Metaplace launches a beta version of their new Facebook game.
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Really? You think there’s no relatively larger focus on social connections in games made for what’s basically a platform for said social connections, and for audience which is likely to use the said platform in the first place because they’re interested in these social connections?
So the trend continues. It’s been said many times that since UO, the MMO industry has taken more and more away from us with each new release. Now we’re all the way back to something strange.
We lost more and more “worldly” game play.
Now we’re back to what looks like the simplest form of “worldly” in Farmville and the like (including the MetaPlace stand-in). Veyr narrow, very simple, but very focused on a “worldly” pattern.
These games will grow and evolve. Get bigger and more complex. It’s like sandbox games based on worldly had to restart at the ameba stage.
Why? Because the ever inflationary (in several ways) level grind games cannot sustain themselves for the long haul. They are “been there done that”. It’s showing now as gamers aren’t buying the new versions enough to maintain the profit expectations. The collapse is imminent.
Maybe this is a good thing.
But us old timers aren’t too happy. We’re ahead of the pulse, waiting for things to be rebuilt from the ground up.
I think it all has to do with the developers. MMO developers grew up on single player games, until recently. So they made MMORPGs more and more like single player games. This new breed, coming in and making new stuff, simulations, more “worldly”, but at the basic level.
It’s going to take time, and that’s the part us old timers regret.
Personally, I’d say I’ve already found the “old timer” solution. It’s not pretty, but it works.
1. Don’t expect big names in the industry to produce the “nerd folk alt” kind of games because, by and large, they’ve giant pocketbooks to support and have decided the best way to do so is to cast a wide net for the lowest common denominator.
Once in a great while, a big name company will put out a game that’s not just a cash grab, but it’s so rare that I can boil it down under a half-dozen titles a year. So, knowing that this is the case, don’t pay a dime for the kind of games you’re not interested in.
You have an alternative: pay more attention to the indies. Spiderweb software, Moonpod, Introversion, and 1001 other little-known companies which enjoy creating compelling games instead of popular ones. If you want to see more of those kinds of games, vote with your dollars, support these guys.
2. Learn to “roll your own.” Seriously.
Frankly, if you’re so very impassioned to find truly interesting “geek folk art” games, and the frequency of the alternative is a perpetual frustration to you (as it is for me), then channel that frustration into trying to make your own.
It’s not so impossible. From Flash to my current choice of poison, a little known 2D-tile based online game platform called BYOND, there’s quite a few means out there for you to explore what a good game means to you by attempting to create one.
As you can see, I’m beyond sitting around on forums just bitching about it anymore.
Interesting. I think Facebook-style games will eventually give rise to the Third Age of MMOs (although the likes of Farmville are too primitive to be there yet):
The First Age: we grouped and socialised because we had to. The games were too unforgiving to solo (grind, downtime, class specialisation into roles). EQ and DAOC are both fine examples of this.
The Second Age: game designers realised that players wanted the option to solo if they couldn’t find a group (or just didn’t want to), and games became solo friendly for most of their content. Downtime is minimised, classes become more multi-functional, plentiful soloable quest content. Grouping becomes less efficient than soloing, and players only group for specific objectives. This is the age of WoW.
The Third Age: we start to realise that it’s actually fun to be social, and games that are designed to support a communal experience take hold. Game design takes a “carrot” approach (making grouping easier and more enjoyable) instead of the first age’s “stick” (find a group or you might as well log off and watch a DVD for the evening instead).
tomp: certainly there is, but those same social connections were straining to occur under the old model (and happened at smaller scales). There is now an enabling platform wrapped around them, but I don’t think it is qualitatively different in terms of audience impulses… similarly, there’s more features to take advantage of them, but again, most of what has happened is a reduction in *friction* which leads, perhaps to a different overall experience, but not to fundamental changes in what the audience sought. IMHO, anyway.
Hick in Ohio, great way to put it!
Geldon, don’t forget that your friends at metaplace are currently in that indie bucket!
Go play Island Life! 
Tremayne: a comment that has been made to me is that UO and SWG were almost Facebook games out of synch with time. And if you had seen the design I did post-SWG that never got made… well, it was even more so, though again, predating Facebook games.
Raph’s completely right about one thing: Many of you complaining he sold out sound literally exactly like the hardcore crowd who complained about how UO was just a lite beer version of a good text MUD.
You look at it as going from theater to film. A lot of people see it as Michelangelo deciding to paint velvet Elvises or dogs playing poker.
Maybe I would … if I ever bothered to register for Facebook.
Michelangelo had the benefit in that, all the way up until post-modernism caught on, there was this focus on trying to capture life in great and magnificent works.
Some time around when post-modernism caught on, between the horrors of war and the din of overpopulation, the definition what’s truly “good” became a very ambiguous thing indeed.
Now, for all we know, velvet Elvises or Andy Worhol Eats A Hamburger is the highest of art.
I love the over analyzing.
1. Raph and co. try to make a browser-based second life/habbo/IMVU.
2. Raph and co. fail to realize that you either need a decent game or an unhealthy focus on Pr0n to make the concept work.
3. Metaplace opens, and people find that the tools can only make bad 8-bit games, and that no pr0n exists.
4. Metaplace underwhelms. Folds.
5. Raph needs to work, and converts game engine to make facebook games. Game engine is pretty good for such, since most facebook games are crap, and Raph designs good engines.
6. Announcement of such. Due to people thinking UO and pre-NPE SWG are the gods of the internets game, horror.
7. Silly arguments and justifications ensue.
It’s not about nerd games versus AAA games at all. Facebook games are cheap to make, and can attract a large enough audience to make profitable despite being crap. We already see this in the Iphone market and the F2P one.
Raph has to satisfy investors and make money, so it’s a smart move, and tbh he can probably make a not-bad game using that engine. But trying to spin this as anything more is silly. Facebook games are the equivalent of bad Wii shovelware, and will have the same impact on the genre as it. Now and then someone may make a fun timewaster out of the sea of crap.
“People are wrong when they say opera is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what’s wrong with it.”
-Noel Coward
ooh, great quote!
“Facebook games are the equivalent of bad Wii shovelware, and will have the same impact on the genre as it.”
Dblade, you’re just completely, mindblowingly, staggeringly wrong on this part.
I think you people need to understand how many people traditionally classified as “not gamers” love this “shovelware”.
I’m always a little shocked at how many people people I know, including my mom for Pete’s sake, that would never think of playing WoW or SWG or UO but just love the heck out of little ole Farmville. They deck out their farms and plant things and never ever have to worry about if they have enough arp and other stats to switch to marksman or if they left one of their ore collectors neglected somewhere on Naboo.
It is a casual game that non traditional gamers love. Now don’t get me wrong, I love WoW, Dragon Age, and am positively DROOLING to get my hands on Mass Effect 2. But if you can’t see the appeal of Farmville to the masses you need to get off vent and go talk to some people in real life that you wouldn’t normally associate as being gamers.
Now I think
Jeff:
Yeah, I get it. But casuals and nontraditionals have always flocked to whatever the latest fad game is. Facebook games are pure fad-they are poorly made grindathons with no real redeeming value to keep them aloft past the initial craze. Everyone owned a tamagotchi as well. Sega even made the VMU for their dreamcast based on it.
I know they love the games, but one day the fad is going to end. It did with Nintendogs for one, and that game is a good example of how a nontraditional game can sink into the waters of obscurity. Heck it did even with pokemon, and even the clones stopped after the initial craze.
Raph:
I’ll bet you a pizza that in two to four years facebook games will be a memory, and people will look at them like how we look at full-motion video games now or those plug and play dedicated TV consoles. “People played that?”
By all means good luck at making your game, and I hope you make enough money at it to recoup losses and come out of it okay. I just disagree with the point, and i’ve seen tons of fads fail to influence people or the industry despite being targeted at traditional or non-casual gamers.
@Dblade:
I think you are underestimating the long term viability of these types of games. None of the games you mention were played by my mom, for example, or most of the people I referred to as non traditional gamers. I think the games you mention were big kid fad games, with maybe some splash from other groups. But facebook apps are bringing a lot of adults that would never think of playing nintendos or pokemon.
Yeah… a key demographic for the farming games is women aged 40-50, for example.
But Dblade, the point isn’t about farming games. The point is about the distribution channel. Here’s the mantra to wrap your head around it: Facebook is a CONSOLE. More specifically, it’s what Xbox Live/PSN wishes it were.
Sure, the first games on a console tend to suck. And sure, there will likely be a better console after Facebook. But the point is that the genie is out of the bottle. Something will replace Farmville — likely, something more to your taste, even! And something will be the Colecovision to Facebook’s 2600. But the market is here to stay.
@ Raph
Thanks for saying what I was trying to say better than I could ever say it.
@ Dblade
Things like Pokemon live on in other ways. Creature handlers in SWG for example. (Damn you, NGE, damn you!) Or my hunter in WoW.
Lim the saberooth tiger, Shellshock the turtle, Monsoon the gorilla can easily be Pichchoo or whatever that guys name is.
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