[The End of Zynga?]

  Medium Difficulty weighs in on the decline of Zynga and the FB game fad:

"Zynga stock is already down more than 45 percent since its December 2011 IPO. Maybe becoming publicly traded meant that Zynga finally exposed itself to some smart money, which meant its game design began to be scrutinized by people whose profits depended on it. In 2009, before the IPO, Forbes uncritically accepted Zynga’s claim that part of its strategy was to make games in a variety of different genres, while CNN called Zynga “more than a one-trick pony” because it had not only produced Farmville, but also Mafia Wars, YoVille, and Café World. But now that investors have wizened up, Zynga has learned that it can drive its share price down just by announcing a new slate of awful games, as analysts “questioned whether Zynga’s new offerings were diversified enough” and raised concerns about the quality of the games."

  It's good to know that people besides gamers have started to 'raise concerns' about the quality of Zynga's titles. The apologists for that type of 'social game' can't claim it's just hardcore sour grapes anymore (if they're even still around at this point).

  Hopefully the fact that Zynga so openly pushed the entire Skinner Box-style game mechanic to the furthest level possible while maintaining only a veneer of 'gameplay' has encouraged future MMORPG developers to move past the tired grind and RNG-based carrot-on-stick standbys into creative, new (and less toxic) gameplay systems. Because I think one reason why Zynga games are so reviled by gamers is because they are, at their core, disturbingly familiar to many of us as exposing the type of mechanics at the core of many our own superior 'real' games, and on a certain level we resented having to acknowledge it.


Related Reading:
Zynga's Stock Fail Was Sadly Predictable
Zynga's Headaches -- Did We Not See This Coming?

[Brenda Brathwaite Defends Social Games]

Brenda Brathwaite, a game designer who has been in the industry since the early 1980s, takes to task all the people who hate on social games for 'ruining gaming':

"Like you, we want good gameplay, we want compelling experiences, we want casual, and we want hardcore. We want to make a great game for the 43-year-old Facebook Mom, because – damn it – she deserves a great game, too."

Full transcript is here.


I will be interested in seeing if her company actually succeeds in making a non-crap FB game. It's a worthy goal at least, and the bar for success is not only low, it's pretty much nonexistant.

[Why I Didn't Like FrontierVille]

So, because I've been on a 'trying lots of new F2P games' kick, I decided to try out a Facebook game or two, just to see what the fuss is all about. I made a FB account specifically for the purpose -- I didn't have one before, since I'm an internet hermit. =P

I picked FrontierVille over the more infamous FarmVille because it's newer and I assume it's got a lot of the same elements and maybe even some improvements to the basic formula. And hey -- clobbering critters with shovels is always good clean fun, eh?

However, after playing for about an hour... I was already annoyed. Not because of the 'click something a dozen times, rinse & repeat' gameplay, or the looped banjo soundtrack, but because the game is a HUGE NAG. Every 2 minutes, a pop-up -- either to nag me to buy something, or to bug my 'neighbors' for something, or to bug friends to join the game, or to start an available quest, etc etc. The game is like a needy 3-year old that can't. shut. up. I was done after less than a day of playing.

And I was totally willing to give it a shot -- I already have tried and rather enjoyed Pet Society (basically a cute virtual dollhouse), which is nowhere NEAR FrontierVille in the annoyance department. I dunno if the heavyhanded pushiness is just Zynga's style, or what. Whatever it is, I won't be trying any more of their games, that's for sure.