Too Human Dev Predicts Social Gaming Crash
- Thread starter Logan Westbrook
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Ha! I'm reading this on my phone, so I only see the post and not the author. when I read this one I thought to. myself: "This sounds a LOT like root.". Turned out I was right.The_root_of_all_evil said:
I also happen to agree with you. As usual, it seems.
Ok. Basic idea is a old game done in a new way.uguito-93 said:
Farmville is M.U.L.E with interaction.=, WoW is Roleplayers for non-nerds, Guitar Hero is Rhthym Games where you hold a plastic guitar. 3DS isn't even that,
I still have one of these somewhere.
Gimmicks don't make a platform. Even the Wii knows that.
He's HOPING that it;ll change.
The truth is that microsoft is entering the market very soon now that she bought Skype and ready to implement it. Microsoft will make her games a social experience, and for that I hate her.
It won't change since all will bow down to the skinner box tricks these games offer, and nothing more.
The truth is that microsoft is entering the market very soon now that she bought Skype and ready to implement it. Microsoft will make her games a social experience, and for that I hate her.
It won't change since all will bow down to the skinner box tricks these games offer, and nothing more.
Social Games will die, but only the ones at the moment. Truth is, people get bored of the same old thing, so when a new genre is shown in a social aspect (like, ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE BELONG TO US) they'll most likely give it a shot and be hooked. Social gaming as it is, is just too broad to simply die out altogether unless people stop making them. That's just common sense.
I'm looking at it like this. He could be right. He could be wrong. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. If by crash he means that there will be a large drop in the number of social games being made and played, I think he's right. There are only so many people able to play these games for so long. Eventually they'll lose interest and/or move on to other games. However, I don't think they'll vanish overnight or anything.
The reason there will be a crash in social marketing is, that the dude is right, at the moment it's a marketing exercise and as a result people are being flooded with a lot of copycats and rubbish which as the Wii and ET proved, have bad results on the market. People will be turned off until people begin putting out games which are fun too. Farmville is less social and more about finding ways to exploit friends networks with spam
The problem is social is a powerful factor, but a very specific one, it has a critical mass and requires a certain share. It's like WoW or Windows, a big thing is how many people are playing already, and if something becomes dominant it's easy stagnate
The problem is social is a powerful factor, but a very specific one, it has a critical mass and requires a certain share. It's like WoW or Windows, a big thing is how many people are playing already, and if something becomes dominant it's easy stagnate
i wish people would stop taking the opportunity to shit on too human, because he just happens to be the founder, he didnt say it was a good idea to make that the stupid death scene (which is the only bad thing i found about the game).
grindfest indeed. its like playing an RPG with no end.exampleAccount said:
I have to point out that this guy also predicted that Too Human would not suck hairy sasquatch balls, which it did.
Exactly, what makes a platform good is the software that supports it, which is why i believe its still too early to pass that kind of judgement on the 3DS seeing as how all we have to go by is its mediocre launch lineup. as long as we start getting some descent games the 3D function wont be the only thing keeping it afloat (which it would not be able to do, no matter how much people say that 3D is the next "big thing").The_root_of_all_evil said:
I'm taking entrepreneur classes; studying to become a business man, and that term have never stumbled upon my learnings. Like, never.Ultratwinkie said:
Until now. Googled it, and I found it just may be irrelevant to games; a product that is built specifically to keep you interest in one or more aspects.
Kind of like, dare I say it... Drugs?
It will take something amazingly significant to change millions of peoples mind to quit social games. Boredom might be their only shot. (Easily applicable but also very easily remedied)
It might happen, mind... Once you find three leprechauns and put them in a stew, boil them, eat them for dinner at your lucky time with dozens of four-leaf clovers as salad.
Or, alternatively, you could just grill them. Any of your choosing.
Precisely. In all fairness, it's not his area of expertise, is it? If he doesn't want to go into "social" games then fair enough, but it's asking a little too much for him to suddenly become the doom prophet of the genre.Logan Westbrook said:
social gaming is NOT going to crash! Because 95% of single player games can be finished in a F..king weekend. this clown is deluding himself of the opposite reality. These big twit clowns such as EA and the weak money hungry minions they possess stop publishing their drivel on the market the better.
I'm sorry, Mr. Dyack, but your personal dislike of a particular genre and your lack of insight regarding its popularity does not necessarily constitute an inevitable failure of that genre. As far as I can determine, two fundamental facts sustain social games: 1) human beings are social creatures by nature(we like finding and having groups with which we are comfortable communing), and 2) people like getting something for free(of course, the games are not truly free, as they are paid by advertising, which the consumer does pay for indirectly through the price of the products being advertised; however, it's close enough to free as most people don't notice or pay attention to the fact). One could also argue that social games are plenty fun for those that play them without requiring the near zealously religious devotion and dedication(sacrifice) of one's mind, body, and soul to the game as many "hardcore" games may require. MMORPGs are especially guilty of this problem.
If you want to talk unsustainable, look at the AAA-title business model of games. Now THAT is unsustainable at its present rate of churn. Soaring costs to produce a game that suffers a complete lack of quality, causing significant disappointment to the gamer for the $60+ that he spent to purchase the game; this results in the success of the game being a complete gamble with a high probability of diminishing returns for the cost and effort. Increasingly, it seems, companies are often betting their entire livelihood on such games rather than diversifying more to balance the costs against the revenue. In other words, producing a AAA-title is very much like playing the lottery for these companies.
The biggest problem of AAA-titles is that they are just too ambitious, and developers are just trying too hard with them in having to live up to producing such a high-value product every single time. This is something that can be done once in a while, not every time a game is produced. The constant expectation that every game produced should be this biblically epic, multi-faceted opus sung by a choir of Angels from Heaven, with appropriate accompaniment by thunder, lightning, and a voice from the Deep expounding the Truths of Existence, is just not reasonable or consistenly attainable; not to mention the fact people just don't have the money to pay for that sort of thing every time or the time to constantly invest in playing such a thing. You have to take a break from stuff like that and deal with something smaller, simpler, more intimate in nature. Something creative.
ADDENDUM: Here is an NPR interview with social psychologist Dan Ariely:
Exploring the 'Upside of Irrationality' [http://www.npr.org/tablet/#story/?storyId=127352130]
Pay particular attention to the segment where he is talking about compensation versus performance and the nonintuitive result that people actually perform worse when the possibility of pay-off is very great. The reason? Stress. People over stress themselves if the possibility of pay-off becomes exceedingly high. They just try too hard and end up failing. I think this behavior has ties into the hit-or-miss nature of the AAA-title model. (This is not to say that people should not try to be successful or obtain great gains for their efforts, but there is a point of reason, beyond which things break down. All things in moderation and proper form, as always.)
If you want to talk unsustainable, look at the AAA-title business model of games. Now THAT is unsustainable at its present rate of churn. Soaring costs to produce a game that suffers a complete lack of quality, causing significant disappointment to the gamer for the $60+ that he spent to purchase the game; this results in the success of the game being a complete gamble with a high probability of diminishing returns for the cost and effort. Increasingly, it seems, companies are often betting their entire livelihood on such games rather than diversifying more to balance the costs against the revenue. In other words, producing a AAA-title is very much like playing the lottery for these companies.
The biggest problem of AAA-titles is that they are just too ambitious, and developers are just trying too hard with them in having to live up to producing such a high-value product every single time. This is something that can be done once in a while, not every time a game is produced. The constant expectation that every game produced should be this biblically epic, multi-faceted opus sung by a choir of Angels from Heaven, with appropriate accompaniment by thunder, lightning, and a voice from the Deep expounding the Truths of Existence, is just not reasonable or consistenly attainable; not to mention the fact people just don't have the money to pay for that sort of thing every time or the time to constantly invest in playing such a thing. You have to take a break from stuff like that and deal with something smaller, simpler, more intimate in nature. Something creative.
ADDENDUM: Here is an NPR interview with social psychologist Dan Ariely:
Exploring the 'Upside of Irrationality' [http://www.npr.org/tablet/#story/?storyId=127352130]
Pay particular attention to the segment where he is talking about compensation versus performance and the nonintuitive result that people actually perform worse when the possibility of pay-off is very great. The reason? Stress. People over stress themselves if the possibility of pay-off becomes exceedingly high. They just try too hard and end up failing. I think this behavior has ties into the hit-or-miss nature of the AAA-title model. (This is not to say that people should not try to be successful or obtain great gains for their efforts, but there is a point of reason, beyond which things break down. All things in moderation and proper form, as always.)
There is one aspect here that wasn't mentionned that also may contribute to an economic crash in the social gaming space. The same aspect that killed the Furby fad: It's fucking annoying. Having millions of beggars online using their friends like leeches, that's not a good way to become popular in a sustainable way. That may sound irrelevant, but when everyone who is annoyed by a product say it in concert, it can have a drastic impact. I'm not saying that it WILL happen, but if I had to take a bet here, it would be on the same side as Dyack. Just because the guy appears to be lunatic while exposed to the media doesn't mean that everything he says is wrong.
While I'm not saying that this fella is necessarily wrong, industry people predicting the demise of their greatest threat is a rather common phenomenon. The creators of Nomad were positive the iPod was just a quickly fading fad, traditional RPG game developers prophesied that Meridian 59, Ultima Online and the whole MMORPG scene were dead on arrival (though, admittedly, they were partly right ), and just about every third AAA developer are quick to tell us that smartphone gaming is a short-term temporary concept.
My guess is that regardless of whether they are right or wrong, in many cases these opinions are inspired by not by solid information and analysis, but by hope and worry.
), and just about every third AAA developer are quick to tell us that smartphone gaming is a short-term temporary concept.My guess is that regardless of whether they are right or wrong, in many cases these opinions are inspired by not by solid information and analysis, but by hope and worry.
Would I rather play Too Human than Farmvile...?
I'll have to get back to you on that. Is suicide viable?
I'll have to get back to you on that. Is suicide viable?