I don’t even need to write anything. The bunch of Escapist forum regulars have said all that I need to say:-<\/p>\n
By SilverKyo:<\/p>\n
This is a difference of what you’re looking for in games. Honestly you made my point for me in your first sentence when you said you play Zynga games five minutes at a time. It’s a matter of what you’re looking for in a game and what you can commit to it, which I’m in college so I understand, I don’t get to play as many games as I’d like to and my backlog of games I’d like to pick up is obscenely long. But the best way I could describe Zynga as not a good game would be to really look at that time commitment you described. And to be fair, I’ll compare it to another nice simple game, Solitaire (or Tetris, or some Popcap game, honestly it won’t make a large difference).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
On the surface, the games look exactly the same. Simple, short, to the point, play whenever you have time to kill, but it’s the subtle differences that really make or break it. If you played Solitaire, you could play it for five minutes, ten minutes, a half hour, really however long you feel like, however much time you need to burn, however happy it makes you, etc. But with a game like Farmville, you can only<\/em> play for five minutes. You harvest the crops, sow the land, and plant the new crops… that’s it, there is nothing else to do after that besides possibly stare at the screen and watch the percent to completion number climb (and if anyone seriously do that, they have some deeper psychological issues, and probably enjoy watching paint dry or grass grow). The game ends without the user being able to offer his desire on whether or not he’d like to continue playing, which is a terrible game design choice. But the way the game functions, and farmville being particularly clever in this field, is they require you to comeback to play again, or else you lose a sizable chunk of money and could royally screw yourself over if you don’t, which gives Zynga more numbers to add to their users and advertisements. It’s ingenious really, letting the player only play for five minutes and making them comeback. It helps gloss over the flaws of gameplay (or lack there of really) and creates recurring users, but it doesn’t really let you play the game because the game functions with a very little user input. You tell the game what to run and it runs it, but you don’t actively participate in the crop growing process or what have you. Another immense flaw out of Zynga’s favor for me is the repetition. In Solitaire, every single game will be new and random. Each game is the same in a very general sense, but no two games are ever the same when you play them… ever<\/em>. Conversely, games like Farmville and the like are the exact same tasks every time. Plant the crops, cook the food, mug the innocent stranger, whatever it is, it never really changes. The crops, food, or illegal action you do may vary slightly, but the user’s experience never changes because it’s the same action of telling the game to do something and it does it. To be more specific, in Farmville it’s always harvest, sow, and replant; In Mafia Wars, it’s always do a mission until you run out of energy; In Cafe World, you cook the food and sell it. It might sound the same as Solitaire in the sense you’re just playing the game, but really it’s not, and don’t even try to suggest otherwise. The game tries to insert the randomness to excite you, like a random farm animal or plant that you find, but they don’t impact the overall experience that much. In the same sense that Zynga games don’t require alot of input from the player overall, they also don’t really require mental effort or thought in any sense. I’m not going to try to say Solitaire is complicated, but it usually requires some effort in trying to move cards around so you don’t run out of moves. I’d enjoy an example of one Zynga games that required some form of thought more complex then click, because there isn’t one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That was just comparing Zynga to Solitaire<\/em>, one of the most basic games in existance that is on EVERY computer, and it still doesn’t stack up really (objectively anyways). So trying to compare Zynga to games like Left 4 Dead, Portal, Half-Life, CounterStrike, etc. (I used all Valve examples for a reason) is almost laughable. I won’t stand here and say Zynga is terrible at what they do, but what they do isn’t good games. It’s simple time wasters that require the user to keep coming back to play, which then exposes them to the ads to make money. Then using incentives to get the user to spread the game virally to their friends is honestly pure genius, because it requires almost no work or investment on the company’s part, so they make almost pure profit on their marketing. Zynga are incredibly good at marketing and playing to their demographic, but to say their games are on the same level of the other 63 developers here is objectively wrong. Obviously people are subjective in their tastes of games and what they play, but taking a step back and comparing the games individually and objectively, Zynga really doesn’t stack up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Thank you for saying the above. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I simply can’t thank you enough.<\/p>\n
And this by TriggerHappy:<\/p>\n
I think the reason so many regulars here are getting so fired up over this is because many of us have been playing games for most of our lives. We see them as more than mere escapist entertainment, just as an avid book reader finds books more than something to read on a slow day. we’ve spent countless hours, and sometimes dollars, honing our skills or perfecting our machines. we have played games from many developers and many ages, exploring different universes that have been artfully crafted with the utmost care. games that require more from us than a button click. This website is our “club” if you will, we come here to talk with others about these experiences because we know that they will appreciate them or at least have something constructive to say. We do not fight against zynga with such fervor because we are all elitists who don’t like anything based in a separate window or on a console. We fight because though we may also enjoy the experience zynga provides for maybe 15 minutes, it will never hold our attention or our imagination for longer than that. And for zynga to be winning against all odds, though it would seem that nearly all of us here are against them, to us seems as though zynga is buying the vote. I have personally played both mafia wars and farmville and I can assure you that I (like most everyone else here) find their quality, in comparison to the quality of games from the other developers in this competition, lackluster at best. I will admit that getting a game on facebook to have 80+ million users is rather impressive, but the people touting the number speak as though it’s the first time it has ever happened. Besides that, they also speak as if the games support in-game interactivity, as in an MMO however the only interactivity you see is though your wall on your profile page, not the actual game. Sure, every now and then you find a message at the top of your mafia wars page that says your friend has given you something but that’s as far as it goes. you never see any of the other players in the game, it is only you. As far as zynga goes, they push no envelopes and do nothing to really innovate while every other devs in the bracket have, at one time or another, done something that advanced the entire industry. Valve brought steam, the halflife series, and at least 3 different ideas that the industry had never seen before (and I’ll stop that rant short as it would, itself, make for a 5 page post). people keep saying that zynga is ushering in the era of social games but the truth is that they are already here, we call them MMORPGs, or MMOs for short. the most famous example is the offering of blizzard we know as world of warcraft which holds 64% of all MMO subscriptions (I’m not entirely sure how many people that is but I have a feeling that it is well over 80+ million). people say that zynga offers creativity but there are games out there that offer so much creativity that they allow you to create the games entire world (see little big planet).
\nGoing back to my initial statements, we who frequent The Escapist see zynga as a developer that offers nothing new to the industry and fails to even come up to par with rest of the developers in the bracket. *deep breath* I realize that this rant probably won’t be seen by many of the people voting for zynga and that in a few hours it will be burried by about 12 pages of other post but I felt I needed to put in my two cents. if I offended anyone or made you uncomfortable, I apologize<\/p><\/blockquote>\nAnd for this hilarious analogy by ObsessiveSketch:<\/p>\n
It’s like a high school talent competition, but the break dancer, sword-swallower, and barbershop quartet all get beaten out by the local hot boy. Why? Because he carried the girl vote. Why? Because he’s HAWT<\/em><\/strong>. What does being hot have to do with talent? Exactly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Ahahahahaahahahahahaha!!!!!<\/p>\n
Another post that made me laugh:<\/p>\n
Spinwhiz (the Mod with the banhammer):<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The Hype<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Welcome to the Field of Four (…). Who will come out on top, nobody knows but the thread furnace is already starting to heat up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n\n