Social Games Rush in Where Hardcore Games Fear to Tread

[drphil1234]

If march madness was any indicator, I think that hardcore and social gaming are very different markets. Hardcore games make people go out of their way to make time to play them. However, Social games rather fill in the boredom void in between people's other activities. Not to mention that successful hardcore games -like wow- rake in much more money than any social game could. Although that is subject to change as soon as the advertising agencies get their claws on the huge market that social games attract.

 

[Cynical skeptic]

Okay, the horse is gone. The place where the horse fell has been mistaken for a free rock quarry by industrial contractors and a strip mine by environmentalists. There is simply nothing left to say on this subject. Which is not to imply there ever was.

First: There is zero overlap between social gaming and actual gaming. They target vastly different demographics and operate on (thank god) completely opposite business/development models. The one and only focus of social gaming is to turn it's users into free advertising. Anything that resembles gameplay is tacked-on, vestigial, existing only to fuel the primary focus. While the actual gamer may indulge in the occasional social game, no social gamer will ever 'graduate' to anything that isn't played in a browser window.

Second: Zygna spammed the shit out of a completely unmoderated, unregulated social network to get to where it was. Biggest problem being, its not there anymore. The application of even the slightest spam regulation to facebook caused zygna to start hemorrhaging users. Proving it was little more than a lucky strike. Zygna is now desperately shopping itself around, presenting old figures as its primary pitch to anyone stupid or apathetic enough to listen.

Third: Outwar. Its older than anyone who thinks social gaming is new/s. But only a few people have heard of it. The only difference between outwar and zygna is when and where. Outwar started while the internet was a small, pretty tightly knit community. The only problem is the small, tightly knit community viewed outwar as a plauge. Anyone caught up in it as infected zombies. Outwar was dealt with thusly. The main reason you have never heard of it is outwar is blocked by every adblock program, blocked as a malware site by every malware protection suite, and treated as a virus by more than a few antivirus suites. Every forum and IRC channel older than a decade has issued hundreds of outwar bans. But despite all this, it still exists. The guy who created it still doesn't have a real job, and lives pretty high on the hog.

So... yea... zygna was a fluke, at best. Social gaming isn't some massive untapped money vein. No "lunch was stolen." Zygna was a case of being in the right place at the right time, and will never be reproduced.

 

[jad4400]

I honeslty stoped caring about the social-hardcore feud thing a long time ago. Look the fact is Zynga have proven they can create good time sinks that are accesable to many people. Do their games encourage a bad buissness practice, perhaps, but in the end they have made somthing that millions of people use. Are social games different from hadcore games, yes, but in the end the people who play these games are gamers all the same and we shouldn't poopoo their choice in gaming medium, because in the end all games serve the same purpose, to entertain us, and there are a varity of way to entertain ourselves with the gaming medium. This who shouting match between social v.s hardcore is insanly stupid because we are basically arguing about which medium is better to sink our time into. Imgine if there was a massive shouting match over weather wine or beer was the better drink to get drunk with. In the end you qare still drinking alcohal and u can still get drunk either ay.

 

[Negatempest]

I would like to say that there is ever a real case of "long term audience". Whether we like it or not, people are fickle and will jump onto anything that may be new or different. The majority of us anyways.

 

[Fensfield]

I'm sorry.. what?

Some of us want a deep gaming experience, and that isn't something you can deliver with numbers - on the contrary, relying on numbers gets you a game described as 'cookie cutter' and 'pandering to the lowest common denominator'.

You can't just declare the numbers are higher for one genre, therefore the other genre suck. I'm an avid player of Visual Novels, how the hell is the produce-it-in-a-month, go-by-the-numbers social gaming movement going to deliver me CLANNAD?

They're two different genre entirely, and there development techniques differ wildly - I'm pretty sure Zynga's story writing is something done by the janitor during one of his lunch-breaks, whereas key/VISUAL ARTS likely have as many involved in the writing side of development as they do the art. That's the extremes of the scale, I know, but I'm sure the issue applies to other games given the depth and complexity of setting and story delivered by games like Bioshock or Cave Story - and even setting that aside, sheer richness of gameplay is wildly different across genre, too, with social gaming again at the bottom.

Increasingly, I'm getting the impression the only people care about this divide any more are developers whining about only making millions rather than billions; which is extremely sad, but in many ways I'd be happy if people like that sodded off to the social gaming movement to make room for people with a bit more artistic integrity.

Seriously, can you imagine if Portal had gone by the numbers? That wouldn't have been very stimulating. And god knows we'd never have so much as glimpsed ICO. And what if the Final Fantasy games had never been imported? Until then, 'the numbers' showed there was no market for RPG computer games in the West because Western gamers simply wouldn't 'get' them (a situation in which visual novels continue to languish).

 

[Echo136]

I certainly cant deny that its addicting. I dont play it, but all my D&D buddies are always logging onto facebook to check farmville or similar.

 

[Fox242]

I think the point both this post and the article are missing is that having the numbers and making money are both fickle and souless. People who makes games should make.... games. Not cheap pandering credit scams like many of these 'social' games are. They are a weird pale copy of the industry they claim to be a part of and contruibute nothing in the way original ideas. Social games by their very nature move backwards, they are NOT meant for the 'gaming' audience they are cheap time sinks meant to rob the player of as much time and money as possible like online casino games.

They didn't eat anyone's lunch because most of the great game makers rightly don't give a shit about social games. Scorsese isn't going to make a Twilight ripoff becuase the numbers show it would make more money and be exposed to more people. Some people are not content to make crap even if crap is what the numbers show will sell. Being obsessed with the numbers ignores long term trends and has led holywood into the blind ally of being a slave to the weekend numbers regardless of budget or 'leggs' on a film. Some people can make money by making this ABOVE the lowest of the lowest common denominator.

Miyamoto wouldn't go and make a ceap facebook time sink, his existing userbase would go into uproar it would runin his reputation. Mass market crap =/= Automatic profit. "Well it makes money" is not an excuse for shoddy buisness practicies or crappy products. In the long term the audience is only left with a bad taste in it's mouth. REAL talent and creativity has long term appeal and builds genuine affection. Epic isn't going to throw in it's engine/ AAA games buisness to make Gearsville. Their audience is established, loyal and long term. Social games something so recent and so transigent that they are not worth diverting attention to.

There is also a basic lack of credibility, a kind of soulless cheapness to social games that leaves many i know feeling cold. They cultivate distain more than loyalty. They are smash and grab recent additions to the gaming bandwagon, operating a kind of Person=$$$ policy that would make a comic book evil corporation proud.

Damn straight brother. You've got the argument I was going to make down to a science. I, for one and I know that I am not alone on this, am glad that the majority of game developers put in alot of time, effort, attention to detail, and love into the hardcore games that they make so that we, the audience, can enjoy them to the fullest extent. Zynga doesn't care about that. They just want money, money, and money. I'm glad that I was smart enough to see Farmville for what it was before it got huge and sucked millions upon millions into the soulless, fleecing void of time wasting that it relies on to be successful. I want Quality for my cash. That is why the hardcore gaming companies have my buisness.

 

[jebussaves88]

It is an entirely different business. ENTIRELY. You can't compare World of Warcraft and Farmville just because they're both on a PC and people spend a lot of time on them, otherwise we'd be discussing in equal enthusiasm the exciting things Microsoft are doing with their latest word processing simulator, and the manic party games involved in entering random information in Excel to see what pie chart you get. Comparing Farmville to World of Warcraft is like comparing a book to a film. In a book, you read the text, and build it up for yourself (Zynga hopes you do the same in order to imagine that cow you bought is real) In a proper computer game, the Necromorph, Combine Soldier or zombie is rendered for you to look at and interact with on a far higher level.
I don't argue with social games being called games, but I argue strongly against them being considered computer/video games, as they neither detract or add to gaming as most of us on this site know it, neither financially or culturally. It is merely a digital table top game on a larger scale, and is incomparable to Dead Space, or Half Life, or Left 4 Dead or whatever else you care to mention.
Also, audiences are different, because no specialist hardware is needed to play them, so anyone can skin a bit of time into one (and if they're particularly foolish in my personal opinion, they can also sink their money in)

 

[Do4600]

Comparing "social" games with "hardcore" games is like comparing tic-tac-toe to rugby.

 

[ThreeKneeNick]

Comparing "traditional" games and the new social games while implying that social games are more successful and therefore better/more fun is exactly like the PC/xbox/PS flamewars. Or it even makes less sense since the three platforms actually have something in common so you could say that one is better, but when two things are so different as regular and social games are, comparing is just crazy because they obviously cater to different audiences. Numbers aren't everything. How low can you sink, Escapist?

 

[Enigma6667]

Comparing "social" games with "hardcore" games is like comparing tic-tac-toe to rugby.

Couldn't have said it any better myself...but I'll try.

Comparing "social" games and "hardcore" games is like comparing a puppy to a Deathclaw from Fallout 3.

No? Nobody? Alright then...

They're two entirely different types of games, with two entirely different types of audiences, and as such, there shouldn't be such experimentation with trying to get social games to the hardcore audience, hardcore games to the social audience, etc.

Farmville may be a big property now thanks to all the idiots on Facebook, but it isn't effecting the hardcore games space like Half Life, Bioshock, or ICO, and hardcore games will never ever have an effect on social games because a majority of social gamers aren't looking for what hardcore games bring.

Despite me thinking that the game industry is filled with tons of idiots (Bobby Kotick anyone?), I don't think anyone in the industry is stupid enough to try and follow Zynga's footsteps, because Zynga never intended for Farmville to be as big as it is now, it just got popular because Facebook is full of morons. And even if they do decide to take notes on Zynga and such, I doubt that it'll last long, and they will go back to making hardcore games.

As for the issue with calling social games "real games" or not, I honestly don't care at all, because both of them are incredibly different, and as such, they shouldn't be compared.

/ramble

 

[SimuLord]

Social gaming : relevant :: Cake in Portal : reality.

Zip-a-de-freakin'-doodah. So a bunch of people who did not before and do not now represent any sort of membership in the traditional gaming market get an entirely new toy to play with that has about as much in common with video games as we know them as my fastball has in common to Nolan Ryan's in his prime?

Farmville (and others like it) looks like a game. They call it a game. But it isn't a game. Not in any relevant sense. It's a social tool, certainly. A means of delivering marketing, absolutely. But a game it is not.

 

[mattaui]

I'll add my own take on what's already been said and said well by many earlier posters, but the huge mistake here is thinking that somehow the same people who love themselves some Gears of War 2 or spend years playing World of Warcraft were really just dying to do something really exciting like play Farmville. Do some people who play those games -also- play Zynga games? Well sure, there are some folks who game 24/7 and might dabble in a little bit of everything, but that's not really who we're talking about here. If you switch the sort of media you're talking about, it immediately becomes more clear as to how ridiculous a concept this is.

With the success of Harry Potter, for instance, did publishers scrap their romance novels and techno thrillers? No. Now, did some authors decide to write more children's fantasy? Yes. What that did was create a bigger market, but it didn't change the fact that there were still all those people who liked romances, mysteries and thrillers that had absolutely no interest in children's fantasy books. Did some of those voracious readers also read Harry Potter? Of course. Did that mean they stopped wanting to read their Anita Blake novels? No. And heck, modern horror, which is often modern erotic horror, is really darn popular too, but does that mean that's all anyone wants to read? Hardly.

I picked on fiction because it's the other media I'm most familiar with, but I'm sure you can apply it across all of them. New, fresh ideas come along and everyone wants to make money off them, but it seems to be a lesson learned anew each time that you can't entirely abandon what came before with the idea that somehow this shiny new concept changes everything. The question is whether or not EA or Activision should waste resources pursuing this or whether they should, perhaps, buy or form some smaller development studio to do little casual games.

Is there a chance for huge ROI based of cheap casual games, on Facebook, phones or otherwise? Sure. But does that mean that people are going to stop being interested in Modern Warfare and Madden to go play Angry Birds and Farmville? Not a chance.

 

[Baldr]

Um EA owns Playfish, and Ubisoft has a couple studios working on social games, so um I don't understand the point of this article?

 

[Hexley]

Social games draw from the non-gamer audience, the strictly casual gaming audience, as well as some of the hardcore gaming audience. While Hardcore games are generally only going to draw from the latter two with emphasis on the hardcore audience. It's not some sort of crazy mystery why Facebook games have larger playerbases than most hardcore games.

They are very different styles of game, and they cater to very different people. But it is simply because of social games' nature that they are going to have more players.

I'm not quite sure how this topic warrants articles in analysis of it. It's the same thing as when people acted surprised for some reason when the wii outsold the other two consoles in the console race.

 

[Lullabye]

No, I like my games hardcore and intense. If I want to play some layed back casual thing then I can always make a facebook profile. but until then, I'll stick with my Tekken, Streetfighter, and Soulcalibur(However broken it is)

 

[mjc0961]

"so what do social game makers know that the likes of EA and Activision do not?"

Easy: people will play whatever junk you throw in front of them if you let them play it for free.

 

[geizr]

I think you all are missing the point of the attention on "casual"/social gaming. As far as I understand, game companies are struggling with profitability in the so-called true gaming/"hardcore" gaming space. In order to be able to continue producing the kind of games you all like playing, game companies need to find new strategies to obtain profitability that will allow them to make more substantial investment in game innovations. The sheer size of the "casual" and social gaming markets have the potential to provide game companies a buffering reservoir of income and profit that will allow them to take on greater risk in game develop, increasing innovation and variety in games. While it is true that the markets don't overlap, there is very good reason for any game company to be considering expanding their operations into the "casual"/social gaming space for the expressed purpose of being able to remain in business.

Another thing, there is such a thing as opportunity cost. It's an old concept that has to do with losses incurred from lost opportunities. Basically, the entire "casual"/social gaming phenomenon represents an opportunity cost that game companies have incurred exactly because of the very insular type of thinking you all are expressing. It is entirely possible that had game companies realized sooner the possibility and scope of "casual"/social gaming, they would have made better capitalization on it sooner and mitigated much of the current financial woes they are currently enduring. Thus, news of the state, nature, and financial solvency of "casual"/social gaming can be of critical important to the future business strategy of almost every game company out there.

Honestly, people, quit being so irrationally cynical and insular all the time and trying to imitate the attitudes of Yahtzee, and learn to look at the bigger picture of things.