August 26, 2010
Zynga and Facebook Games
Over the past year, for some cause unbeknown to me, I was an avid Mafia Wars player. If no 1 is familiar with Mafia Wars or similar video games like Farmville, these video games are simple video games developed to pull you into an nearly sub-culture of gaming. It starts innocuous enough. They provide you having a restricted quantity of energy to utilize on tasks. As you accomplish tasks, you earn points to expand your energy and build your cache (in Mafia Wars its weapons, protection, vehicles, properties, etc. ). The more you play it, the greater you acquire, the larger your energy builds. It is an addictive cycle that draws people in.
An extra component that’s imperative towards the game is the social networking part of the game. For Mafia Wars, you develop your Mafia. Tasks and game objectives are accomplished by recruiting your Facebook buddies in becoming your Mafia. The more buddies that you recruit, the greater tasks that your buddies can assist you to annihilate. If anybody on Facebook that has spent 5 minutes on it, you’ve probably been asked to join a Mafia, begin your Farm, been given a virtual hug, or even been given a virtual Dunkin Donuts’ donut (I’d prefer the real ones).
This Social Networking element of the video games is both the cause that these video games are well-known and the cause why so many “Facebook”ers are sick of those games. More than the past year, Mafia Wars (and I’d venture to guess Farmville, et al) has evolved. When I started playing this game a year ago, the emphasis was to develop your Mafia. So like numerous I sent all my Facebook buddies a request to join my Mafia. Then when I wasn’t capable to reach my limit of 500 people in my Mafia, I searched on the internet forums. These fan forums basically created an area where you could post your info and recruit for people, unknown to you, to join your Mafia. This meant that they needed to be your Facebook friend as well.
Privacy is in the eye of the beholder, right?
My belief is that this is among the factors that Facebook is constantly changing their privacy settings. Hundreds of thousands of strangers were strangling Facebook’s internal email program through these requests. Plus these same people were littering Newsfeeds and requests boxes with these solicitations. For every Facebook update or change, these game developers seemed to have a fix. At this point, I am sick of “the games” that these game developers are thrusting at you to ensure that you are able to play these games.
Let me buy myself a Mafia!
Another nefarious element of those video games are the add-ons. Whenever you accomplish so many tasks (how numerous, I’ve no concept), in Mafia Wars, you’re given Godfather points. I believe this is a similar approach on the other video games as well. You accumulate these points and when you get a certain quantity, you are able to upgrade your character or globe in some fashion. Those that do not want to wait to develop your character through natural game progression can also buy these points. The last time I heard, about 1 quarter to 1 half players on these video games have purchased these incentives on these totally free gaming platforms. I really feel that this practice is very similar to using cheat codes in other video games except your game status is only restricted by the dollars that you spend on this game.
Furthermore, Zynga, the maker of most of those video games, contracted with hundreds of businesses to offer Godfather points. The catch was that the player needed to sign-up for a service through these companies. Numerous were regarded predatory in nature. Zynga felt a backlash and eliminated numerous businesses from this practice. However, it’s still 1 of their business models becoming used. This preys on our anything-to-get -ahead culture.
Feeling withdrawal symptoms!
As of now, I’ve stopped playing this and other video games on Facebook. They are too intrusive. I do not want to flood my buddies anymore with these requests. You can’t play a game on Facebook with out becoming asked to recruit buddies or post your info on your profile I’ve quit cold-turkey and, as of right now, I really feel liberated.. Until these rules change, I will feed my gaming addiction somewhere else. Now I need to go, Spider Solitaire is calling my name.