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[knightav]

Now Playing Update

Still Playing

Sims Social - I actually have friends playing this (it's the only one)

Dropped

CityVille - Very little reason to play this one solo.  The building mechanics were ok, but just couldn't hold my interest.

CivWorld - I played this one a lot.  It probably has the most inherent "fun", but the competitive aspect and lack of persistence puts it at a disadvantage versus the rest of the social space.  I'll probably come back to it.

Illyriad - It's a good Travian clone, but in the end it's still a Travian clone.  I haven't met one yet that stays interesting once you get to the mid-game.

Picked Up

Jupiter's Folly - Fun competitive strategy.  Finished one round and going to try another.

Mafia Wars 2 - Definitely the most "game-like" of Zynga's games that I have played so far.

Castle Empire - Found this one tonight.  I'm a huge "Settlers" fan and it looks like Ubisoft is trying to capture some of that magic.  Here's hoping anyways.

[knightav]

Iron Helmet

Iron Helmet Games, maker of online (casual?) strategy boardgames really deserves a shout-out for their work.  Their games are social games, but not massive ones.  They all are played with a small group, frequently a pick-up group unless you have a lot of friends.  Being able to connect complete strangers for a meaningful long-term strategic experience is an impressive achievement.

Neptune's Pride, their first game, is a simplified take on the 4X space strategy genre.  It's simple rules and non-random combat calculations left all the focus on the diplomacy and overarching strategy.  To be brutally honest, at times it seemed even a little bit _too_ simplified.  Once turning points occurred, very little could be done to reverse the course of the game short of complete diplomatic betrayals.

Jupiter's Folly is similar to NP in theory but in execution is very different.  Notably it has NPC actors (aliens), a random aspect to combat, a randomized card hand-building aspect, and a clever card sharing mechanic to encourage diplomacy.  While the added non-determinism may not be loved by all, I personally find that it spices up the game dramatically.

Blight of the Immortals is the only one I have not tried yet (soon to be rectified).  In Blight, the objective is to repel a massive worldwide zombie invasion in a fantasy setting.  Combat-wise it seems very similar to JF, but there is a persistent element of global co-op even when "friendly fire" is enabled in premium games.  It seems that the zombies can overrun the whole map, in which case everyone loses (?) or perhaps just the highest scorer (likely the last to survive) wins.

Iron Helmet's games seem to be Flash running on top of Google App Engine.  They suffer from a fair bit of operational downtime, but I'm not sure whether to blame them or the platform.

For a very reasonable fee of $48, it looks like you can get premium access to all of their games for a year.  This has a variety of benefits, including the ability to host your own private games for your friends, as well as switch to a fully turn based mode, or tweak many of the games settings to create your own custom experience.

These titles are probably some of the most hardcore of the social games currently in existence and are quite fulfilling to the casual strategy enthusiast.

[knightav]

The link above is an incredibly insightful article on social games from an industry insider (of sorts?).  I feel like I'm at a place now where he was a year ago with his own analysis.

[knightav]

Raptr posts a pretty detailed look at Zynga's playerbase based on their internal data.  As The Escapist notes, the percentage of the hardcore userbase that also plays casual games seems to be on the rise.

However, without a compelling experience, it's almost a certainty that these new converts won't stick around.  The report was light on player retention statistics and heavy on the "have played" verbage.

[knightav]

For King and Country

CivWorld is a good game.  It's got the core aspects of Civilization, multiple paths to victory (...sort of, more on that later), and an extremely workable approach to asynchronous multiplayer.  Some of the ideas might have looked better on paper or with testers rather than with actual random facebook players.

The ad hoc way any player can join up with either an existing civilization or create a new one is a fantastic way to get people onto a team quickly.  However, due to the rampant inactivity of the majority of the game's population, the game tends to degenerate into 1-3 super teams that steamroll everything else on the map.  I'd like to see something like the old "maintenance" costs from earlier Civ games where large Civilizations are punished (somewhat) for their size.  Smaller civs need to have a role in the game.

I love that you can specialize or generalize your city in a variety of different ways, but at the end of the day there seems to almost be only one decent way to do it.  Prioritize growth over all else at first to maximize your per tick resource accrual and then later switch into science to dominate the endgame once you have a substantial population lead.  I think every game I played ended up with the best players doing this.

There's also almost no reason to specialize in gold right now.  Because of the way resources are currently balanced, it is universally more effective to specialize in growth, production, and science.

All in all I keep playing CivWorld, and even threw them a few bucks for the trouble, but I'm not sure whether there is much to keep me here long term.  Maybe if I knew a few other people we could form a team and dominate the map, but it really doesn't seem like it would be hard or terrifically rewarding.

[knightav]

Glitch Beta Final Phase

Glitch seems to be entering its final beta phase.  Glitch is a social game/experience from developer Tiny Speck.  It is flash + html and pushes the platform pretty hard.

Gamewise it feels like a social network version of A Tale in the Desert.  The genre is absurd/humorous and every aspect of the game is filled with semi-off-color humor, references, and inside jokes.  It's hard to do it justice, really, but it oozes character (not unlike how butterflies ooze milk).

Lastly, John Smedley of Sony claims that "The Old Republic" is likely to be the last blockbuster title to use the full-on subscription model.  Glitch actually has a subscription option as well as an item shop for aesthetic and convenience purposes.

[knightav]

Legitimacy.  That's what a trailer backed by a decent Jane's Addiction single represents.  It may seem strange to see a full blown trailer for a Facebook game, but this is just another sign of the times.

[knightav]

Session Timeout

One of the disadvantages of social gaming on non-phone devices is that it can be hard to stay on top of things.  I was gone this weekend and got kicked out of my civ on CivWorld due to inactivity.

When the Nexus Prime comes out, maybe it'll be time to get in on the smartphone thing and start playing these games in their element.

[knightav]

Opening Moves

Here are the games I'm starting with and why:

CivWorld - Sid Meier knows strategy and game mechanics.  If anybody can inject legitimacy into the platform it's him.

Illyriad - Travian-clones are probably one of the original social game genres.  Illyriad is a non-flash HTML5 clone with a particularly epic bent to it.

The Sims Social - The Sims has always been a single player game crying out for multiplayer.  The failed The Sims Online (2002) was leaps and bounds ahead of its time, audience-wise.

CityVille - Zynga is the current reigning champion in social gaming and this is their (current) crown jewel and the most played facebook game (today).

There's a decidedly strategic bent to these picks, but that is more a reflection of my personal tastes than the industry.  Over time I will inevitably dabble in puzzle, card/board games, and maybe even action.

[knightav]

"The Big Board" for social gaming.  Shows the fortunes of apps rising and falling.

[knightav]

It was easy to ignore...

...when it seemed like just another internet fad.  Eventually, I thought, the farm updates would dwindle and everybody would find other ways to waste time on Facebook.

But somewhere between Farm Town and Cow Clicking, Zynga became one of the largest game companies in the world.  Since then EA, 2K Games, and others have granted the movement legitimacy through their own social products.

Is it the future of gaming?  No idea.

Is it part of the present of gaming?  Definitely.

That's good enough reason to dive in and see what lies beneath the surface.