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[Gimym TILBERT]

I see your point, the problem is really should we consider a game for merit on its own or should we consider based on the intention they were made of. But what if a mechanics was create with good intention and turn into a devious trick? Experience point was not created to bring retention and promote shameless grind but end up that way.

There is still the "zynga bias" as if all social games use the same metrics with the same goal as zynga, which is not true, most game who create the mechanics first were made with a genuine feeling of making the game better until zynga copy them and change their meaning.

We don't see such a backlash for traditional game design only because most feature create to trick people have became genuinely cool through tradition. Only non gamer see them as devious harmful trick.

[LemonScented]

Goodness me, these quote-by-quote posts are getting lengthy. I'm going to have a stab at brevity. If you think I've omitted a response to something really important, let me know

You are trivialising a serious issue by characterising it as an extreme situation when it's more nuanced than that. The problem is:
  - we know people repeatedly do things in life that they will tell you that they'd prefer not to do. Typically we refer to this as addiction.
  - we also know most of these things are originally done "for fun". Thus it's not just about subjectivity, but about a sliding scale of where something crosses over from "fun" to "compulsive".
  - we know enough about psychology - or at least the behaviourist approximation of it - to know how to create stimuli that specifically pushes behaviour into the bounds of compulsion. This has been empirically studied.
  - we are seeing games that are beginning to resemble these behaviourist experiments - as we always have - but where there appears to be little narrative or ludic justification for this.
  - worse, we are seeing games where these approaches are coupled with microtransactions to convert successful compulsion into payments.

Surely you can see how this is a cause for concern, at least?

Yes, I do see it as a cause for concern, which is why I bothered reading/replying to the thread in the first place. I agree that a bunch of the games we're talking about are vastly more simple than what we're used to, and when combined with the use of these psychological techniques, they warrant questioning. What bugs me is that the discussions about this stuff seem to be coloured by our ("our" meaning us as longtime gamers and designers) fear/incomprehension of the success of new platforms like Facebook in the same way that every new media has been reviled by those who considered themselves experts in the existing media. We know how games are reviled by the existing media, in the same way that paperback novels, cinema, TV, Rock & Roll, comic books, D&D, Punk, Heavy Metal and the Internet were in the past, and we know how nonsensical all those arguments are. Now here we are, active defenders of some of those media, and grown-up enough to be way past being concerned about others, and we're suddenly finding a new target to rail against ourselves. We'd better be damn sure that that target is worthy of genuine concern, because otherwise we're becoming the next generation of "Get Off My Lawn" dinosaurs.

Yes, we should be constantly double-checking ourselves about the ethics of our designs. And yes, I think it's valid to have a discussion about how the current state of social games is, frankly, a bit crap. But I don't see evidence of actual harm being done. We should be talking about how to improve the genre, not how to vilify it.

You make it sound as if it is done to be nice to the players. I assure you that it is not. It is done primarily to reduce costs, by getting people off their servers and back on the Facebook infrastructure which is essentially free for them.

Of course it's not done to be nice to players. But the end result is a game designed to keep people from spending a long time hitting their server is also a game which slots nicely into small chunks in players schedules, which attracts a big audience of people who don't have a lot of time to sink into games. It's kind of win/win.

Spamming people who aren't already playing the game? Yeah, that's pretty crappy.

But that is, of course, the absolute only reason this stuff exists. It's to spread the application virally by making your players spam their friends in exchange for benefits. Whereas a less antisocial game like Minecraft relies on you thinking that it's really cool and choosing to spread the word with no benefit to yourself.

Uh, that's why I said it was pretty crappy. We're in agreement here. As I've said, I think game mechanics that utilise people's social graphs could become really cool one day, but right now they're pretty exploitative.

It happens all the time on MMOs. You see someone with certain kit, so you want it. It doesn't have to be a PvP game for that. People covet cool stuff. Nothing wrong with having a game that shows cool stuff and lets other people want it, of course. What matters is how you, as a developer, choose to advertise that to players, and how you capitalise on their resulting desires.

If you've got a game that's monetised, entirely or partly, by microtransactions, doesn't it make sense to find a way to show the have-nots what the haves have? The iPad is powered by Magic, and owned by Hip and Trendy People, and I should feel bad for not being able to justify the cost of one, and my girlfriend should find me less sexy because I don't own one. It's shitty, but it's the world we live in. You can't pretend games invented advertising.

[Kylotan]

I see your point, the problem is really should we consider a game for merit on its own or should we consider based on the intention they were made of. But what if a mechanics was create with good intention and turn into a devious trick? Experience point was not created to bring retention and promote shameless grind but end up that way.

Yep, a lot of it comes down to perception. Do we know the mind of the designer?

Personally, I am not inclined to think highly of Zynga, partly because I think they have honed the compulsive mechanics at the expense of normal gameplay, but also because they cloned existing games and worked on making them more profitable. I've not seen much evidence of them caring about gameplay or bringing something new to games, just something new to monetization of games. Maybe some of that is valuable if it protects 'better' games (whichever they may be).

Goodness me, these quote-by-quote posts are getting lengthy. I'm going to have a stab at brevity.

Good plan; I will do likewise.

What bugs me is that the discussions about this stuff seem to be coloured by our ("our" meaning us as longtime gamers and designers) fear/incomprehension of the success of new platforms like Facebook in the same way that every new media has been reviled by those who considered themselves experts in the existing media.

Agreed. We mustn't fall into the trap of thinking it's about "real" games vs "Facebook" games, or giving Zynga a hard time where we let Blizzard off on a similar charge, etc. And I do think there is a place for microtransactions; I'm just not sure exactly what form I think it should take.

Of course it's not done to be nice to players. But the end result is a game designed to keep people from spending a long time hitting their server is also a game which slots nicely into small chunks in players schedules, which attracts a big audience of people who don't have a lot of time to sink into games. It's kind of win/win.

That's one way of looking at it. I'd like to quote Jonathan Blow here as I think he can say things better than me, and his opinion carries more weight:

But I mean now that we've got FarmVille and stuff like that, I pretty much would say "don't make that kind of game" because I don't see much value in it.

It's only about exploiting the players and yes, people report having fun with that kind of game. You know, certain kinds of hardcore game players don't find much interest in FarmVille, but a certain large segment of the population does. But then when you look at the design process in that game, it's not about designing a fun game. It's not about designing something that's going to be interesting or a positive experience in any way -- it's actually about designing something that's a negative experience.

It's about "How do we make something that looks cute and that projects positivity" -- but it actually makes people worry about it when they're away from the computer and drains attention from their everyday life and brings them back into the game. Which previous genres of game never did. And it's about, "How do we get players to exploit their friends in a mechanical way in order to progress?" And in that or exploiting their friends, they kind of turn them in to us and then we can monetize their relationships. And that's all those games are, basically.

(source)

If you've got a game that's monetised, entirely or partly, by microtransactions, doesn't it make sense to find a way to show the have-nots what the haves have? [...] It's shitty, but it's the world we live in. You can't pretend games invented advertising.

It does make sense, and I'm not entirely against it. But on the other hand, a lot of people don't want advertising in their games, and don't want to be shown that other people can do better at the game if they pay for it. It's the whole 'sanctity of games' thing, the 'magic circle' within which there is a presumption of equality, etc. Perhaps we're breaking down that presumption, but I'm not convinced that's a great way to go.

[LemonScented]

It sort of feels like after many poorly-worded posts, I'm sort of honing in on my standpoint, which I should probably have found a way to make more clearly and succintly.

I don't think microtransactions are for everyone, and I'm not saying every game should be built around that business model. But for certain types of games it makes sense. I like it because you're already playing the game for free, and assuming the game designers aren't being completely dishonest about what you'll get for your money, the games put the players into a situation where they're a lot more informed about what their hard-earned cash will buy them than the currently prevalent business model where you pay up-front for a whole game that might be crap. These days, you might not even get the whole game for the price you pay for the box, since certain companies seem to be getting pretty exploitative with charging for "DLC" for just unlocking something which is on the disc already. DLC might be a discussion for a different thread, though.

I guess what this discussion has sparked in me is that it would be great to find a way to have a framework in which we can discuss the relative morality of different types of game design whilst being objective as possible. If there's a way we can do that, I'd love to know what it is. What irks me is knee-jerk reactions to new directions in game design. I think there needs to be a process of questioning of the designers' intentions, some actual concrete statistical data about the effect those designs have on players (socially, psychologically, financially), and from that a way of formulating some theories about whether certain types of games have a net positive or negative effect on games in general and society as a whole. There's something about social games right now (I suspect it's just their "newness" - they borrow a lot from older design concepts, albeit in a new context) that seems to frighten people and cause them to demonise them in a knee-jerk way without sitting down and really analysing what they're all about. It might be that in time we gather evidence that supports the view that these sorts of designs really are objectively Bad Things, but in the absence of that evidence I kinda feel like the burden of proof lies with the critics.

I even kind of see some of that in Blow's comments. He's not shrieking "OMG EVIL!" but he's expressing some degree of discomfort about the designer's motivations. My personal take is that regardless of how villainous the designer might be (and let's be clear: Zynga fit the model of Big Evil Corporation pretty well), the true measure of evil is the effect on the people who actually play the game, and I've looked and failed to find compelling evidence of actual harm. He's highlighting potential ethical issues, and I think those are worth exploring, but I don't see enough evidence to support his view that people shouldn't be making those sorts of games. I think that rather than not making them, they should be looking to find ways to make them better. If the quality bar can be raised a bit, there could be something really incredible in there - both from the business/profitability point of view, but also from the creative and player experience points of view. Social games are the babies of the games world right now. Let's not advocate killing them because they cry and poop everywhere and annoy people on public transport. Let's try to raise them properly and see what they're like when they grow up.

[Gimym TILBERT]

Next generation spamming




Zynga what have you done!

[LemonScented]

Huh? Isn't that just standard cross-game promotion stuff? That sort of stuff has been in social games for as long as I've been playing them, at least.

Crappy though it is, it's a step up from "EMAIL ALL YOUR FRIENDS WHO DON'T PLAY FARMVILLE AND DON'T GIVE A FUCK!".

Reminds me of Arthur Dent arguing with the Nutrimat machine:

Nutrimat: "If you have enjoyed the experience of this drink why not share it with your friends?"
Arthur: "Because I want to keep them."