businesses should be pretty much banned entirely. I think it was a worthy experiment, but like the drug trade it's just too easy to exploit. I see it very much as being like those "foreign pay line" scams from decades ago run through the phone system. The very fact that Zynga has made billions off of things like "Farmville" is indicative of the problem and demonstrates exactly why such things should be banned. Especially when a company admits that they design their games to addict stupid people, that's just like using subliminal and hypnosis techniques in advertising which was also banned.

There's also the argument that Zynga doesn't make any original ideas of their own. All of their games are either social games, or games which are copied from other developers (Rollercoaster Kingdom - Rollercoaster Tycoon. This one I will always curse them for.)

Still, you make a good point. If Zynga is admitting they are doing what they are to siphon money from users who are not intelligent enough to see they're being used, or keep in people who can't break free from those games, then they are doing unethical things and can be investigated for it.

 

[craddoke]

Anybody - ANYBODY - who says that social gaming is "evil" has no idea what evil is.

I've always thought that it's the smallest, least important, acts and choices that qualify as pure evil (or good). Those small little cruelties, exploitations, and lies that are too insignificant for anyone to even bother with an explanation or rationale. You seem to be arguing from the position that "evil" implies a certain magnitude - that something with limited consequences can't rise to the level of evil.

Are social games a little evil in the larger scheme of things? Sure. Of course, cultures in which little evils are never called out tend to end up with bigger evils.

 

[Omgsarge]

Honestly, calling them Evil is just overreacting. Friend gathering on Facebook is the same thing in my opinion (or cut from the same cloth). You use other people to drive a number up that doesn't really matter. I don't like it either, but that is just how these network sites are.

What's with that exploiting thing, though? Last time I checked, you, a freaking person with a brain, had to chose if you want a digital villa that costs 5 $ on your farm or not. Your friends had the choice of helping you or not. I had a short Farmville phase and I sure as hell didn't see my friends as simple resources. It was a small bonus in addition to the stuff I did on the farm.
Honestly, sometimes I get the impression that people who view these games as exploitative only view it with the nerd-craving to be the best like no one ever was. "To have the best and most beautiful set up I need to pay real live money? OMG! It's like they are robbing me!" You get way more enjoyment out of Facebook games if you don't play them like "real" games. I play them because I can just let them run in the background and don't have to sit in front of them for hours to get somewhere. And they are FREE! At least my games are.

 

[Quiet Stranger]

Finally someone else thinks the same thing!