Thursday, January 7, 2010

Facebook games?

Everyone on earth is STILL playing farmville, Mafia Wars, and oodles of other video games on various social networks. The legendary game creator Sid Meier now claims he's making a Civilization game for facebook, as well!

Yet I've done everything I can to avoid "social network-based" video games. I spend too much time on both social networks and video games separately already.

That I don't spend time with this particular breed of video game, however, also means I can't attest to their quality. I CAN say, however, that they certainly LOOK like garbage - Farmville = cheap graphics, loading issues, and time-based gameplay that rewards prolonged screen exposure as opposed to skillful time management.

Why not just play one of the better iterations of Harvest Moon instead? Is there really something different about them?

4 comments:

Coppiceman said...

I'm with you on this one...I have no idea why people play Facebook games. Even if you don't have access to a console, why not play decent flash games elsewhere?

But I don't play Facebook games, either, so what do I know?

Michael Weiss said...

The civilization is old news.

heres the link:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/95622-Civilization-Coming-to-Facebook

Shane Park said...

Its all about accessibility. With console games you need to buy a console, find the game, then you can enjoy it. For PC games you need the hardware to be able to play them which can be very little or a lot depending on what you're playing. But these games on social networks like Farm-ville and Mafia Wars takes nothing but your average browser. It also has a quick and easy social aspect inviting your friends to play and in turn rewarding you. Think pyramid scheme without the money investment.

But I do agree, I don't like the games on there. I find them particularly drab. Probably because I have better games to play. :3

Andy Kirchoff said...

In other words, FB games are like the Red Eye and various other publications are to actual newspapers like the Chicago Tribune - garbage they may be, but people will still read them simply because they're free.