Gaming Wars: Farmville v Final Fantasy

So who plays games on Facebook? I must admit I have tried out a couple such as Farmville, mainly to stop the endless requests from friends to join their farming community. With over 75 million players there seems to be the demand, in fact I have seen people in lectures tending to their crops, harvesting their trees and animals.

So why do people play them? My friends who play say they feel a sense of community, yet at the same time try to be more competitive than their neighbours. In this respect Facebook games are much like Final Fantasy etc. Zynga (the company that makes the FB games) received over 100 million dollars from Google. Here lies the problem commonly discussed by traditional game developers such as Charles Randall (Assassin’s Creed, Neverwinter Nights), Daniel James (Bang! Howdy, Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates) who argue in a wired magazine article that the problem with games such as Farmville is that they “break traditional game design and get players to pay money” and this is creating a gaming industry where it becomes not about skill but about gaming more “stuff” which they claim is similar to junkie behaviour. I have to admit I tend to agree, there was no better feeling when you were young than using skill to pass a stage.

While there is nothing wrong with playing games such as Farmville, they are probably more suitable for kids than others like God of war etc., there is the belief in the gaming world that Farmville etc. are fads and by creating them to be as such people will soon come to think of gaming as a whole as an industry that they don’t want to invest as much time and money into. Oh and just a last note, I think I lasted about a week on Farmville before it started becoming too time consuming.