Current Social Games Aren't Fun, Says MUD Co-Creator 111
Speaking at Gamerlab 2011 in Barcelona, MUD1 developer Richard Bartle had harsh words for the current state of social gaming:
"The big thing about social games that they don't like to tell you, is they're not actually social. Games played on social network sites is what we mean by social games ... These games are categorized more by the platform than that they are social themselves. The way they engage their players is not through interesting gameplay, it's done through extrinsic rewards — basically bribes. ... The difference is, social games rely on the extrinsic rewards so as to be compelling. People keep playing the game because it keeps giving them things — rewards. This has led to gamification. In the hands of designers, this has a great deal of potential, but unfortunately it's not in the hands of designers, it's in the hands of marketers."
I love being rewarded for my achievements with ads (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems like the people making the games these days are focusing less on the actual game play and the "fun factor" and more on achievements and hooks too keep people coming back. It's the easy way out for them, they know a lot of people will keep forging on just to get that next achievement and post about it on their Facebook wall. I know it worked for me when I was younger with Pokemon! Even though the gameplay was incredibly boring and repetitive, I keep trudging through it just so I could get the next Pokemon. The only "social" factor of these games are all of the item requests and such that are posted to friends walls, making them feel like their left out if they're not playing, or even making them feel like they need to play because hey, "Tom needs to plant his seed and needs a hoe". These new social games are just a big scheme to get people to play so they can watch the ads, or spend extra money for in game purchases. Until people stop playing these games it's never going to change, they think we're eating their shit and loving it. I actually think a lot of people do. It's a casual kind of gaming for them, and it seems like the people who play a lot of these games don't get out much, so they stick with it because they're hanging with their buds too I guess.
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"Tom needs to plant his seed and needs a hoe".
I don't really understand what sewing has to do with prostitution.
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My question would rather be, what does planting my seed in some hoe have to do with sowing?
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Reap what ye sow.
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Well prostitutes were often gave their job as "Seamstress", so I think that may be an appropriate slip ...
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And these days they go by masseuse...
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You mean like Slashdot's achievement system? Like being modded up and the people who give kneejerk and/or slanderous comments to get modded insightful? Or how about relationships, being a friend of a foe?
Yeah, why do people tolerate this crap? And I'm not saying that your comment is either kneejerk of slanderous. I am saying that Slashdot works on the same scheme and we eat it up just as much here. That's one reason that political articles are so big and hard science articles normally get little pla
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Slashdot "Achievements" are a tongue-in-cheek joke. They rolled out on April 1, and stuck around because, well, people liked them. And, unlike social games, people are actually communicating and forming relationships on Slashdot. A message board system by it's very nature has to be more social than those games; there is literally nothing else to it.
I'd wager that political articles see so much energy because everyone feels like they are qualified to participate, and there are multiple valid-yet-contradictor
Re:I love being rewarded for my achievements with (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps you missed the history behind some of these things on slashdot.
Achievements were an April Fools joke that got left in place.
Moderation has the utility of allowing filtering. And you can use elements like "friends", "tags", etc for further filtering, increasing/decreasing effective score - and thus what is displayed to you.
Don't like how people moderate? Suggest a better method. Don't like moderation as a concept? Ignore it.
Friend of a foe? er, what? I can't speak for others, but I barely use the "friend" or "foe" features of Slashdot at all.
Political articles get lots of comments and attention largely because there IS room for comment about them. Science articles? By definition, there aren't going to be a lot of people able to provide informed commentary on breaking science news. Would you rather more uninformed comments?
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why do people tolerate this crap?
Here, because I get news out of it. I gave up on farmville, because I got nothing from it.
That's one reason that political articles are so big and hard science articles normally get little play.
I disagree. Political stories have a lot of nuances and spur a lot of arguments while to science stories (being one of the main reasons I'm on /.) my comments would be something along the lines of "cool," or "huh." I could make such comments, but the reason they would not be modded up is because no one would care to read them.
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I'm 20 now, and just because those games were out before I was born doesn't mean I know nothing about them. I know I am not the person that this post was directed at, but still, this kind of attitude really irks me.
Wolf3D was the first game I ever played, apart from the masses of starwars games my dad had on the Commadore. Followed by Doom and Quake and Duke Nukem 3D. I then got a snes off my uncle with Duck Hunt on the Snes scope, and other arcade suc games, as well as the original SNES mario games.
Now I a
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...there was no Duck Hunt for the SNES (Super Scope)
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If we are talking about shooting ducks and then the funny dog goes and fetches them, yes there was, because I had it.
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Not according to this [wikipedia.org] you didn't.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your original thesis, but claiming to have played a game that doesn't exist doesn't help your argument much.
--Jeremy
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The game exists, even if it isn't compatible with the Super Scope. Your responses are misleading.
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IT DOES NOT EXIST ON THE SNES AS THE OP CLAIMED.
Your ability to read and comprehend is pretty telling of your age - just graduate high school, eh?
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Nope. I'm actually a middle aged man who enjoys trolling idiots who argue over stupid-off topic crap on /.
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I remember playing it when I was younger, but after rooting through my old stuff it turns out that it was on my Commodore. Ah well.
Still, Loved my SNES!
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Wish I had mod points for you, kid ;)
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"I then got a snes off my uncle with Duck Hunt on the Snes scope, and other arcade suc games, as well as the original SNES mario games."
No Duck Hunt on the SNES. It ONLY ever made it on the Famicom/NES.
Mario games were not original on the SNES.
"just because those games were out before I was born doesn't mean I know nothing about them."
Sorry, I *WAS* around during the time of those games (Born in 82,) you DON'T have a fucking clue what you're talking about.
You can't even properly spell 'Commodore.'
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I was just using Pokemon as an example of a game which I progressed through mindlessly seeking achievements rather than an standard for excellent game play I think all modern games should be judged by. I was born in 1987 so Pong, Asteroids, etc. are well before my time, you're right on that one. According to Wikipedia the Pokemon games came out in 1996, so I was like 9 or 10 at the time, so yes that was the cool game at the time for me.
I would love to see more games in the spirit of the classic arcad
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Are these the kind of games that appeal to a console gamer or someone who's playing Starcraft, or is savvy enough to even know what a MUD is? Absolutely not, and guess what, you're not the target demographic. I know, its crazy, you're a gamer so all games certainly must be made with you in mind right? No.
The demographic of games like Farmville and Bejeweled Blitz (Bejeweled surprisingly moreso) is absolutely dominated by the 30-50 female crowd. Stay at home moms, empty nesters, whichever, but a demograp
I disagree, brought to you by Carl's Jr. (Score:4, Funny)
I don't know why you guys are complaining. Ads have the electrolytes your body craves.
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It's all about the Benjamins.
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They're not in it for the love of making games anymore. They're in it for the money.
The reason Farmville and its ilk are crappy games is the same reason that EA makes crappy games. They're made with bad intentions (in the sense of game design) from the start.
Simplicity of a MUD and a 2496 Baud Modem (Score:3)
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You'll be surprised to learn that others think the opposite!
I played a MUD called DragonRealms for a few years. It was quite an amazing game, but eventually the daily grind just got to me. It was the same thing over and over to claw my way up another level. The social aspect was the best part at that point, but the developers destroyed the community with an insane price hike. -sigh-
I've searched for years for another one that I would enjoy as much, but haven't found it.
Facebook games hit me almost exact
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I hate to be a shill, but if you're actually in the market for a MUD you might want to take a look at Alter Aeon. In my opinion, we can easily hold our own against DR.
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It sounds interesting! Of course, I can't really tell until I play it, but I'm definitely going to check it out. Thanks!
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Thanks, that one looks like it's worth checking out, too.
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To be fair, a lot of MUDs were highly repetitive, boring grindfests. After MUDs and their tropes had been firmly established (with Diku and Circle MUD), one MUD was pretty much the same as any other MUD, with the exact same, boring gameplay and areas. In fact, I remember playing on some MUDs where you were handed a bag full of the best low-level loot, so that you could get to the drudgery right away, without having to expend any creative thought. Sure, there were exceptions -- I remember one custom MUD t
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In defense of the MUD developers, I understand extremely well the strengths of LPC, and I want it "way the fuck far away" from my builders. IMHO part of what makes a game world good is its consistency; game physics should work roughly the same everywhere, and while there should be surprises and special cases, they shouldn't be game breaking.
A lot of it boils down to complexity. For a well built, globally consistent world, you need a fairly small ruleset that limits what can be built. Not because it's a h
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I'd tend to agree. In my experience I've found that a class of players will want to constantly grind and level up and a number of people will then portray that as the only way to play the game and highlight it as a disadvantage. I think it's a human nature thing - some people will always want to have bigger numbers of some arbitrary metric than the people around them.
Where some MUDs were, and still are, undoubtedly grindfests others have been built with variety and provide many ways to play them. I like
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A very interesting middle ground between the all-combat MUDs and the all-social MUSHes was Dune MUSH. You could actually die there, and I believe you even had stats, but death meant make a new character. I didn't play it much because I was too involved in another MUSH, but for something resembling a real, story-driven RPG experience in MUDs, this one seemed to have the most potential.
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Then you should have leveled to wiz and coded new and more interesting challenges....
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"The alternative was arguably even worse -- stories that were more interactive and interesting, yet full of people who wanted to RP every breath they took, with no actual game involved. You want to actually kill a monster? You want to gain a level?! Powergamer! Ban him!"
Sounds suspiciously like the roleplaying servers that people set up for NWN. The ones that think that in order to have proper rp and immersion, you need glacially slow levelling and miniscual amounts of magic.
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Yeah. Online NWN was very heavily influenced by MUD/MUSH culture. I tried a few NWN persistent worlds, but I found that they were usually a bit too social or too combat-oriented for my taste, so I ended up playing the single-player modules more than anything else. There were a few servers that had a decent mix of both action and RP, but they were often a bit underpopulated, as people gravitated toward the more extreme servers. While I'm generally more a fan of the action side, I like a compelling story
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I helped run an LP-MUD for awhile. It was relatively easy to extend this and we added new areas all the time, without even having to reboot. Meanwhile every time I visited a Diku or Aber MUD (those most closely related to Richard Bartle's game) they all seemed very similar to each other. The difference I believe is that it was much more difficult to do extensive modifications to those games and you relied on a smaller set of trusted people to touch the source or add objects to a database; but in a game w
emote agree (Score:3)
Multiplayer games that are actually social (Score:2)
I have noticed this, and there are social multiplayer games. The thing is, I am wondering why some of the legacy titles, such as Zelda don't get multiplayer online variants. (A Link to the Past with 4/8/16 Links anyone?)
A Good example of this is Mega Man: 8 bit Death Match.
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I have noticed this, and there are social multiplayer games. The thing is, I am wondering why some of the legacy titles, such as Zelda don't get multiplayer online variants. (A Link to the Past with 4/8/16 Links anyone?)
Zelda has had mutliplayer versions, they just weren't online.
Four Swords (GBA, required a copy of the game and a GBA for each player) and Four Swords Adventures (GBA + GameCube, required a GBA for each player plug a GBA->GC link cable) were the names of the two.
Four Swords is about to come to the DSiWare shop for free (for DSi/3DS owners) so we'll see if they add online play to it.
The other catch for multiplayer Zelda games... Four Swords explicitly limited each player to being able to carry one item, al
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Back in the day (est. 2000), there was not very subtle Zelda: A Link to the Past clone called "Graal Online" that was multiplayer. The gameplay mechanics and graphics were very similar to the SNES title, except there were hundreds of people running around doing random quests (and the lore was different).
It was a lot of fun in the day, but it sort of went down hill and slipped into obscurity (even if a cursory googling sugests it's still around). Partly from competition from emerging MMORPGs like WoW, but al
He's right (Score:4, Insightful)
I completely agree. There's nothing in modern social games that draws me. I used to love MUDs, and especially the more social ones: MUSHes and the like. Playing together and establishing some kind of community inside the game is awesome. Having a community outside the game see your achievements in some lame grind game is not so exciting.
Yet I do think it should be possible to do something much more interesting with social networks and games. For example, nearly my entire RPG group is now on Google+, and with its circles, you could have some online game and play it with that circle, without all your other contacts getting annoying messages about it. That's certainly something we intend to explore.
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Talking of Google+, Anyone want to PM me an Invite?
Designers are Important (Score:3, Insightful)
In the hands of designers, this has a great deal of potential, but unfortunately it's not in the hands of designers, it's in the hands of marketers.
Bartle is probably a little biased, but he is definitely right... about more than just gaming. The marketing department tends to be in control of to much. Marketing has a simple goal: make products more desirable to the target consumer. This is supposed to involve pre-design data, and post-design constructive criticism.
However, many companies let the marketing department control the entire design process. The accountants tend to have their way with the product as well. In the end, the consumers only get choices between poor-quality products with a shiny vernier. I have no data for the following statement, but personal observation is that this process has made a few people dumber as well...
Designers are important, not only because they aim to produce a creative and unique product, but because they find ways to challenge customers in one way or another. Believe it or not, surmounting challenges are what keep us coming back for more.
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In my opinion, Batle is very biased and frankly, a bit dinosaur.
He is the guy that argues that "Permanent Death" is good thing for MMO (and only hated because of bad past implementations and that intelligent player can be convinced it is good thing for him).
Then, it goes downhill. He is basically all about trying to convicne people that good old hardocre muds were fun and if you do not find then fun, you are stupid. Any innovation is, of course, stupid too because it dilludes old and superior design. He is
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This reminds me of my favorite social site, you are rewarded points based on what you say..
Or have them taken away
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That depends on your definition of fun! (Score:1)
While I agree with the author and find games like farmville and mafia wars completely unfulfilling, I never found MUDS that enjoyable either. This comes from the fact I'm a visual person. I learn visually, I experience visually... you get the idea. Games like Everquest and World of Warcraft appeased me much more. Story is always important and with MUDS it's absolutely essential to have a good experience.
With WoW or EQ, not only do you have a good storyline but you get to see the combined creative 'juice' fo
movies == what the author meant? (Score:2)
No, you're seeing the director's interpretation of what the author meant, as constrained by the producers, budget, ratings system, skill of the actors, etc.
Even with the adaptation of comic books to movies (both visual mediums), some authors (eg, Alan Moore [filmcritic.com]) have made comments on how they are effectively two different stories, as how the reader/viewer interacts with the medium is different. (pause the movie, and go check out what h
Source on Gamification (Score:3)
A) He isn't having fun in social games
B) He makes statements like " This has led to gamification. "
C) He also had no fun at the prom. He found it had led to dancification and kissification.
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He should play Recettear so he can have yayifications.
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Gamification is a very useful term for what we think of as "social network gaming"; not just an indicative that someone isn't enjoying the formula. "Gamification" is basically taking the elements that make someone play a game or engage in certain behavior and applying them to other applications - The yogurt shoppe near me punches a card every time I buy so much froyo, and provides a free item when the card is full. That's no different than an "Achievement" that unlocked a perk. The business thinks, "If
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if people didn't enjoy the games, wouldn't they move on and find other ways to amuse themselves?
Short answer - no.
Slightly longer answer - you can exploit human behavior in such a way that they become obsessed with doing something, even when all the actual rewards (fun) from that behavior have disappeared. If I create an activity with the goal of it being fun, and some people become addicted to where they participate long after it's still fun, you might forgive me. I have done some harm (through causing addiction) but it was accidental. If, however, I create an activity with the goal of forming addict
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I think it's not being done because it's harder and more costly to program, and the
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" There's little attempt to really explore the possibilities of multi-player.'
On the contrary, companies like Zynga have explored and researched the possibilities of social interaction a hundred times more that most game designers, tweaking all the tiny elements to an optimum range that works on the hairless apes on Facebook - that is then copied to all the games.
All these shallow elements that you mention - they work. They keep the most amount of players coming back. The recovery rate of "energy levels" an
What does fun have to do with it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Solitaire games are still among the most widely played games on computers. I can't say they can be classified as "fun." They are particularly good at being a distraction, clearing the mind and passing time. Playing games is often used for those moments when such things are desired.
Some games are even the source of anger and frustration -- is that "fun"? I am quite sure a few people will answer "yes" but for most people, that's actually not the case.
For most people, they seek "reward" after a challenge. Having the reward is fun for people, but to road to getting there is quite often not fun.
So what is "fun"? I like riding my bicycle. Some games are genuinely fun to me... perhaps this weekend I will load up an old computer with Win98 and set up XWing vs Tie Fighter or something similar. THAT was a fun game. But fun for me and fun for others are different things.
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Having worked in social media and social gaming quite a bit in the past, I've heard this and the other side of the argument on "social gaming" many times. Yet no one, on either side of the argument, even those active in the industry to this date, have actually admitted that they themselves play "social games" such as Farmville or Cityville. They have no desire to play the very games they create. They tend to prefer games with deeper strategy, storytelling, or action dynamics. Indeed, Smash Bros and StarCraf
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Maybe that's because marketers make money? (Score:2)
"it's not in the hands of designers, it's in the hands of marketers."
Would you rather make more money? Or a better game.
If your reaction is to ignore the entire sentence except for the word "money" you shouldn't be the guy who takes the decisions about how to manage the money that investors have lent you.
If your reaction is to think that a better game makes more money than a game designed to make more money... Well, it's not going to be me who pops the pretty pink bubble.
so, what's he playing today? (Score:2)
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Those games are for them, not us.
On a Broader Note of Games in General (Score:1)
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I personally want to get into the game industry just so I can have something fun to play in my leisure time once again...
Good luck with that. From what I gather, if you get into the game industry you won't have any leisure time.
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I'm in the game industry, and I know exactly where they keep getting their money: investors looking to make a quick buck. Gaming is becoming the new rage, and everyone is trying to get a piece of the pie. Anyone with minimum competence and a business plan can get a couple million dollars these days. I've personally tracked a couple of these games (Earth Eternal springs to mind) from creation to destruction to see what was going on.
It's really just another bubble. It'll seethe and froth for a while, but
kind of a subjective point (Score:3)
OK, so some designer says that a simple system of semi-addictive task/reward dependencies isn't "fun".
That's self-evidently not true by an objective measure. Lots of people play them, ergo, to many people it IS fun.
I don't think running on a treadmill (or any running, frankly; I *am* posting on slashot...) is "fun" either, but I'd expect that a significant number of runners would disagree with me.
It's more like he's complaining that the task/reward system is so dull and transparent that it is uninteresting. That may be true, I certainly don't find them fun myself. But for a good 6 years I played WoW intensively, which is only marginally more complex in essence (although a great deal more varied). I was having a lot of fun, although in retrospect I have trouble understanding why, even in my own personal context.
Arguing over what's objectively "fun" is like arguing which is "better", orange or blue.
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You assume the only reason people play games is because they are fun. That's not necessarily the case. They may be playing because it was fun in the past, and expect it to be fun in the future. Or they may be playing because it's easy and occupying which can be rewarding but falls short of fun.
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WoW is one of the few games that I persistently lost players to. WoW really does have nearly everything - an actual social environment, huge game world to explore, hooks to keep you leveling, stuff to do, stuff to learn. WoW isn't the juggernaut because it's the largest; WoW is the juggernaut because they built a damned good game that appeals to a lot of people.
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That's self-evidently not true by an objective measure. Lots of people play them, ergo, to many people it IS fun.
Kind of a false assumption. Lots of people could play because they feel compelled (I want to stop but can't). They could play because they feel pressured (I don't really like the game, but all my friends are doing it). They could play because it smooths relationships (hey, thanks for watering my pumpkins). Or they could play because they feel driven to complete things (gotta catch 'em all).
A quick rule of thumb is that if you won't look back on the activity fondly in a few years time, it probably never was
Obviously (Score:3)
They are not supposed to be fun, they are supposed to make money.
MUDs were never that much fun either (Score:3)
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Conversely, my experience with modern games has been great. There are plenty of great games these days that are tons of fun to play (I think I put somewhere upward of 700 hours in Left 4 Dead 1 over the course of about a year, Team Fortress 2 is probably even higher), and Steam is exposing me to a lot of ind
Preaching to the choir (Score:3)
The platform may be social, but the games in practice quite often are not. Players perform an end run on the 'beg other players for X of Y material' mechanic by registering shill accounts to work for themselves, or applying themselves to vast lists of other players that they don't know, who end up merely pressing the occasional button for one another without pursuing contact beyond those mechanical benefits.
No need to worry - MUDs arn't dead yet! (Score:2)
There might be fewer than 15 years ago but there are still plenty around - as a quick Google will show - and there must be a new generation discovering them now as they do have quite a few users and I can't believe its 30 and 40 somethings doing the same quests over and over again that they were doing in their teens and 20s back in the 90s.
MUDs are still alive... (Score:2)
I understand completely what Bartle is saying, and I don't just see it in facebook games. A lot of MMOs seem to be going the same direction - emphasize item collection and checkpoints over actually having a fun game. The down side of this is that the MMO and social game space are incredibly full of games like this and it's hard for truly original, independent games to get noticed. The up side is that I've been watching these games drop like flies for the last four years. The psychological tricks and 'ne
Ruined by greed. (Score:2)
Agreed, micropayments suck (Score:1)
Question for the community (Score:1)
Simplification and socialization (Score:1)
Refuse to play them (Score:1)
Sid Meier - Civlization (Score:2)
Sid Meier might have the answer. He's bringing a version of Civilization to Facebook. My respect for him is enough to take a look. That will total exactly 1 Facebook game I've ever tried.
Examples (Score:1)