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AyJay
1515 Posts
Old news but haven't seen topic for this... I don't want to express my feelings, but how does that make you guys feel? Poll: HOW DOES THAT MAKE YOU FEEL? angry (106) Cool (23) happy (15) 144 total votes Your vote: HOW DOES THAT MAKE YOU FEEL? For me it pisses me off. Zynga games aren't actually games. I think I would compare this to MW2 success compared to SC2. I mean MW2 is average compared to how much content/work were put to SC2  | ||
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spinesheath
Germany8679 Posts
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Emon_
3925 Posts
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MangoTango
United States3670 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:17 spinesheath wrote: Should I have heard of this Zynga? I checked the link and the logo doesn't ring a bell either... They make Mafia Wars, FarmVille, etc. | ||
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AJMcSpiffy
United States1154 Posts
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MuR)Ernu
Finland768 Posts
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Deadlyfish
Denmark1980 Posts
EA and Activision (not blizzard) should just close. They want to make money more than they want to make a good game. Go Zynga i guess  | ||
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Shiragaku
Hong Kong4308 Posts
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Ryps
Romania2740 Posts
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Emon_
3925 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:23 Shiragaku wrote: For those who are angry, you gotta admit that this is very impressive business skills. What skills are that? | ||
Myles
United States5162 Posts
I mean seriously, they're games just as much as any other and by how large they are I'd say they're enjoyed by more people than SC2 is | ||
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Seide
United States831 Posts
I personally find them stupid and waste, but hey many people think Starcraft is stupid and a waste. Diffrent people, different tastes. Not everyone wants to spend hours upon hours grinding build orders and trying to play at 150+ APM. Some people just want to drift off into a virtual world 10 minutes at a time and have some cheap fun. | ||
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sCuMBaG
United Kingdom1144 Posts
finding dumb shits that play useless and boring shit all day long, and somehow make money out of it. me personally i think it's damn immpressive^^ | ||
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AyJay
1515 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:25 Myles wrote: Elitist much? I mean seriously, they're games just as much as any other and by how large they are I'd say they're enjoyed by more people than SC2 is It also probably means less quality games in future as developers will try to go for these types of games Not to mention social functions such as facebook implementations in our games will be more common... | ||
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Nizaris
Belgium2230 Posts
EA is so desperate they bought Angry Birds the iphone game .. http://www.pcworld.com/article/208315/electronic_arts_snaps_up_angry_birds_publisher_chillingo.html Just give it up already you guys have no creativity. | ||
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us.insurgency
United States330 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:29 AyJay wrote: It also probably means less quality games in future as developers will try to go for these types of games Not to mention social functions such as facebook implementations in our games will be more common... Theres going to be two types of companies.... EA and Blizzard. EA masses shitty games while Blizzard makes high quality games. | ||
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sikyon
Canada1045 Posts
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BeMannerDuPenner
Germany5638 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:25 Myles wrote: Elitist much? I mean seriously, they're games just as much as any other and by how large they are I'd say they're enjoyed by more people than SC2 is mc donalds is enjoyed by more people then "insert actually good food". doesnt mean its good or makes people trashing mcdonals elitist. @topic whatever. the gaming industry is going downhill anyways. was jsut a matter of time till crap for the idiots grows bigger then good games. On November 02 2010 04:34 sikyon wrote: Wow I don't know what people's problems are with more social integration in games and games catered to more casual audiences. it heavily influences future games and trends in the industry. look at shitty bnet2.0. imagine what it could be if the guys responsible wouldnt try to mimic Xboxlive. or look at todays shooters. crappy COD clones evrywhere. games had to be unique ,cool and fun. now its about who copys best and can suck most idiots in their crappy models to milk em for as long as possible. when good games become a niche market its a bad thing for evryone who wants quality. | ||
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Seide
United States831 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:29 AyJay wrote: It also probably means less quality games in future as developers will try to go for these types of games Not to mention social functions such as facebook implementations in our games will be more common... Noone is forcing you to use facebook implementation. It's a nice feature from those who actually have a circle of gaming friends on facebook. If developers want to go where the money goes, sad, but can't fault them for that. Gotta make a living somehow. | ||
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Myles
United States5162 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:29 AyJay wrote: It also probably means less quality games in future as developers will try to go for these types of games Not to mention social functions such as facebook implementations in our games will be more common... Bad games were being made before their creation and will continue to be made long after they die. And I doubt every game developer is going to be jumping ship to create browser based games, unless it becomes possible to play games like SC2 through a browser. And so what? I don't use facebook or any of that crap at all, but I don't care if games have features that integrate with it. As long as it's all optional just get over it. | ||
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Bosu
United States3247 Posts
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Osmoses
Sweden5302 Posts
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NukeTheBunnys
United States1004 Posts
Now that I actually think about it and wrote this down its not surprising at all. The masses don't care how bad the final product is, as long as its cheep(in this case free). There is always going to be a smaller portion of the population that demands the high quality goods. I just hope the proliferation of McGames doesn't negatively effect the development of real games | ||
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Myles
United States5162 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:34 BeMannerDuPenner wrote: mc donalds is enjoyed by more people then "insert actually good food". doesnt mean its good or makes people trashing mcdonals elitist. @topic whatever. the gaming industry is going downhill anyways. was jsut a matter of time till crap for the idiots grows bigger then good games. He's mad because mcdonalds is worth more than any 'good food' restaurant chain for the simple reason that it's quality, to him, makes it unworthy of being in such a position. If that isn't elitist I don't know what is. | ||
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Necrosjef
United Kingdom530 Posts
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Krigwin
1130 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:23 Shiragaku wrote: For those who are angry, you gotta admit that this is very impressive business skills. What skills? Catering to the lowest common denominator? That's not impressive, Rupert Murdoch has been doing that for years. Zynga is not the first to be doing this, or even the most successful. I don't know if you've heard of this, but there's this game called "World of Warcraft", it makes a little bit of money. | ||
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Reason
United Kingdom2770 Posts
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gogogadgetflow
United States2583 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:33 us.insurgency wrote: Theres going to be two types of companies.... EA and Blizzard. EA masses shitty games while Blizzard makes high quality games. EA masses a ton of games, many are shitty but by force of numbers it's practically guaranteed that a few will be halfway decent or better. These will allow EA to persist for decades. Blizzard is meticulous and tries to release only the highest quality games at a slower rate, but eventually it will slip up at a crucial time, be unable to deliver the next thrill, and be gone forever. Most likely EA or Zynga or fucking Sid Myers will pick up the intellectual property pieces and make shitty games with them. source: my sick twisted fancy. | ||
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Seide
United States831 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:42 Krigwin wrote: What skills? Catering to the lowest common denominator? That's not impressive, Rupert Murdoch has been doing that for years. Zynga is not the first to be doing this, or even the most successful. I don't know if you've heard of this, but there's this game called "World of Warcraft", it makes a little bit of money. WoW != farmville/mafia wars. It takes a lot more of a dedication to play it, and it is a different approach to gaming than farmville or mafia wars. Its one of those games that people do enjoy messing around on, but thats really the only similarity. | ||
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On_Slaught
United States12190 Posts
If you combine the market for facebook AND pot smokers... my god they will rule the world. | ||
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trevf
United States237 Posts
OUTERSPACE FOR EXAMPLE. | ||
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Herculix
United States946 Posts
the game industry's passion died a long time ago as far as i'm concerned. as long as someone keeps making quality games in some capacity, i don't care who is making the most off of the dull ones that everyone consumes mindlessly every few months. | ||
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mgj
191 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:15 AyJay wrote: Old news but haven't seen topic for this... I made a topic. It even had a better source for the news (slashdot). It got closed. I guess adding a meaningless poll to your thread is putting in enough effort. | ||
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Ghostcom
Denmark4782 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:42 Krigwin wrote: What skills? Catering to the lowest common denominator? That's not impressive, Rupert Murdoch has been doing that for years. Zynga is not the first to be doing this, or even the most successful. I don't know if you've heard of this, but there's this game called "World of Warcraft", it makes a little bit of money. The WoW hate has got to stop tbh. It's a pretty decent game which in its original form wasn't catering very much for casuals. It has later turned out that way, but give the game some credit for what it was - the developers who were on-board back then deserves it. And sadly, the western society has turned out to be more and more about catering to the lowest common denominator - just take a look at tv-shows like "dancing with the stars", "X-factor" "America's got talent" or really any reality show there is out there. | ||
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BeMannerDuPenner
Germany5638 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:39 Myles wrote: He's mad because mcdonalds is worth more than any 'good food' restaurant chain for the simple reason that it's quality, to him, makes it unworthy of being in such a position. If that isn't elitist I don't know what is. so not agreeing/liking something the masses enjoy is now elitist. good to know. guess you really love paris hilton and justin bieber then, cause not agreeing with the random 15 year old girl that they are awesome makes you elitist! dude get real.if you cant have a own opinion anymore without beeing called elitist something is wrong. | ||
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Myles
United States5162 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:55 BeMannerDuPenner wrote: so not agreeing/liking something the masses enjoy is now elitist. good to know. guess you really love paris hilton and justin bieber then, cause not agreeing with the random 15 year old girl that they are awesome makes you elitist! dude get real.if you cant have a own opinion anymore without beeing called elitist something is wrong. I never said that he couldn't dislike the games or think other games are better. But being mad because it's successful, imo, is elitist. | ||
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Seide
United States831 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:55 BeMannerDuPenner wrote: so not agreeing/liking something the masses enjoy is now elitist. good to know. guess you really love paris hilton and justin bieber then, cause not agreeing with the random 15 year old girl that they are awesome makes you elitist! dude get real.if you cant have a own opinion anymore without beeing called elitist something is wrong. Its not about having your own opinion, or not liking something, its the way you approach it. Saying, "McDonals is popular but I dont like their food because I believe it to be low quality" is a different satement than "McDonalds doesn't deserve to be popular because their food is cheap, low quality and appeals to the idiot masses". One is voicing your own opinion. The other is voicing your own opinion while stepping on and demeaning others who you see as lesser than yourself. Like for example calling people who enjoy those casual games "idiots". It is about being able to accept that people have different tastes, not freaking out because not everyone in the world is in a love affair with Starcraft, or more standard games. | ||
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HwangjaeTerran
Finland5967 Posts
Is it that Facebook thing? But nobody would play such crap, how can it be worth anything? confused | ||
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Alphaes
United States651 Posts
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AyJay
1515 Posts
On November 02 2010 05:02 HwangjaeTerran wrote: What the hell is Zynga? Is it that Facebook thing? But nobody would play such crap, how can it be worth anything? confused You plant plants. If you want to buy a cow for your farm you need to pay 1$. Thus Massive money are paid daily basis so people could buy that crap. | ||
Heyoka
Katowice25012 Posts
Farmville is worth a gazillion dollars it always shocks me that people who identify themselves are RARGH HARDCORE COMPETITIVE GAMERS don't see that. | ||
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mucker
United States1120 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:49 Ghostcom wrote: And sadly, the western society has turned out to be more and more about catering to the lowest common denominator - just take a look at tv-shows like "dancing with the stars", "X-factor" "America's got talent" or really any reality show there is out there. How is that only a western phenomenon? Every country has that same shit. There have always been karaoke contests and talent shows on Japanese tv. I don't play their games but I think Zynga is brilliant. They have come up with a very good formula for a gaming market most didn't even know existed - the office worker with internet access. Most people can't/won't dedicate multi-hour blocks of time to gaming, but if they can spend 5 minutes here 5 minutes there and get the full experience they are totally into it. It is addictive and fun for a lot of people and really lends itself to spreading via social media networks, marketing tie-ins and moble app sales/ad serving. Fantastic stuff, wish I'd thought of it. | ||
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Roflhaxx
Korea (South)1244 Posts
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scDeluX
Canada1341 Posts
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Widar
Sweden261 Posts
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Krigwin
1130 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:46 Seide wrote: WoW != farmville/mafia wars. It takes a lot more of a dedication to play it, and it is a different approach to gaming than farmville or mafia wars. Its one of those games that people do enjoy messing around on, but thats really the only similarity. Oho, this should be good. I was in a NA top 50 raiding guild for two expansions and a 2500+ arena team for 4 seasons. Go ahead, explain to me what kind of game WoW is and the "dedication" involved in playing it. On November 02 2010 04:58 Myles wrote: I never said that he couldn't dislike the games or think other games are better. But being mad because it's successful, imo, is elitist. And? What's your point? That it's bad because it's elitist, or it's elitist because it's bad? Do you even have a point? Or are you just here to say "but that's elitist mang!" and then let everyone else just naturally work their way from there to the conclusion you want? | ||
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DejaVu119
United States131 Posts
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Bosu
United States3247 Posts
On November 02 2010 05:09 Roflhaxx wrote: Happy, EA makes horrible games. EA puts out a ton of games so there are bound to be many bad ones, but the overall quality of the stuff they put out has gotten better over the last couple of years. | ||
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KurtistheTurtle
United States1966 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:38 Bosu wrote: Pretty hard to feel angry about it. EA/Activision have the resources to compete. No they don't... they have the capability to the resources to compete (which is an important distinction), and I'm pretty sure they're looking into it nowWhy would anybody be mad about this? Call Farmville crappy, the end of gaming, whatever you want...but if you condemn it based on its merits as a game, you compare it to games like SC. Like it has the same purpose, let alone suggesting its in the same league. Way to shove a finger up your own ass lol. It's the 'killer app' of the new generation of social games & their integration. I have no problem with games becoming more prevalent in our society or our lives. They're not stealing fans from the traditional games we're used to, they might be bigger than EA but that's fine--they target the housewives, the children, the demographics EA can't reasonably touch right now. Now these examples have no specific empirical merit because they're from my personal life, but the point is people who don't usually play games are playing this game and other games from Zynga. And its successful. While that doesn't mean we'll be getting an influx of 40-something housewives due to Farmville, the continuous, explosive and unpredicted rise of gaming companies demonstrate how much room there still is to grow. And the more pervasive the cultivation of "gaming" as something everybody can do, not some young, christian adolescent male (as Gamefly aggravatingly seems to be targeting) is better for all gaming and, specifically, e-sports. So when I read 'Zynga is bigger than EA,' I thought "Oh fuck" also. But based on the comments here I thought of it in a completely different way | ||
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NukeTheBunnys
United States1004 Posts
On November 02 2010 05:06 heyoka wrote: What shady/unethical practices? I'm not surprised, but not at all knowledgeable about what they do. Farmville is worth a gazillion dollars it always shocks me that people who identify themselves are RARGH HARDCORE COMPETITIVE GAMERS don't see that. well RARGH HARDCORE COMPETITIVE GAMERS have played a lot of video games, and therefore have had exposure to both high quality, and low quality video games. They perceive the games made by Zynga to be low quality and therefore have trouble understanding why its so popular, and why its worth anything. Zynga's success has nothing to do with gameplay, story telling, production value, competition, or anything else traditionally associated with gaming and everything to do with business(10million people buying a virtual cow for $1) and sociology(im gonna go play that popular easily accessible thing). When you think about them first as a traditional game developer its not hard to see why RARGH HARDCORE COMPETITIVE GAMERS don't see it as being valuable. | ||
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KinosJourney2
Sweden1811 Posts
Only EA game i ever liked was Command & Conquer: Renegade  | ||
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BeMannerDuPenner
Germany5638 Posts
On November 02 2010 05:02 Seide wrote: Its not about having your own opinion, or not liking something, its the way you approach it. Saying, "McDonals is popular but I dont like their food because I believe it to be low quality" is a different satement than "McDonalds doesn't deserve to be popular because their food is cheap, low quality and appeals to the idiot masses". One is voicing your own opinion. The other is voicing your own opinion while stepping on and demeaning others who you see as lesser than yourself. Like for example calling people who enjoy those casual games "idiots". yeah youre right. but the line is pretty thin. cause the "McDonalds doesn't deserve to be popular because their food is cheap, low quality and appeals to the idiot masses" is 100% true and not debatable if you cut out the part about the idiot masses. and evryone is elitist then. cause evryone thought "oh god why that crap song again... why is that stuff so popular people must be stupid" when annoying song X is on the radio. or how about people hating on the twilight hype? waht did you think about people following sarah palin? countless examples. imho that is just normal and evryone does it. calling someone out for it looks like hypocrisy to me. its even more reasonable when the the things success has bad influence on stuff you like. and i dobut anyone can deny that games today are getting more and more stupid cause companies rather milk COD clone #231 with 80 overprized dlcs then making innovative quality games. | ||
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starfries
Canada3508 Posts
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NukeTheBunnys
United States1004 Posts
Story here Its actually a pretty big deal because companies have been collecting data about an anonymous internet address for years, and now this leak allows them do identify you by name, address, whatever other public info you have on facebook. | ||
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BurningSera
Ireland19621 Posts
but fear not! it only said its STOCK value are higher than the real game developers, it could be just another internet bubble...like many cases in the stock market history... | ||
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endGame
United States394 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:46 Seide wrote: WoW != farmville/mafia wars. It takes a lot more of a dedication to play it, and it is a different approach to gaming than farmville or mafia wars. Its one of those games that people do enjoy messing around on, but thats really the only similarity. Actually Krigwin does have a point. WoW's latest trend has been to cater specifically to the "casual" crowd, watering down the difficulty and making the game easily accessible for anyone with a pulse. The difficulties of the encounters dropped dramatically from TBC to WotLK, so Blizzard in a sense has been catering to the lowest common denominator. Farmville and Mafia Wars are just the extreme of what Blizzards views on WoW have been leaning to: homogenizing the player base by lowering the difficulty in order to appeal to the widest audience possible. Unfortunately that kind of game doesn't necessarily appeal to people who have more competitive spirits and want to differentiate themselves from other players by improving their skills. I guess that's what we have Starcraft for though, right Blizzard? ^^ | ||
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Seide
United States831 Posts
On November 02 2010 05:15 Krigwin wrote: Oho, this should be good. I was in a NA top 50 raiding guild for two expansions and a 2500+ arena team for 4 seasons. Go ahead, explain to me what kind of game WoW is and the "dedication" involved in playing it. I dont understand your hostility for the simple statement of "wow takes more dedication to play than farmville". Do you disagree with this or something? All you really did with that statement is whip out your e-dick out and wave it around, but did nothing of value with it. Congradulations on your achievements...? I come from a similar WoW background as you. Raided with Rush/Gentlemens Club and did some high level PvP, though the PvP mostly in vanilla, arenas I stopped after getting glad in season 1 and 2. It is not anything special. While WoW has been appealing to the casual crowd, it is not on the same level of casual as Farmville or Mafia Wars. You are not going to get server first kills or gladiator ranking in arena playing the same type of "casual" as you do in those games. Content in WoW is on a timeframe, things are made easier and more accessible to casuals as time goes on and the content ages. As there is no point to locking that content away from them, just because they dont want to put in the same amount of time as the guild who got server 1st, and is already bored out of their minds killing the same thing, week after week. | ||
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lowercase
Canada1047 Posts
But regardless, their earnings compared to expenditures is probably outrageous. | ||
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VonLego
United States519 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:20 AJMcSpiffy wrote: This doesn't bother me at all. They found their market and set up a great formula for mass appeal games. They deserve the money they make off of it. This, a hundred times this. Zyngea or whatever it is called is the fast food market of video games. Are their products good for you? Hell no. Are they delicious? Not really. Does just about everyone eat fast food at some point in any given month? Yes. Does just about everyone eat out at a nice restaurant (aka the SC2's of the food world for those who I've lost with the metaphor) every single month? No. | ||
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Krigwin
1130 Posts
Since the dawn of industry smart people have realized they can make a lot of money by exploiting not-as-smart people and selling them addictive crap. How many wars and disputes have been fought and countless dollars have been wasted over drugs? It took decades for people to realize nicotine is addictive, and then even more years (and lots of angry lawsuits) later for us to restrict tobacco to the level that we do today, and tobacco companies are still getting around it - snus, electronic cigarettes, etc. McDonald's has made such a huge business and global presence through dastardly economic manipulation and exploitation of its target market worthy of a Bond movie. Everything from the psychological traps aimed at children (playgrounds, subliminal branding, etc), to the chemical engineering of its food to be as empty and addictive as possible, to the Wal-Mart-esque economic bullying of suppliers and local markets to muscle out as much competition as possible. When you look at all of these combined factors, are you still going to say stupid nonsense like "McDonald's is just popular because people have different tastes and if you're angry you're just elitist!"? The same with Zynga. I don't know how many of you have actually played Farmville, but it's not actually a game. It's a cleverly-engineered psychological trap created by an actual behavioral psychologist and an unscrupulous, sleazy businessman with no concept of quality or game design. It uses every contemptible trick in the book to spread itself and keep people hooked, from dressing up spam as Facebook messages, to a rotating catalogue of copied and/or outright stolen content, to using guilt trips as an actual game mechanic to keep people playing, to using fictional monopoly money to disguise the real amount of money players are spending, to mastercrafting the illusion of "free" while at the same time running possibly the world's largest microtransaction scheme. If these tactics sound familiar, they should - everyone from EA with the Sims to Blizzard with WoW are doing this same shit, and they're going to keep on doing it because it's profitable, and if you're going to call me elitist for "demeaning" the people "lesser" than myself for falling for this shit, then I guess I just must be elitist. | ||
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Borknagarush
176 Posts
My 2 cents would be to justify nerd rage in this thread. Look how Blizzard success damaged fantasy genre. Every damn game using Blizzard design. P.S. To hell with those inbreed elves with retarded looong horizontal ears. | ||
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Terranist
United States2496 Posts
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Phyre
United States1288 Posts
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/30353/Zynga_Staff_Told_To_Copy_Competition_Claims_Senior_ExEmployee.php Staff were explicitly told to steal competitor's ideas, said the anonymous senior staffer, speaking to alt.paper SF Weekly. "I don't f***ing want innovation," the ex-employee claims company founder Mark Pincus told him. "You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers." As a game developer it's sad to see these people making as much money as they do. | ||
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LegendaryZ
United States1583 Posts
Besides, EA makes shitty games anyway. | ||
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R0YAL
United States1768 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:21 Deadlyfish wrote: I'm happy. EAs games suck so bad, they just release game after game without putting any effort into any of them. Cant remember the last good game they made. EA and Activision (not blizzard) should just close. They want to make money more than they want to make a good game. Go Zynga i guess You sir know whats up  I have never heard of Zynga but I guess thats because I am not a fan of those kinds of games, but it seems that there are many people who dig them. | ||
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fleeze
Germany895 Posts
On November 02 2010 05:50 VonLego wrote: This, a hundred times this. Zyngea or whatever it is called is the fast food market of video games. Are their products good for you? Hell no. Are they delicious? Not really. Does just about everyone eat fast food at some point in any given month? Yes. Does just about everyone eat out at a nice restaurant (aka the SC2's of the food world for those who I've lost with the metaphor) every single month? No. what most people in this thread are missing is that this will affect the gaming industry as a whole. zynga and bigpoint are already buying many good game developers. guess what they are producing? the old AOE developers (Ensemble) for example were bought. now they're producing Age of Empires Online, a browser game. the more studios they buy the less good game developers will actually develop GAMES. so REAL gamers should be angry. | ||
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Seide
United States831 Posts
On November 02 2010 05:51 Krigwin wrote: The problem is you people are making the mistake of assuming people play Farmville because they like to play Farmville, or that people eat at McDonald's because they just like McDonald's. I mean sure, those people do exist, but proportionally how many of them do you think there are out of the millions of people who play Farmville or eat at McDonald's? Since the dawn of industry smart people have realized they can make a lot of money by exploiting not-as-smart people and selling them addictive crap. How many wars and disputes have been fought and countless dollars have been wasted over drugs? It took decades for people to realize nicotine is addictive, and then even more years (and lots of angry lawsuits) later for us to restrict tobacco to the level that we do today, and tobacco companies are still getting around it - snus, electronic cigarettes, etc. McDonald's has made such a huge business and global presence through dastardly economic manipulation and exploitation of its target market worthy of a Bond movie. Everything from the psychological traps aimed at children (playgrounds, subliminal branding, etc), to the chemical engineering of its food to be as empty and addictive as possible, to the Wal-Mart-esque economic bullying of suppliers and local markets to muscle out as much competition as possible. When you look at all of these combined factors, are you still going to say stupid nonsense like "McDonald's is just popular because people have different tastes and if you're angry you're just elitist!"? The same with Zynga. I don't know how many of you have actually played Farmville, but it's not actually a game. It's a cleverly-engineered psychological trap created by an actual behavioral psychologist and an unscrupulous, sleazy businessman with no concept of quality or game design. It uses every contemptible trick in the book to spread itself and keep people hooked, from dressing up spam as Facebook messages, to a rotating catalogue of copied and/or outright stolen content, to using guilt trips as an actual game mechanic to keep people playing, to using fictional monopoly money to disguise the real amount of money players are spending, to mastercrafting the illusion of "free" while at the same time running possibly the world's largest microtransaction scheme. If these tactics sound familiar, they should - everyone from EA with the Sims to Blizzard with WoW are doing this same shit, and they're going to keep on doing it because it's profitable, and if you're going to call me elitist for "demeaning" the people "lesser" than myself for falling for this shit, then I guess I just must be elitist. So they fall into the psychological trap, but otherwise are happy with life and what they are doing. Who cares? They certainly don't, why should you. Or do you think that your opinion of consumer culture being terrible is more valuable than their indifference because you did not fall into this trap? People will do what they do, for the most illogical reasons. Trying to logic it out is asking for a headache. Zynga found their niche, they provide a service that people log into, kill time and have a personal attachment to. Saying that was cleverly engineered by Zinga to "trick" them into liking their game and that thsoe people are not acting of their own free will is a bit crazy. The users like the service, why the users like the service or whatnot is irrelevant. Zynga still deserves the props from being able to market and please people like they do. Sure I'm mad that this takes away possibly talented designers and developers from creating the games I enjoy to play, but it is what it is. | ||
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Cpadolf
Sweden1199 Posts
I'm pissed mostly because of all that. | ||
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Crazyeyes
Canada1342 Posts
Basically, that. Quote from the damn founder: So I funded the company myself but I did every horrible thing in the book to, just to get revenues right away. I mean we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this zwinky toolbar which was like, I dont know, I downloaded it once and couldn't get rid of it. *laughs* Nobody should be applauding this sleazebag. They dont even create their own ideas. They steal their videogames, integrate them into facebook, and call them something else. They've been under tons of lawsuits becasue of theft. I realize this isn't a good source here, since it's a comedy site, but it's pretty accurate... and they give their sources. For anyone who's still interested. http://www.cracked.com/article_18709_6-devious-ways-farmville-gets-people-hooked.html Zynga is far worse than EA, and the fact that they're successful is... saddening. | ||
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OPSavioR
Sweden1465 Posts
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LegendaryZ
United States1583 Posts
On November 02 2010 06:06 fleeze wrote: what most people in this thread are missing is that this will affect the gaming industry as a whole. zynga and bigpoint are already buying many good game developers. guess what they are producing? the old AOE developers (Ensemble) for example were bought. now they're producing Age of Empires Online, a browser game. the more studios they buy the less good game developers will actually develop GAMES. so REAL gamers should be angry. No it won't. Hostile takeovers aside, developers get bought because they are willing to be bought. There will always be developers that won't sell out just like there will always be small coffee shops that refuse to be a Starbucks franchise. So long as there is a market of "real" games, there will always be developers to feed that market. Good game developers will only disappear when the demand for them disappears. So long as "real" gamers are willing to support that market, they have nothing to fear and nothing to be angry about. | ||
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mgj
191 Posts
On November 02 2010 06:06 fleeze wrote: what most people in this thread are missing is that this will affect the gaming industry as a whole. zynga and bigpoint are already buying many good game developers. guess what they are producing? the old AOE developers (Ensemble) for example were bought. now they're producing Age of Empires Online, a browser game. the more studios they buy the less good game developers will actually develop GAMES. so REAL gamers should be angry. You've got a good point, but i think you are underestimating whats actually possible with a "browser game" Just take a look at quake live, quite impressive for a browser game and QL is just getting started. I had a talk with my magic 8-ball, and we both came to the conclusion that we will be moving back to the mainframe/terminal setup when the internet infrastructure can support it. Once everyones computer is reduced to a screen and a keyboard with minimal computational power, browser games will reign supreme (and be the only form of game in existance). Ofcourse, this isnt happening tomorrow and browsers by then will probably be something completely different to what we consider a browser today. Most likely your browser will resemble a VNC client more than a browser, but we'll see. Dont hate on browser games. | ||
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Jaso
United States2147 Posts
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Graham
Canada1259 Posts
That being said, however, the only people who are hurt by this and their incredibly shady policies are those who continuously dish money into these awful "addicting" games. The only reason they're more successful then EA is because they chose the ultimate platform in Facebook, and that they have access to hundreds of millions of people who use Facebook in comparison to EAs which includes PC users who have gaming rigs, and console users. Not to mention they hook-and-sinker people by letting them play the game for free initially, and then offer additions in small amounts ($1 or a cow or w/e is a lot cheaper to people then a game for $60, until it starts to add up fast...). Until the day comes that Zynga takes over EA or Activision and starts implementing shady business practices and spamming the games with adware, who cares if they make more money? Let the poor suckers who buy into their games and practices deal with them. | ||
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Reaper9
United States1724 Posts
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Flanlord
265 Posts
Hopefully EA will learn to stop making bad decisions when it comes to handling gaming projects that aren't the newest installment of Battlefield or a sports game. Maybe they'll just stop trying to make other kinds of games. Either way they'd be better off for it. | ||
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Krigwin
1130 Posts
On November 02 2010 05:41 Seide wrote: I dont understand your hostility for the simple statement of "wow takes more dedication to play than farmville". Do you disagree with this or something? All you really did with that statement is whip out your e-dick out and wave it around, but did nothing of value with it. Congradulations on your achievements...? I come from a similar WoW background as you. Raided with Rush/Gentlemens Club and did some high level PvP, though the PvP mostly in vanilla, arenas I stopped after getting glad in season 1 and 2. It is not anything special. While WoW has been appealing to the casual crowd, it is not on the same level of casual as Farmville or Mafia Wars. You are not going to get server first kills or gladiator ranking in arena playing the same type of "casual" as you do in those games. Content in WoW is on a timeframe, things are made easier and more accessible to casuals as time goes on and the content ages. As there is no point to locking that content away from them, just because they dont want to put in the same amount of time as the guild who got server 1st, and is already bored out of their minds killing the same thing, week after week. There is no hostility, just amusement that you would presume to tell someone like me what WoW is about. Hence stating my qualifications to speak on the game. WoW is not on the same level as Farmville, but it's getting there fast and using the same tactics. In fact, that's largely the reason I quit. You make the completely false claim that WoW requires some kind of fanatical devotion to succeed at - I maintained my position that I stated logging on less than 6 hours a week. I know plenty of people who spend more time on Farmville than the most "hardcore" of raiders in WoW, so that's just simply not true. The truth is Blizzard is doing their damnedest to dumb down WoW and make it less time-intensive and more and more accessible to the middle-aged single mother crowd, which makes my comparison valid, which makes your post declaring my comparison as invalid, well, invalid. On November 02 2010 06:09 Seide wrote: So they fall into the psychological trap, but otherwise are happy with life and what they are doing. Who cares? They certainly don't, why should you. Or do you think that your opinion of consumer culture being terrible is more valuable than their indifference because you did not fall into this trap? People will do what they do, for the most illogical reasons. Trying to logic it out is asking for a headache. Zynga found their niche, they provide a service that people log into, kill time and have a personal attachment to. Saying that was cleverly engineered by Zinga to "trick" them into liking their game and that thsoe people are not acting of their own free will is a bit crazy. The users like the service, why the users like the service or whatnot is irrelevant. Zynga still deserves the props from being able to market and please people like they do. Sure I'm mad that this takes away possibly talented designers and developers from creating the games I enjoy to play, but it is what it is. "Zynga still deserves props from... please people like they do"? Are you fucking serious? That's like saying a drug dealer deserves props for dealing heroin. I mean, the people high on heroin seem pretty happy to me, I don't know what the problem is. And saying that Farmville is cleverly engineered by Zynga to trick people into playing the game and those players are not acting fully of their own volition? That's exactly what I'm saying. That's the definition of addiction. Go look it up. User was warned for this post | ||
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jacen
Austria3644 Posts
On November 02 2010 04:37 Myles wrote: And I doubt every game developer is going to be jumping ship to create browser based games, unless it becomes possible to play games like SC2 through a browser. Well the point is, that games like sc2 are too complex for a wide audience. And in fact ubisoft just released the settlers online, a browser game based on the settlers games. They were one of the first economy simulations back during amiga days (produced by blue byte back then) and were always full price PC games. Now they jump to the browser with a game that is not that much different from the full games (minus the graphics) ... I can see this work with a "dumbed" down version of starcraft or warcraft too. Maybe turn based or rudimentary real time. It's not impossible for blizzard to release a browser game based on strategy or action rpg in the future. | ||
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NIJ
1012 Posts
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Alou
United States3748 Posts
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Reaper9
United States1724 Posts
On November 02 2010 06:46 Alou wrote: Farmville is a game and it brings more people into gaming. Yes compared to SC2 it's utter trash, but if it makes more people enjoy games and the internet I don't see why it is a bad thing. That would be fine and dandy if it also wasn't sucking out the souls of people by subliminal messaging. (Although our movie and TV industry, at least in the USA, does that quite splendidly already.) Is Zynga's games addicting? Yea, like opiates. Are they evil? Probably. Does it make the company money? If my ethics didn't get in my way, I would say that it is simply a smashing idea to make easy money. | ||
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LOLtex
United States148 Posts
And what's with the EA hate? EA makes some pretty damn good games these days, and aren't like the old EA of yesterday. I still like Bad Company 2 and Dead Space (can't wait for DS2!!). Sure, they make some games I'm not interested in like Madden 201X and the other sports titles, but face it; if they weren't making these games, someone else would be. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean others can't. Play what you want, buy what you want. No one is forcing you to do anything. | ||
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scBane
Netherlands35 Posts
I don´t get the comparison with EA though, like I said before, it´s a different market. And what LOLtex said sums it up pretty nicely, EA makes some pretty cool games. It IS sad that a company with no values and only profit in their mind can get this big though, but that's where Facebook comes in. | ||
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Count9
China10928 Posts
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TymerA
Netherlands759 Posts
You have to be mad now :| | ||
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Trang
Australia324 Posts
When you get great people in the gaming industry such as Brian Reynolds who were responsible for games like Civ 2 and Alpha Centauri moving over to making Facebook games because it's more lucrative, you have a potential problem there. | ||
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Kennigit
Canada19447 Posts
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