Social Games Rush in Where Hardcore Games Fear to Tread

[Logan Westbrook]

Social Games Rush in Where Hardcore Games Fear to Tread

The player base for social games dwarfs that of even the most successful "hardcore" titles, so what do social game makers know that the likes of EA and Activision do not?

Even the staunchest critics of social gaming would find it hard to deny that it attracts a massive audience, making the millions that play games like World of Warcraft or Modern Warfare 2 look like small change. In Issue 264 of The Escapist, Erin Hoffman argues that a combination of prejudice and pride meant that the gaming industry ignored the possibilities of social gaming, leaving the door open for companies like Zynga to capitalize on its mistake.

In effect, metrics-driven online companies invest a substantial portion of their development in monitoring and analyzing player statistics ... nothing cuts through a four-hour design argument quite like saying, "I did this scientific test and here are the numbers - *****."

The game industry missed the social game revolution. All of this - our intellectual tendency to complain "But it isn't that simple!", combined with the fundamentally romantic notion that our creativity cannot possibly be enslaved to numbers (as if numbers were a master and not a tool) - is why a bunch of web marketers swooped in and ate our damn lunch [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98426-Facebook-Gaming-Blindsided-Traditional-Developers].

Should the videogame industry be taking several leaves out of Zynga's book, or do social and hardcore games represent two distinct audiences? Read the rest of How Social Games Ate Our Lunch [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_264/7896-How-Social-Games-Ate-Our-Lunch], and let us know what you think.


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[Loonerinoes]

Didn't bother to comment on it back then when it was written up, because I genuinely didn't feel it was worth it. But fine, might as well comment on it now if it's here again.

It entirely depends on what the audience wants for the long term. If people genuinely want to play nothing else than casual games in the long term, then that is what will happen. It's just a shame that the business practices that 'eat our damn lunch' happen to also eat the lunch of those they entertain, with scamming being encouraged within the business model that is currently in use for these casual games (and also being unrestrained because the vast majority of the audience for such games remain completely uninformed about who the company that provides them the game is and how they do it).

As for me I hope that a good amount of people might still prefer games to be about a bit more than just clicking on cows. And that people might still want to stay informed about what sorts of business practices happen to be in use to deliver them their gaming experience.

 

[Woodsey]

Oh for fu-

They're 2 different markets, with 2 different audiences. The reason stuff like Farmville is so successful is because less people are gamers than aren't.

It's not like Activision are losing money to Zynga; no one's going to be dropping our type of gaming just because they see Farmville and go "ooh, it's free!".

I don't even know why we constantly talk about them, the only similarity is that they're both described as games.

 

[Loonerinoes]

What..?

I don't even know what you people are on about. The social gaming player base is almost completely separate from the hardcore player base. It didn't exist before casual social games like Farmville popped up.

It doesn't even remotely affect hardcore gamers, why should I care in the slightest whether 2 billion people play farmville or not? World Of Warcraft had around 10 millionish subscribers before the "social gaming revolution" and now it still has as much/more players, meaning our player base isn't converting or anything.

What's the issue here?

Also a post worth noting. Really, I get sick and tired of all these up-and-coming business types who keep saying "Hey! Everything in life's a competition bro!" and forget the fact that there are: a) Different markets within the same category of product and b) That not everything has to outcompete something to be succesfull. Just because you choose to play WoW doesn't mean you can't play Farmville for christ's sake!

 

[Le_Lisra]

No. No.

Noooooooooooooo.

Studios and publishers should NOT try to combine the two markets into a big pile of money. Give these farmville playing slobs something to do during lunch and let the rest please continue to stomp on zombie faces. Or something.

It gives me a headache reading articles like that..

We, as players who take their hobby somewhat seriously, should not be thrown into the same bucket.

 

[Cherry Cola]

I can't believe we're actually dedicating the weekly issue to social gaming.

I almost feel like claiming that all those "analysts" who proclaim that this is a new evolution in gaming and that we should acknowledge it completely oblivious to how the world works.

You know what an evolution in gaming is? The NES resurrecting gaming after the Atari 2600 almost destroyed it, consoles starting to use CD's instead of cartridges. That's evolution of gaming.

This has nothing at all to do with the gaming we know and love. How is it an evolution when it can't physically alter anything about the modern day video game market. It's not stealing customers, it's not going to become a behemoth that swallows publisher's like EA and Activision whole. It's completely separate to the gaming market.

 

[FinalHeart95]

The game industry missed the social game revolution. All of this - our intellectual tendency to complain "But it isn't that simple!", combined with the fundamentally romantic notion that our creativity cannot possibly be enslaved to numbers (as if numbers were a master and not a tool) - is why a bunch of web marketers swooped in and ate our damn lunch [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98426-Facebook-Gaming-Blindsided-Traditional-Developers].

How can the numbers of people playing your game have anything to do with the creativity put into said game? Not only that, but it seems implied here that the numbers themselves are creativity in itself. I believe they have something in the music industry like that. It's called selling out.

Besides, there is some merit to the fact that some of the most creative games didn't have huge sales. Anything by Team ICO and Tim Schafer pretty much fits in those categories.

 

[oranger]

Do you guys realize that there are only a handful of massive companies that you never hear about (usually called The ____ Group, or some other seriously generic name) own large quantities of shares in the companies that produce the products you consume?
So of COURSE the game companies want to combine current gaming culture (by that I mean the gemeinschaft of gaming) and the "games" like farmville which exploit the many blindspots of our social programming. It just makes sense when looking at it from the bottom line, as games themselves are expensive to produce, and see little return when compared to what Zynga is producing.
Beyond the cost, gamers themselves live vicariously through their in-game avatars, and thus by altering the medium through which gamers define themselves, you redefine their psyche to an extent, possibly creating a more consumption-centric market than what already exists.

We gamers know this is bad instinctively, but putting it into words is always, always good.

 

[cardinalwiggles]

seperate entities, should exist next to each other but the difference between the people is the lack of skill for lots of reward, whereas the other is lot of skill for less reward.
these social games and "casual players" can also house some hardcore players as they break from their other titles

 

[V8 Ninja]

Why are articles put on the site being considered news on the same site? This demands logic.

OT: So what he's basically saying is that we didn't consider the "Possibilities" of casual games because we're much smarter? Way to defend an argument there. Either way, it's probably best to just keep the two markets away from each other.

 

[Woodsey]

What..?

I don't even know what you people are on about. The social gaming player base is almost completely separate from the hardcore player base. It didn't exist before casual social games like Farmville popped up.

It doesn't even remotely affect hardcore gamers, why should I care in the slightest whether 2 billion people play farmville or not? World Of Warcraft had around 10 millionish subscribers before the "social gaming revolution" and now it still has as much/more players, meaning our player base isn't converting or anything.

What's the issue here?

Also a post worth noting. Really, I get sick and tired of all these up-and-coming business types who keep saying "Hey! Everything in life's a competition bro!" and forget the fact that there are: a) Different markets within the same category of product and b) That not everything has to outcompete something to be succesfull. Just because you choose to play WoW doesn't mean you can't play Farmville for christ's sake!

I never said you can't...?

The point was, Activision aren't losing money to Zynga, because they're 2 separate markets. No one's going to drop playing games as we know them to exclusively play Farmville, nor do we need a similar pay-model as them. I want my games to come in a whole package.

This type of casual gaming will not impact on how we play games, nor is it moving us in a new direction.

 

[tehroc]

The real issue is it seems like journalists are more interested these days about a companies bottom line then the games anymore. Fear not the publishers are also thinking about the bottom line (actually only) and little by little farmville will be integrated into our games as they chase the dragon.

 

[Stabby Joe]

I don't even consider Modern Warfare players "hardcore", let alone use them in contrast to Farmville players, that aren't even gamers in any sense including casual. It's not different from playing a flash game off Newgrounds or a desktop download.

 

[ItsAPaul]

Because social games aren't games, they just light up when you click them while facebook gets fat off of ad revenue. They even have the balls to charge real money to do that sometimes.

 

[RvLeshrac]

This is like saying that the Chinese workforce is an evolution of the well-paid Western workforce, because the Chinese workforce has no unions and can be paid less than is even necessary for basic human needs.

The amount of money you make isn't an indicator of your product doing anything for the industry. Look at housing and bank loans.

Is it too much of a stretch to think that most of these companies looked at the kind of social gaming Zynga produces and said "Even WE aren't interested in screwing our users THIS much"?

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

There is an audience for either style and hence there has to be a producer for each. If all the 'Hardcore' game developers switched to 'Casual' the result would be a wider spread of profits and all the 'Hardcore' gamers would cry in their soup.

This idea keeps coming up that casual games trump serious ones, but besides adding more tutorials to WoW and making big titles like Mass Effect 2 simpler and more forgiving, the developers don't seem to care.