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Money Based Games
Many online games, including MMORPGs mentioned yesterday, run on a free to play basis with the option of paying small amounts of money for in-game items or perks that help speed up the process of leveling or giving advantages to players. This structure is known as "micro-transactions" and has proven to be profitable by bringing in a lot of players to little by little as opposed to having a small amount of players pay a medium fee once or monthly. As much as I am against the idea of creating semi-applications passed for games on facebook and having players spend tons of money just to get to the next level, I think the initial companies that started on the Facebook frontiers (Zynga in particular) are geniuses. Because Facebook is a popular site for friends and family to keep in touch, companies are able to bring in more players by giving an incentive to have more people from your friend's list to join their game. I actually never played FarmVille but have played one of their games and many similar games on facebook where a player's stats become stronger by having more friends join the game that I was playing. So when my friends join, they'll want to invite their friends to become stronger. It then spreads like a virus and reaches everyone on facebook. With their publicity taken care of, they have an idea of keeping players interested and tempted to buying points and items with real money. Along with going through quests in the game, the main attraction was attacking other players. The more friends and items they had, the better the chance they had in winning a fight. Quests and player versus player is nothing more than clicking a button and seeing if you won or lost, but it got people playing since it was on-going and it didn't require much time to play. So with players hooked to the game, they make players frustrated each time they log on and find that they've been attacked by 30 players and lost 28 of those attacks. This may cause a player to purchase the in-game points and items to become stronger and gain advantages over other players. When those players start losing, they'll start to buy more items. And thus you have an endless flow of money from the players cashing in on the game. So the complaint for the players of a lot of these games is that they're based on how much money you spend. "If you don't spend any money, you won't win any matches." That's not true for all games, and it's not necessary to fight other players (it's an option). I'm a passive gamer when I get the choice (RPGs, Strategy games, etc.) and concentrate more on the quests and story rather than trying to over power players because I know I won't be able to win and I don't plan on spending any money. Some games really are imbalanced and become difficult to play even the story without paying, but I guess I could consider it an extra challenge.
Button Clickers
This one's easy to explain. Most all the facebook games that initially launched were nothing more than a few words and a few art assets to accompany a story. How did the players progress through the game? By clicking a few buttons. By spending "energy" or anything synonymous to turn points, players complete quests and fight other players by clicking a button and continue doing that for the rest of the game. And when those turn points are depleted, the player has to wait a certain amount of time before it gets replenished. Or, you can buy "potions" to recover that bar and continue clicking that button. The complaint here is that these games are a disgrace for even being called "games" when the objective that it achieves is making money for the publishers and developers. I'll admit that I play a few Facebook games, and I like how some of them are evolving into actual games. Destiny Stone is a 2D action platformer (but totally geared towards young girls...very young) and has some RPG elements in it (which is how they get players to pay money). Brave Arms is a 3D First-Person Shooter that's played within facebook through the browser. And Dragon Age Legends has a very interesting take on the Facebook type RPGs by adding in turn-based fights that requires actual strategy and a simulation like gameplay when building the castle. And for justification, the reason why a lot of these games are just button clickers is because it's meant to be played discreetly (like at work or in a classroom without anyone knowing).
OCD Syndrome
Remember hearing news reports about boyfriends, husbands, and family members having to miss out on a Thursday night event or outing because they need to participate in a "raid" for World of Warcraft? I thought it was pretty hilarious when the tables were turned for Facebook games and every other hour, a girlfriend, mother, or sister had to check on their farm on Facebook to see if it's ready for harvest. One of the things I started disliking about these facebook browser based games was having to wait for the energy to replenish and then returning back to facebook to click some more buttons. It was even worse when these games started to release on mobile devices such as iPod touch. With the access to the internet, a player will have the urge to log onto facebook every other hour to check on the status of their character/account for their game to see who attacked them, whether they won or not, and to use up the energy they've replenished. This causes a sort of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Syndrome where a player can help but check their game everyone hour (even if the person really doesn't have OCD). The reason for players to argue about this problem is that the only way to level up and progress through the game quick enough is to not waste any time spent doing nothing on the account. I conquered this problem by simply not caring how fast I get through these facebook games and to log on whenever I felt was okay to play for a short duration.
Facebook games and Browser-based games may seem evil to a lot of you, but it's becoming one of the main platforms for the industry to work on right now. Casual is the new hardcore for the developers and it's more profitable than traditional games. I'm all for supporting casual games, facebook games and browser games if they're truly entertaining to play; however, I don't think we should ignore the main videogame market for the hardcore or traditional. Don't let button clickers affect deep game play experiences. Resist spending $500 worth of facebook points if you can go and buy a console/PC to play retail games. Retail sales are declining and it's slowly affecting the quality of our games, please don't let that happen. As long as the main traditional game industry is intact, Zynga can make as many -ville games they want and facebook can continue hosting games on their platform. Good night, TGIF, and have a great weekend.
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