The day when such "games" will actually eat a meaningful share off the "regular" games market will be the end of the Human Sapiens. There are a lot of regular Bills and Joes that are hard put to it when it comes to plugging the mouse into the right USB, yet it is not the thing masses should aspire for.
Everyone starts at 0. It is by overcoming challenges that we learn and evolve. Thus, the day when challeges become uncool will be a very bad day indeed. And these games are avatars of this cool uncoolness.
I really didn't want to be reminded of this. This topic has popped up quite a few times since Facebook games took off. The "Farmville Side" (Or the social, micro-transaction, pay for results side of the coin) really believe this is the future of video games as a whole. It's scary how sure they are sometimes. I mean, you hear them talk and they're in the industry and you're not, so you have to ask yourself, "What if he's right?"
I recommend everyone check out this episode of the Bonus Round. It's a discussion on the state of the industry. The guy in the middle is so certain that games, we're talking hardcore games like your Call of Duty's, World of Warcraft's, sports games and such are all going to follow the Farmville approach where you can pay to unlock everything. He believes games will require longer time investments to unlock everything, but will all offer micro-transactions to unlock and upgrade faster for the players who don't have time or don't want to work at it.
It caused a lot of anger on Gametrailers.com and I can't blame blame them. We as gamers and not developers have to speak with our wallets and word of mouth to make sure this shift never occurs.
I really didn't want to be reminded of this. This topic has popped up quite a few times since Facebook games took off. The "Farmville Side" (Or the social, micro-transaction, pay for results side of the coin) really believe this is the future of video games as a whole. It's scary how sure they are sometimes. I mean, you hear them talk and they're in the industry and you're not, so you have to ask yourself, "What if he's right?" http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/bonusround/402?ch=1 http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/bonusround/401?ch=2 http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/bonusround/401?ch=3 http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/bonusround/401?ch=4 I recommend everyone check out this episode of the Bonus Round. It's a discussion on the state of the industry. The guy in the middle is so certain that games, we're talking hardcore games like your Call of Duty's, World of Warcraft's, sports games and such are all going to follow the Farmville approach where you can pay to unlock everything. He believes games will require longer time investments to unlock everything, but will all offer micro-transactions to unlock and upgrade faster for the players who don't have time or don't want to work at it. It caused a lot of anger on Gametrailers.com and I can't blame blame them. We as gamers and not developers have to speak with our wallets and word of mouth to make sure this shift never occurs.
Rest assured, it will not occur. There will always be games as we know them. Like there is only place for one WOW, there just isnt a market for dozens or more Farmville's. And then what will the other game developers do?
This is total nonsense talk.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Great! So, the backlash of this is the so-called AAA developers now decide that they might as well make their games even more shallow and less like worlds (sim-like) to cut even more costs to make them more attractive toward investors. Perfect. Just, perfect. Oh, sure, there may be more logical steps to take in this case, steps that I may even embrace. But if there is one thing this industry has shown me since WoW is that the heads of these companies aren't anywhere near logical nor do they have creativity anywhere in their mindset. They are indeed chasing metrics and there hasn't been any miraculous event that is going to stop them from this pattern of behavior.
If World of Darkness Online and/or Copernicus don't offer up well-rounded world's and instead are more of the same old same AAA offerings of late, then I'm seriously done with this genre of gaming. I'm going to go to Facebook, unblock Farmville and start playing it non-stop. I, and many others, have been begging, kicking and screaming for a return to the depth and variety of gameplay that UO and early SWG offered and have been continuously ignored. Well, if hitching my wagon to Zynga and finally accepting a paper dixie cup full of Aihoshi's Blue Kool-Aid in any minute way screws over the establishment (the AAA P2Pers) and allows me to throw up a parting middle digit, well, in the infamous words of Palpatine..."So be it, Jedi..."
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Nice article, but there is a bit of a dot-com, beanie baby ring to the way "social games" are being talked about these days. Yes like any "trendy" things some implimenters can make a good chunk of change off it if they luck into hitting it at the right time and place.... but most won't and alot that invest heavily in it will loose thier shirts. The VC's have a vested interest in hyping this up as well...I've seen the way alot of these guys work... they are like snake-oil salsemen... they don't make the bulk of thier returns off of sustained revenue like a traditional business would (i.e. making a doughnut costs 50 cents, you can sell one for $1 ...repeat a couple million times and your making money).... they do it buy jumping into a company product early with a chunk of cash...hyping it up to show that it has "growth metrics" and then turning around and making a windfall by selling it to some other poor slob investor who suddenly discovers that "growth metrics" doesn't equal sustainable proffit.
I think one of the posters in one of the discussions linked to put it best....essentialy he said....
So what if some social game has x zillion users, how many of them are actualy paying anything? A thousand people drive by my house every day, not one of them gives me any money...does that make me rich?
That shouldn't be too hard to understand...USERS/VISITORS are not a revenue source...they are a COST source... CUSTOMERS are a revenue source (i.e. money changes hands).
Now traditionaly...alot of high volume sites have tried to cash in on that volume by selling advertising space or targeted mailing lists or other crap like that.... but that business model is getting harder and harder to pitch ever since the economy took a down turn and corporate budgets got tighter. The CFO's at the big Corps have finally started to finally wise upto the fact that just because you put your corporate logo in front of millions of eye-balls doesn't mean your bottom line is going to budge one millimeter. Things like "brand-awareness" and all that other fuzzy stuff that Marketers love to tout are being put under a harsh spot-light these days.... and the view, unsurprisingly isn't pretty.
The big corps (rightfully so) aren't much interested in paying for things like "site views" or "unique visitors" or "even click throughs".....increasingly the only thing they are willing to shell out cash for is "conversions"..... that is something that shows that the pair of eye-balls you directed there way actualy plunked down cold hard cash to BUY something from them.
That's the real kicker (as in bring you back to reality) about this whole Social Network phenominom.... at the end of the day, Volume doesn't mean crap if somewhere down the line, money isn't changing hands.
That isn't to say that there isn't some decent money to be had in the social gaming arena. Some users do derive some value (entertainment or otherwise) from those social venues and (just like those of us who like to light up digital zombies with a 12 gauge) are willing to plunk down some cash for that experience.
However, "social gaming" and social media in general these days are alot more hype then they are SUSTAINABLE revenue.... and anyone that tries to tell you different is probably trying to sell you something.
I think it is just an expanding online world. My gal plays facebook games and would never play a MMORPG - just wouldnt invest that much time. I think they are very different targeted audiences, just happen to be online and games.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
I think it is just an expanding online world. My gal plays facebook games and would never play a MMORPG - just wouldnt invest that much time. I think they are very different targeted audiences, just happen to be online and games.
Make sure she is on the lookout for scams. Big time.
Meh, my girl played Farmville pretty hardcore for about a month and got bored, never spent a dime on it but I'm sure there are some that have. I don't see how people can enjoy it, it looks soooooo boring. To each his own though. Either way, it's a trend, it will die out. Just like Myspace did before Facebook became the "in" thing. I really don't see games similar to Farmville destroying anyones fun, no real gamer is going to sit there and play these things for more than a couple days without getting absolutely bored of it.
Rest assured, it will not occur. There will always be games as we know them. Like there is only place for one WOW, there just isnt a market for dozens or more Farmville's. And then what will the other game developers do? This is total nonsense talk.
Agreed.
It's one thing for Zynga to have a dozen different variations of Mafia Wars and Farmville on Facebook. It's another thing entirely for dozens of other developers to flood Facebook and other social media sites with knockoffs of Mafia Wars and Farmville to try and replicate their success. The crowd that gravitates towards a game like Farmville isn't necessarily going to follow a dozen more clones of it or give those other games any money or time at all. They've got their Facebook routine down, and they're going to stick to it.
Also, nothing on Facebook is going to kill traditional gaming. The whole idea that companies are suddenly going to divert all their funding away from larger AAA titles towards cheaply made Farmville clones is absurd. Developers can easily do both. Look at Ubisoft-- for every ridiculous piece of Wii or DS shovelware that they put out (the Petz and Imagine games, the My Coach series, etc.) they ALSO still put out more serious, hardcore games for the traditional gamer. Why can't the same hold true here?
If an MMO developer decides to put a game on Facebook, like SOE has with Pox Nora, that doesn't detract from their other games in development, like DCU Online, and it doesn't fundamentally alter the game market. It's just a developer casting the widest possible net for potential customers.
The problem with games like Farmville or any of the facebook games. They operate 24/7 so you have to contantly be online to tend your game. Completely ridiculous. I can play a MMO when I want in most situations. Same with any FPS or stategy game and not worry about logging on in the middle of the night.
They do not threaten gaming at all in my opinion, they just seem to attract people who are not really gamers.
This is a funding war. I actually think MMOs as a genre will survive just fine, because face it - MMO fans are a niche market. What will be interesting is what happens to the rest of gaming - I can't imagine that EA, Activision, and their investors are very happy to watch Zynga. Not to mention what Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony are feeling right now.
It might actually be healthy for PC Gaming - remember the dead gaming platform, no one will play games on their PC anymore - that was the forecast a few years ago from all the big publishers/console makers.
I played Farmville for a while, until family got way to competitive. In retrospect it was hilarious to watch my sisters and brothers have melt downs over berries and which had the better barn. It was fun for a while, played it longer than I've played many games including some MMOs. Parts of it are more Sims like and part of it is frankly just like a lot of MMOs - a grind fest.
It is healthy for the game developers to be discussing grind fests, because they truly lack creativity. Farmville really does have the whole levelling for your carrots (and other edibles) thing mastered. I'm waiting for a review that compares the grind in a new MMO to Farmville - we now have a standard that can be measured against.
As an example - is there any difference (except for time) between planting/harvesting berries in Farmville and killing Salamandars in LOTRO (for a deed)? Farmville actually has LOTRO beat on this one, it takes less time, though you will have to do something else for the hours that the berries are growing.
What will be really kewl is if more in depth games tackle Facebook. I can't wait to see what Firaxis does with Civ on Facebook.
Social games are just that, social. Good for what they target, families.
Just in my wife's family, she has 2 sisters, nephews, nieces, a brother, and even her 60+ year old mother spend a few minutes a day on face book and farm town.
Just another way besides e-mail, or the phone to keep in contact.
None of them actually spend cash to add to their farms, and when my wife is ready and has time to play games, she goes on-line and plays with her gaming friends. DAOC, FE, are the 2 games she spends time on now. She does not consider farm town a game, just an extension of face book that she and her family uses to talk and visit with and about, a few minutes each day.
The vast majority of people are the same as my wife and her family i would imagine, never spend cash on these sites just use them to keep in contact a little each day. By the way, none of the others in her family on face book, play other on-line games now or have they in the past.
Just a social site that they can chat for a few minutes if they happen to be online at the same time and leave a message for them each day.
I do not think that there is much competition between the 2, On-line games and the social sites. As i said, just in my wife's family, the ones that have or will play and pay for on-line games have and will continue to do so, but not on the social sites, they go with the regular on-line games.
i dont really consider Farmville killing gaming. its merely a social game, a time waster, some people obviously spend money on it, but most dont. I dont play farmville and I probably never will. I just think I consider it a killer of gaming, as it doesnt directly compete with traditional games.
but I also think its a good thing that these 'games" are here as they introduce non gamers to the joy of gaming, whether it be a social game, a psuedo-RPGesque game. It gives a person who would not necessarily be interested in gaming in general a reason to be curious and venture further into perhaps console gaming such as buying a PS3, wii, or xbox360 or even getting PC games. I think they are in some respect are a benefit to the industry as a whole.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
It's the same choir we hear every time something new comes up. When Second Life was new, all those experts predicted that in a few years normal MMOs would be dead and everyone would play games like Second Life. Or like for 20 years consoles make PC gaming dead. Or whatever is fashion to say that X is going to kill Y.
I really stopped listening to this.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Only time will tell whether or not it lasts. My opinion is that it is like cell phone gaming. Yes, it's profitable for those that survive, but you don't see Capcom shelving its AAA games to focus solely on cell phones. Companies will make money off of it while it lasts as a fad, and keep making their AAA games.
We've had so much pontification though on the MMO scene that anything anyone says I am starting to doubt.
Originally posted by Stradden I think that's probably true from a player's point of view, but the war isn't over players and where they spend their time. The war, if there is one, is over money. Obviously, games need money in order to be made. With the success of social games like Farmville, which can be made at a literal fraction of the cost of making a AAA title, more and more investors are looking toward that side of the market. Think about it this way: If you could make a pile of money by either a) investing a lot and taking a large risk or b) investing a little and taking a much smaller risk, which one are you going to do? So, do virtual worlds have something to fear from the success of Facebook and other social games? Of course they do. it's not that people are afraid no one's going to play the AAA games, it's the fear that no one's going to fund the AAA games.
Hi John,
This is not dissimilar to the differences between Mainframe solutions and the introduction to the PC or Custom written software versus off-the-shelf software that has happened in the commercial side of computer usage. For that matter, you can look at the web for similar examples... roll-your-own HTML produced from 1993-1996ish vs. WYSIWYG editors that completely hide HTML from the developer.
I think you'll see development of solutions that allow you to create triple A games for a fraction of the development time and cost evolve similar to the Game Engines that were developed by FPSs. Frameworks will evolve to assist in building out the rules sets and allow balancing. Art and music will be a challenge but we've already seen giant leaps in the tool sets used in computer generated media.
I also think that this will be an incentive to reducing the entry barrier (and I'm not talking costs) to MMOs. If you want a more general audience to play your game, you'll have to make it easily understandable to non-gamers. This, I think, is the biggest thing "social games" get right today.
My HOPE (and others have already said this) is that some of these people in the new games will get bored and want a greater challenge, drawing them to more traditional MMOs. Being a sandbox player, I've long held out hope that the theme park MMOs would act as 'trainers' to users who would migrate to sandbox solutions but, to this point, that has not occurred as yet (I say it's because the only triple A game was SWG but I'm wearing my rose coloured glasses) so maybe all of my thoughts here are just wishful thinking.
I have to run out but will simply say this: THIS is the kind of (high) quality, in-depth article mmorpg.com has to aim to release on a consistent basis. We will read more than a 1,000 words if it isn't merely unresearched and unsubstantiated ranting. A great read and I look forward to adding a comment or two once I have some free time.
QFT, first article I read from the first word to the last paragraph in years on this site. Keep it up, and redesign the aweful graphics of the site (remove most flash adds and make the site use modern fonts and colors) and you will gain our trust and interest back from sites such as massively.
I think that's probably true from a player's point of view, but the war isn't over players and where they spend their time. The war, if there is one, is over money. Obviously, games need money in order to be made. With the success of social games like Farmville, which can be made at a literal fraction of the cost of making a AAA title, more and more investors are looking toward that side of the market. Think about it this way: If you could make a pile of money by either a) investing a lot and taking a large risk or b) investing a little and taking a much smaller risk, which one are you going to do? So, do virtual worlds have something to fear from the success of Facebook and other social games? Of course they do. it's not that people are afraid no one's going to play the AAA games, it's the fear that no one's going to fund the AAA games.
I would almost consider this a good thing. The current developerXpublisher companies are producing lackluster products, and quality has not been a characteristic of any game that has released, since LOTRO. If it is more difficult for developers to obtain funds, then hopefully they will put that much more time into developing and producing a good quality product.
Calling Farmville a "social" game is like calling solitair a social game. You play it alone. You don't team up with anyone to plant seeds or harvest your crops. The most social thing you can do in Farmville is fertilize/weed the plots on your neighbor's farms, alone.
Real social games are MMORPG's where people team up for adventure to achieve common goals. True socializing happens in MMORPG's. Not in play-for-10-minutes-between-classes time wasters like Farmville.
I've played a number of those social networking games including Farmville to level 24 and I've stopped because it's horrendously laggy and painfully time wasting. They're very buggy and have constant desync issues and the spam advertising has changed the spirit of Facebook. On top of this, Facebook constantly make annoying changes to the interface, such as 'newsfeed' intended to bombard people. Where once you could configure and control different types of newsfeeds, you now can't do anything to get rid of them.
I marvel how these Zynga dudes got in at the right time to get direct access and exploit 300 million users. The games are simple, and as has been said, it's suckered in all those non gamers, primarily the females. Their brutal spam methods are shamelessly scammy and I'm wondering if these guys are going to end up with some lawsuit in the near future.
Civ is going there and so is Richard Garriott because they know there's a market to be tapped here. It might not affect big companies and real gamers but it's not going to do Indies any favours.
Of the 80 million farmville players, how many are actively playing? Most people play farmville off and on and I don't know anyone who doesn't spend more then a few minutes a day on it. It is no competition to real games. No gamer would ever say, instead of buying a game I really want, I will play Farmville instead.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.
I have no problem with gaming like farmville. The people i want to play with in MMO's are not the farmville type. Therefore it wont affect my fun in the least. As a player who loves EVE i have not a single bit of desire to play anything even remotely like farmville. I would like to think that other players who love games like EVE feel the same way. So what the hell do i care?
Playing: PO, EVE Waiting for: WoD Favourite MMOs: VG, EVE, FE and DDO Any person who expresses rage and loathing for an MMO is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
Comments
The day when such "games" will actually eat a meaningful share off the "regular" games market will be the end of the Human Sapiens. There are a lot of regular Bills and Joes that are hard put to it when it comes to plugging the mouse into the right USB, yet it is not the thing masses should aspire for.
Everyone starts at 0. It is by overcoming challenges that we learn and evolve. Thus, the day when challeges become uncool will be a very bad day indeed. And these games are avatars of this cool uncoolness.
Not again this argument... didnt we just have the same 2 weeks ago?
Farmville killing gaming... shoot. THE END IS NIGH! =P
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I really didn't want to be reminded of this. This topic has popped up quite a few times since Facebook games took off. The "Farmville Side" (Or the social, micro-transaction, pay for results side of the coin) really believe this is the future of video games as a whole. It's scary how sure they are sometimes. I mean, you hear them talk and they're in the industry and you're not, so you have to ask yourself, "What if he's right?"
http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/bonusround/402?ch=1
http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/bonusround/401?ch=2
http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/bonusround/401?ch=3
http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/bonusround/401?ch=4
I recommend everyone check out this episode of the Bonus Round. It's a discussion on the state of the industry. The guy in the middle is so certain that games, we're talking hardcore games like your Call of Duty's, World of Warcraft's, sports games and such are all going to follow the Farmville approach where you can pay to unlock everything. He believes games will require longer time investments to unlock everything, but will all offer micro-transactions to unlock and upgrade faster for the players who don't have time or don't want to work at it.
It caused a lot of anger on Gametrailers.com and I can't blame blame them. We as gamers and not developers have to speak with our wallets and word of mouth to make sure this shift never occurs.
Actually - the argument is that Farmville and it's ilk are scamming people.
Rest assured, it will not occur. There will always be games as we know them. Like there is only place for one WOW, there just isnt a market for dozens or more Farmville's. And then what will the other game developers do?
This is total nonsense talk.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Great! So, the backlash of this is the so-called AAA developers now decide that they might as well make their games even more shallow and less like worlds (sim-like) to cut even more costs to make them more attractive toward investors. Perfect. Just, perfect. Oh, sure, there may be more logical steps to take in this case, steps that I may even embrace. But if there is one thing this industry has shown me since WoW is that the heads of these companies aren't anywhere near logical nor do they have creativity anywhere in their mindset. They are indeed chasing metrics and there hasn't been any miraculous event that is going to stop them from this pattern of behavior.
If World of Darkness Online and/or Copernicus don't offer up well-rounded world's and instead are more of the same old same AAA offerings of late, then I'm seriously done with this genre of gaming. I'm going to go to Facebook, unblock Farmville and start playing it non-stop. I, and many others, have been begging, kicking and screaming for a return to the depth and variety of gameplay that UO and early SWG offered and have been continuously ignored. Well, if hitching my wagon to Zynga and finally accepting a paper dixie cup full of Aihoshi's Blue Kool-Aid in any minute way screws over the establishment (the AAA P2Pers) and allows me to throw up a parting middle digit, well, in the infamous words of Palpatine..."So be it, Jedi..."
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
Nice article, but there is a bit of a dot-com, beanie baby ring to the way "social games" are being talked about these days. Yes like any "trendy" things some implimenters can make a good chunk of change off it if they luck into hitting it at the right time and place.... but most won't and alot that invest heavily in it will loose thier shirts. The VC's have a vested interest in hyping this up as well...I've seen the way alot of these guys work... they are like snake-oil salsemen... they don't make the bulk of thier returns off of sustained revenue like a traditional business would (i.e. making a doughnut costs 50 cents, you can sell one for $1 ...repeat a couple million times and your making money).... they do it buy jumping into a company product early with a chunk of cash...hyping it up to show that it has "growth metrics" and then turning around and making a windfall by selling it to some other poor slob investor who suddenly discovers that "growth metrics" doesn't equal sustainable proffit.
I think one of the posters in one of the discussions linked to put it best....essentialy he said....
So what if some social game has x zillion users, how many of them are actualy paying anything? A thousand people drive by my house every day, not one of them gives me any money...does that make me rich?
That shouldn't be too hard to understand...USERS/VISITORS are not a revenue source...they are a COST source... CUSTOMERS are a revenue source (i.e. money changes hands).
Now traditionaly...alot of high volume sites have tried to cash in on that volume by selling advertising space or targeted mailing lists or other crap like that.... but that business model is getting harder and harder to pitch ever since the economy took a down turn and corporate budgets got tighter. The CFO's at the big Corps have finally started to finally wise upto the fact that just because you put your corporate logo in front of millions of eye-balls doesn't mean your bottom line is going to budge one millimeter. Things like "brand-awareness" and all that other fuzzy stuff that Marketers love to tout are being put under a harsh spot-light these days.... and the view, unsurprisingly isn't pretty.
The big corps (rightfully so) aren't much interested in paying for things like "site views" or "unique visitors" or "even click throughs".....increasingly the only thing they are willing to shell out cash for is "conversions"..... that is something that shows that the pair of eye-balls you directed there way actualy plunked down cold hard cash to BUY something from them.
That's the real kicker (as in bring you back to reality) about this whole Social Network phenominom.... at the end of the day, Volume doesn't mean crap if somewhere down the line, money isn't changing hands.
That isn't to say that there isn't some decent money to be had in the social gaming arena. Some users do derive some value (entertainment or otherwise) from those social venues and (just like those of us who like to light up digital zombies with a 12 gauge) are willing to plunk down some cash for that experience.
However, "social gaming" and social media in general these days are alot more hype then they are SUSTAINABLE revenue.... and anyone that tries to tell you different is probably trying to sell you something.
I think it is just an expanding online world. My gal plays facebook games and would never play a MMORPG - just wouldnt invest that much time. I think they are very different targeted audiences, just happen to be online and games.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
Make sure she is on the lookout for scams. Big time.
Meh, my girl played Farmville pretty hardcore for about a month and got bored, never spent a dime on it but I'm sure there are some that have. I don't see how people can enjoy it, it looks soooooo boring. To each his own though. Either way, it's a trend, it will die out. Just like Myspace did before Facebook became the "in" thing. I really don't see games similar to Farmville destroying anyones fun, no real gamer is going to sit there and play these things for more than a couple days without getting absolutely bored of it.
Agreed.
It's one thing for Zynga to have a dozen different variations of Mafia Wars and Farmville on Facebook. It's another thing entirely for dozens of other developers to flood Facebook and other social media sites with knockoffs of Mafia Wars and Farmville to try and replicate their success. The crowd that gravitates towards a game like Farmville isn't necessarily going to follow a dozen more clones of it or give those other games any money or time at all. They've got their Facebook routine down, and they're going to stick to it.
Also, nothing on Facebook is going to kill traditional gaming. The whole idea that companies are suddenly going to divert all their funding away from larger AAA titles towards cheaply made Farmville clones is absurd. Developers can easily do both. Look at Ubisoft-- for every ridiculous piece of Wii or DS shovelware that they put out (the Petz and Imagine games, the My Coach series, etc.) they ALSO still put out more serious, hardcore games for the traditional gamer. Why can't the same hold true here?
If an MMO developer decides to put a game on Facebook, like SOE has with Pox Nora, that doesn't detract from their other games in development, like DCU Online, and it doesn't fundamentally alter the game market. It's just a developer casting the widest possible net for potential customers.
The problem with games like Farmville or any of the facebook games. They operate 24/7 so you have to contantly be online to tend your game. Completely ridiculous. I can play a MMO when I want in most situations. Same with any FPS or stategy game and not worry about logging on in the middle of the night.
They do not threaten gaming at all in my opinion, they just seem to attract people who are not really gamers.
This is a funding war. I actually think MMOs as a genre will survive just fine, because face it - MMO fans are a niche market. What will be interesting is what happens to the rest of gaming - I can't imagine that EA, Activision, and their investors are very happy to watch Zynga. Not to mention what Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony are feeling right now.
It might actually be healthy for PC Gaming - remember the dead gaming platform, no one will play games on their PC anymore - that was the forecast a few years ago from all the big publishers/console makers.
I played Farmville for a while, until family got way to competitive. In retrospect it was hilarious to watch my sisters and brothers have melt downs over berries and which had the better barn. It was fun for a while, played it longer than I've played many games including some MMOs. Parts of it are more Sims like and part of it is frankly just like a lot of MMOs - a grind fest.
It is healthy for the game developers to be discussing grind fests, because they truly lack creativity. Farmville really does have the whole levelling for your carrots (and other edibles) thing mastered. I'm waiting for a review that compares the grind in a new MMO to Farmville - we now have a standard that can be measured against.
As an example - is there any difference (except for time) between planting/harvesting berries in Farmville and killing Salamandars in LOTRO (for a deed)? Farmville actually has LOTRO beat on this one, it takes less time, though you will have to do something else for the hours that the berries are growing.
What will be really kewl is if more in depth games tackle Facebook. I can't wait to see what Firaxis does with Civ on Facebook.
Social games are just that, social. Good for what they target, families.
Just in my wife's family, she has 2 sisters, nephews, nieces, a brother, and even her 60+ year old mother spend a few minutes a day on face book and farm town.
Just another way besides e-mail, or the phone to keep in contact.
None of them actually spend cash to add to their farms, and when my wife is ready and has time to play games, she goes on-line and plays with her gaming friends. DAOC, FE, are the 2 games she spends time on now. She does not consider farm town a game, just an extension of face book that she and her family uses to talk and visit with and about, a few minutes each day.
The vast majority of people are the same as my wife and her family i would imagine, never spend cash on these sites just use them to keep in contact a little each day. By the way, none of the others in her family on face book, play other on-line games now or have they in the past.
Just a social site that they can chat for a few minutes if they happen to be online at the same time and leave a message for them each day.
I do not think that there is much competition between the 2, On-line games and the social sites. As i said, just in my wife's family, the ones that have or will play and pay for on-line games have and will continue to do so, but not on the social sites, they go with the regular on-line games.
i dont really consider Farmville killing gaming. its merely a social game, a time waster, some people obviously spend money on it, but most dont. I dont play farmville and I probably never will. I just think I consider it a killer of gaming, as it doesnt directly compete with traditional games.
but I also think its a good thing that these 'games" are here as they introduce non gamers to the joy of gaming, whether it be a social game, a psuedo-RPGesque game. It gives a person who would not necessarily be interested in gaming in general a reason to be curious and venture further into perhaps console gaming such as buying a PS3, wii, or xbox360 or even getting PC games. I think they are in some respect are a benefit to the industry as a whole.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
It's the same choir we hear every time something new comes up. When Second Life was new, all those experts predicted that in a few years normal MMOs would be dead and everyone would play games like Second Life. Or like for 20 years consoles make PC gaming dead. Or whatever is fashion to say that X is going to kill Y.
I really stopped listening to this.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Only time will tell whether or not it lasts. My opinion is that it is like cell phone gaming. Yes, it's profitable for those that survive, but you don't see Capcom shelving its AAA games to focus solely on cell phones. Companies will make money off of it while it lasts as a fad, and keep making their AAA games.
We've had so much pontification though on the MMO scene that anything anyone says I am starting to doubt.
farmville is not even a real game, cmon -.-
my gf plays in when she is facebooking. i simply laugh at this, but this kind of game suits her fine. ill stay with real games
Hi John,
This is not dissimilar to the differences between Mainframe solutions and the introduction to the PC or Custom written software versus off-the-shelf software that has happened in the commercial side of computer usage. For that matter, you can look at the web for similar examples... roll-your-own HTML produced from 1993-1996ish vs. WYSIWYG editors that completely hide HTML from the developer.
I think you'll see development of solutions that allow you to create triple A games for a fraction of the development time and cost evolve similar to the Game Engines that were developed by FPSs. Frameworks will evolve to assist in building out the rules sets and allow balancing. Art and music will be a challenge but we've already seen giant leaps in the tool sets used in computer generated media.
I also think that this will be an incentive to reducing the entry barrier (and I'm not talking costs) to MMOs. If you want a more general audience to play your game, you'll have to make it easily understandable to non-gamers. This, I think, is the biggest thing "social games" get right today.
My HOPE (and others have already said this) is that some of these people in the new games will get bored and want a greater challenge, drawing them to more traditional MMOs. Being a sandbox player, I've long held out hope that the theme park MMOs would act as 'trainers' to users who would migrate to sandbox solutions but, to this point, that has not occurred as yet (I say it's because the only triple A game was SWG but I'm wearing my rose coloured glasses) so maybe all of my thoughts here are just wishful thinking.
-=[ Gaidin ]=-
QFT, first article I read from the first word to the last paragraph in years on this site. Keep it up, and redesign the aweful graphics of the site (remove most flash adds and make the site use modern fonts and colors) and you will gain our trust and interest back from sites such as massively.
I would almost consider this a good thing. The current developerXpublisher companies are producing lackluster products, and quality has not been a characteristic of any game that has released, since LOTRO. If it is more difficult for developers to obtain funds, then hopefully they will put that much more time into developing and producing a good quality product.
Calling Farmville a "social" game is like calling solitair a social game. You play it alone. You don't team up with anyone to plant seeds or harvest your crops. The most social thing you can do in Farmville is fertilize/weed the plots on your neighbor's farms, alone.
Real social games are MMORPG's where people team up for adventure to achieve common goals. True socializing happens in MMORPG's. Not in play-for-10-minutes-between-classes time wasters like Farmville.
I've played a number of those social networking games including Farmville to level 24 and I've stopped because it's horrendously laggy and painfully time wasting. They're very buggy and have constant desync issues and the spam advertising has changed the spirit of Facebook. On top of this, Facebook constantly make annoying changes to the interface, such as 'newsfeed' intended to bombard people. Where once you could configure and control different types of newsfeeds, you now can't do anything to get rid of them.
I marvel how these Zynga dudes got in at the right time to get direct access and exploit 300 million users. The games are simple, and as has been said, it's suckered in all those non gamers, primarily the females. Their brutal spam methods are shamelessly scammy and I'm wondering if these guys are going to end up with some lawsuit in the near future.
Civ is going there and so is Richard Garriott because they know there's a market to be tapped here. It might not affect big companies and real gamers but it's not going to do Indies any favours.
Of the 80 million farmville players, how many are actively playing? Most people play farmville off and on and I don't know anyone who doesn't spend more then a few minutes a day on it. It is no competition to real games. No gamer would ever say, instead of buying a game I really want, I will play Farmville instead.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.
I have no problem with gaming like farmville. The people i want to play with in MMO's are not the farmville type. Therefore it wont affect my fun in the least. As a player who loves EVE i have not a single bit of desire to play anything even remotely like farmville. I would like to think that other players who love games like EVE feel the same way. So what the hell do i care?
Playing: PO, EVE
Waiting for: WoD
Favourite MMOs: VG, EVE, FE and DDO
Any person who expresses rage and loathing for an MMO is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.