EA - Goes RPG Social

@Dez - I agree 100%

"social this" and "social that" - yes, let's hop on the bandwagon. "Social media" is business's new Big Thing. Anything that can be punted on or converted to "Social Media" is pushed very hard. Ironically the reason (IMHO) it's so big is cynical marketing by big businesses to convince you that you absolutely have to be part of the 'revolution'. Sadly seems there PR campaign has succeed - deny people access to Twitter/Facebook and they behave like civilization is ending. I think social media has led to poorer communication skills if anything…maybe they should call it 'antisocial media' - wait, I'm sure that will be the next Big Thing ;-)

Anyway, my respect for the 'good doctors' diminishes every time they make some new announcement.

Twotricks said:

Not only brand name. But brand name with bad associations

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Touche` my friend, touche`... :lol:

Glad you liked the article, Dhruin.

About the gambling aspect : I'm not a legal expert but I suspect it's not classified as gambling unless you can remove money earned through play from the system. A slot machine without any system for winning/paying out money is pretty much an arcade entertainment machine, you pay to play for a round and get to be entertained, nothing else.

It's skirting the line, I agree, and it's probably more that the F2P mania of the East hasn't swept to the West yet, so legislators haven't paid much attention to legislating around it. But I'm sure that point will come, someone spending $200k to get a prize has all the hallmarks of a gambling addiction.

Great another newsbit that give me more chills about Bioware and EA's future. As skavenhorde said if people want to be idiots and throw there money away let them. There the reason why F2P is so popular and why publishers are liking the model.

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I think it's more than just the money. The games industry is hit-driven, it's estimated that only 1 in every 3 games breaks even, the big hits like Modern Warfare cover the expenses of the others. Part of the problem is that the industry is a creative one, outside the established franchises it's hard to predict a game's success.

These F2P mechanisms are, I think, more quantifiable than relying on a game to spark in the popular consciousness on launch. Look at the article, they talk about ARPU (Average Revenue Per User). They can measure, test, predict this to a very fine degree. That's gotta be hugely comforting and attractive to the exec whose job may be on the line if he makes the wrong decision with where the company spends the next $50 mill.

Unfortunately, that's a grim thing for creativity and individuality, in an industry that is already averse to those things. I don't have a problem with actually building a game around social interaction (check out experimental games like Spy Party), or the idea of incorporating social media into (some, appropriate) games (digital version of those Murder Mystery parties people host, played like a DnD campaign, for example). But these games are remarkably disinterested in actually fostering shared social experiences. They just want to strip-mine your friends list and accentuate your feelings of peer pressure.

if Mark's comments to me were accurate, that they are much bigger than Heroes of Neverwinter, its kind of a no brainer for EA - this company makes money, and there is no work for them to do except throw money at it.

And of course, EA's absurd soul crushing policies as the former owners sip mai tais in the bahamas.

I wonder why EA didn't buy Bigpoint in the first place ?
But the answer to that is most likely this : Bigpoint is already too big to be swallowed …

In 2009 an employee of Bigpoint (which I realized much later) told in an presentation on the Games Com how much money could actually be made by the use of these so-called "micro-transactions". And these numbers were really impressive !

And now everyone wants to have a share of that cake.

But the cake is only so big.


The other point which worries me even more is the point of addiction. Yes, they create some kind of addiction, I'm sure about that. "Internet addiction" is becoming a disease right now, it begins to settle in the minds of doctors right now.

Dhruin said:

Gareth Fouche (Scars of War) wrote a blog piece about "social gaming" that I agree with:

http://garethfouche.com/revulsion

Still, if I was a business manager within a large organisation, this is what I'd do.

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One of Roger’s most interesting points was that “fun pain” was the key to social games’ success. Think about how a player needed to click each square to plant or harvest their crops in Farmville. This is a perfect example of “fun pain”, something that is simultaneously entertaining and a little bit annoying. This also gave Zynga the opportunity to upsell the player on pain-reducing items, such as a tractor that clicked four fields at once. These items were extremely popular among players, even though they only existed because it was painful to play the game in the first place!

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Fun
Items that make the game more convenient and tip the “fun pain” scale more towards fun are worth a lot to a wide variety of players.

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"Fun Pain" ? Huh ?

Sounds to me as a new way of exploiting people. "Gimme your 10.000 dollars or I'll smash your shop's windows every day !"

The player growing weary is actually a design goal. It bears repeating, gradually increasing boredom is actually a design goal for a game here.

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Fits perfectly into my philosophical approach that a gam is only a game as long the ingredients which define it as a game or a play aspect are preserved.

I'm actually glad that someone came up with that idea independently of me. I had always thought I was the only one wih that.

It sticks in my craw, this kind of thinking. There is no love for the art and craft of game design. The player having fun is actually an obstacle. A continuous cycle of dissatisfaction must be built into the system or the player can’t be convinced to give up money.

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Great line !

I’d suggest imagining it in another context. Imagine you open a restaurant, and your strategy to make money is to create purposefully bland food so that you can ‘upsell customers on condiments!’.

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He sees patterns, too !

I signed up for the Secret World beta test a few days back. It gives you the option to link up to Facebook so you can put something on your page about whether you are Illuminati, Dragon, or Templar. Sheesh. *I* am none of those. My characters may pick those out. I'm afraid I'm not a method roleplayer.

But yeah, these social network games strike me as more of a "who's who" of cheap psychology tricks to get people to pay. The 'social value' aspect already has an oder of pyramid scheme. Next they will "discover" the art of making an auction where the top two bidders pay but only the top bidder gets the auction item.

What is Secret World about ?

Alrik Fassbauer said:

What is Secret World about ?

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Here you go: http://www.darkdaysarecoming.com/

I am looking forward to trying out this game myself. But its online so I suspect it won't be high on your radar going from some of your other posts.

The Secret World is a massively multiplayer online world with a unique modern-day setting and unparalleled freedom of character progression.

Imagine if every myth, conspiracy theory and urban legend was true. Imagine a world where you can become anything you want to be, without restrictions such as classes or levels. This is the premise for The Secret World, Funcom’s upcoming massively multiplayer online game set in the modern-day real world.

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