Have you ever had people make comments about your video gaming habits? Non gamers love to say things like “all you do is play your games all day” or “I don’t know what you see in these things”. This is perfectly understandable – a lot of people just don’t get video games. They don’t comprehend how you can spend most of your Saturday morning immersed in a game world. I suspect that I wouldn’t understand it either if my only exposure to gaming was playing Wii Sports one time at a party. It wouldn’t make sense to me.
But nowadays things have changed. The same people who have been making these gaming comments are hopelessly addicted to Farmville, Mafia Wars, that island thing or one of the other crappy Zynga games. In fact, they will often make these comments while planting their crops on their fucking farm. They give you shit for gaming while they are gaming.
Yes, I said it – every single person who plays Farmville obsessively has caught the gaming bug. They are a gamer in a larval form, even though they might not know it yet. If you really look at Zynga games, they are very simple and primitive MMO-type games. No, seriously. I watched people play Farmville and this is what I noticed:
- Farming has levels – you actually level up your character by working on your farm
- The crops and special items are organized in level appropriate tiers so you have to work your way up to them
- You earn achievement ribbons for accomplishing special goals
- Your player stats and farm are public, so you can compete with your friends trying to level up faster
The only difference between Farmville and your average MMO is that there is nothing else to it. It is just a rudimentary leveling/loot/gar/trade system. But perhaps that’s why it’s so popular – because it is simple. Because it has a gentle learning curve and almost no complexity. Compare that to WoW for example which while seemingly straightforward is actually incredibly complex once you get to the end game.
So next time someone makes a comment about your gaming, ask them about their farm. I have actually managed to completely stump several Farmvile players by explaining that “my games” also have levels, achievements and experience. It’s just I do different things to obtain them. Instead of farming crops, I hunt, I fight bandits to save the local village from being raided, track down terrorist cells, try to take down opposing spy network, try to find out who has killed the king and kidnapped the princes and etc… The stuff I do is more complex – but also more fun. I experience adventures, solve mysteries and often I also have a house or a farm I can work on or decorate. In other words, I play for the same reasons they do – and I get the same type of satisfaction out of leveling up my character. It’s just that their game is much, much simpler.
Granted, I have yet to “convert” any Zynga player to gaming proper. I’m not even sure if that’s entirely possible. We just don’t have any low entry level games that would be somewhere in between Farmville and something like Fallout 3, Mass Effect or WoW. The leap these folks would have to make is to great. But I think I managed to give several people a much better understanding of our hobby by comparing it with their favorite Facebook past time.
Perhaps one day we will have some games that will help people to bridge this gap though. Think a fairly standard MMO but with dumbed down simplified mechanics, all done in Flash and integrated with Facebook. I am fairly certain there would be money in a game like that.
i dont know many ppl addicted to farmville, but i have seen some addicted to browser pseudostrategy games
ive even tried one for a few months (ogame), it was actually an interesting experience, i wasted a LOT of time in that game yet i just couldnt keep up with other players because i refused to actually change my lifestyle to play it, eventually i got kicked out of a clan because i couldnt reach the exponential “points quota of the week”, after that i quit and i felt a huge burden lifted from my chest, at that point i realized i wasnt having any fun
and thats the thing, observing my friends playing those games they dont seem to be having fun, they need to play the game like they need to go to their jobs or shoot their heroin fix, i tried shoving one plants vs zombies which he admitted to be fun but i still see him playing the browser game
i’d say the best way to “convert” one of these guys would be sort of a detox, you could somehow block them from accessing the internet for a few days and give them a fun single player game when they start freaking out (finding “fun” sp games these days is HARD btw, luckily theyll probably wont be graphic whores and you can give them a few good retro games)
but im not sure that would be a good idea from the addiction point of view, the way they play those games already show an addictive personality, getting them to play a game where they can invest even more time (like proper mmos) might be dangerous
I play some browser based games, but only ones with some real strategy elements. My current favorite is estiah. But lets not elevate anything from Zynga to the level of a real game. Farmville isn’t healthy, and here is why. Reminds me of this.
My comment is awaiting moderation, I suppose because I put in 3 links. Anyhow, farmville-type games are bad, and other than zynga being pure evil, here is why: http://www.bogost.com/blog/cow_clicker_1.shtml
@ JKjoker:
Really? My brother plays these browser based strategy games on and off but he seems to be enjoying himself. Then again, he is the sort of person that gets a kick out of the social aspect of these games: forging alliances, breaking them, infiltrating enemy alliances, negotiating peace treaties, running multi-person cons and swindles in the game, etc..
He always has crazy stories about the stuff he and his friends pulled off to win a given round.
Oh, and when I used the word “addiction” I meant it figuratively. I do not actually believe you can be addicted to a game. I subscribe to the old school definition of the word addiction: as in, physical dependence on a psychoactive substances that cross the blood-brain barrier and alter the chemical state of the brain.
Anything that does not result in physical dependence and does not cause physical withdrawal symptoms when withheld is not addiction but obsession or fixation. If it is taken to an excessive level, it should be treated as such.
Everything I have ever read on the subject suggested that people suffering from things like the so called “video game addiction” do not respond well to addiction type treatments (as in detox, 12 steps, etc..) but tend to get better after seeing a traditional therapist.
I remember a story about a video game addiction clinic opening somewhere in the Netherlands at some point and then closing down again after about a year due to the fact that overwhelming majority of their patients had underlying psychological problems and had to be referred to real psychologists and psychiatrists to be properly diagnosed and treated.
@ jambarama:
I am not denying Zynga is evil. They totally are. Their business practices are very, very shady and their games are IMHO horrible. What I’m saying is that we should exploit them and use them as a sort of gateway through which we can introduce people to video games proper.
maybe is not addiction but compulsion caused by the conditioning the players go though in the
skinner boxgame ?“Compulsive behavior is behavior which a person does compulsively—in other words, not because they want to behave that way, but because they feel they have to do so”
I think the major issue preventing all the lamers from moving up to better games is that Zinga games and the like don’t really allow you to die. Whatever you do, how bad you screw up, you can only succeed. More or less than your friends, but succeed nonetheless. Facing a true challenge, most people who are not already gamers simply balk. Watching TV is safer. My gf, for instance, is an avid browser gamer. She will never move into anything else than point and click games because she abhors the idea of having to fight (and die) for any goal at all. She finds it too fast and too complex and too scary.
@ JKjoker:
Compulsion does seem like a much, much better word for it – thank you.
@ Alphast:
I agree. Most Farmville players wouldn’t be interested in the games we play because they are simply to hard. Well, not to us but we grew up playing video games. We watched them evolve and become more complex. We already have a built in visual vocabulary – we instinctively know about health bars, mana bars, leveling up, we use WASD for movement without thinking, we don’t even have to think in order to start circle strafing, we know how to handle quick time events, we know to use the quick-save button often.
New players don’t have that. If you sit them in front of a mainstream game they will be fumbling around with the controls, they can’t tell their health bar from mana bar, they don’t fully grasp mouse aiming, they walk into walls and the game mercilessly punished them for it. It is intimidating.
Hell, to be honest – I don’t like games that are too hard either. Being stuck on the same segment of the game for over an hour, unable to proceed until I memorize the placement of every enemy and trap, and can execute perfectly timed sequence of movements with my eyes closed is not my idea of fun. It is usually a deal breaker. So I can clearly see why “casuals” shy away from modern games.
Personally I don’t play video games for challenge – I play them for the stories. I want to be a spy, a knight, a wizard or a space marine. I want to explore the game world and have adventures. I play for the experience. And I believe that a lot of casuals would be drawn to this aspect of gaming as well – it’s just that they don’t have an in right now.
They flock to things like Farmville and Wii party games because it offers them easy, intuitive game play. They get a glimpse of the experience – however shallow and badly designed it is – and they like it.
What if we offered them a game like Farmville but with a story and characters taken out of BioWare game? Let’s say you have a farm that you manage by clicking, but whenever you buy or sell things you get to talk to these fully fleshed out NPC’s that tell you about the game world, the political situation, their families and etc. When you hire helpers they also have personalities, histories and etc. You grow attached to them, and then perhaps one of them gets sick or has an accident. Perhaps a rival farmer wants to run you out of business. Perhaps government wants to build a railroad or a highway through the middle of your farm.
As the story progresses, so do the controls. First you hook them with easy and fun casual gameplay, then you engage them with the story, then you can very gradually add complexity.
Maybe give your girlfriend Animal Crossing – its’ kinda like Farmville but with characters, stories and a tiny bit more challenge. And then, who knows – maybe after that she will be ready for 2008 Prince of Perisia (the one where you can’t die) to see if she enjoys some hard core platforming and quick time events without the death penalty and constant backtracking and repetition.
My cousin is not a gamer either but in the past I actually got her into all sorts of games. She loved the Sims back in the day, and I remember giving her one of those city building games (I think it was Caesar or Pharoh – you know, like sim-city but in ancient times) and she really loved it too. And these games were quite complex compared to stuff like Farmvile. They key was that you didn’t actually die in these games – you could fail, but it was not punishment for not having quick enough reflexes – it was a logical response to your in-game choices. You could see it coming and you could take steps to recover.
Nowadays she does enjoy some of the punitive challenge based games. She totally pwns at the 2D Wii Mario game which frustrates the living shit out of me.
It’s all about finding the right level of challenge and the right game. For example, I’m not a big fan of RTS games – and probably will never be. So I wouldn’t expect someone just getting into video games to start loving FPS or RPG type stuff right away – or ever for that matter.
I sometimes forget it too but this is a very diverse hobby.
[Hey long time no see…I used to frequent when your posts were more computer-oriented if you recall]
What do you say to those of us who still only like Tetris after trying everything? =P
bwahahaha kotaku.com/5615849/how-to-explain-starcraft-to-farmville-people