I thought I was done with Facebook games, but just when you think you're out, they pull you back in.
Since then, I've put $15 into Cityville, which ultimately felt like a rip off because of how quickly that virtual currency was used. I've contemplated the problems with the platform, how the flaws in Facebook's design preclude what you can do there. But most of all, I'm struck with how little the platform holders seem to care about making Facebook better for games.
Case in point, Message Centers. Cityville debuted a cross-game interface for accepting requests from other players with a single click, it enabled the game to run a very high re-targeting rate in its "user" base and has fueled its sustainability. Now every other major game is doing the same thing. Unlike all the other times these companies copied each other, when they were designing their games, this time the feature is an unquestionably useful piece of boiler-plate that all Facebook games must have in order to compete.
So that leaves a pertinent question: why doesn't Facebook just make their request system more useable?
Right!?
I know Facebook is really strapped for cash and they can't afford to put a lot of developers on doing more features and testing for the game experience on Facebook, but maybe put a junior intern on the problem. When the community of developers on your platform have to collectively implement a feature to get around the morbidity of your own native interface, you are failing as a platform owner.
But the truth is, Facebook doesn't give a damn about Facebook game developers. I mean, they like Zynga obviously, they own shares in it. They changed the rules of the platform just in time fo the Cityville launch, rules that Cityville happened to be designed to exploit. What kind of fair and transparent marketplace is that?
There has never been a free market.
There has never been a Santa Claus.
These companies do not care about games, or their developers. They do not care about you. At all.
You know what Facebook cares about? Fucking Facebook. If they were going to care about something else, they'd wouldn't have invented Facebook. These people are going to do an IPO at a ridiculous valuation and take in so much cash from the public, so much cash, it will not matter to most of the early founders/employees if the company ever earns another dime of revenue. Anyone halfway smart will try and liquidate at least half their position in the company's stock at the first available opportunity. A basis point (.01%) of Facebook is worth $7.5 million. What would you do if you owned 1/100th of a percent of Facebook? You'd take that money!
This also applies to console developers, app stores, mobile game network/platforms, retailers, those shitty awful goddamned casual game portals from five years ago. It goes for everyone who is not you, the developer, who has an economic incentive to earn off the audience reception of your games alone. Platform holders have an economic incentive to reap the rents of their platform. These interests conflict all the time in a variation of the tragedy of the commons known as the zom-rom-com of the commons. If indie game development is the Land of the Lost then platform-centric game publishing is ZombieLand.
The solution is for developers to make their game, ahem, THE PLATFORM, and make everyone else a *player* acquisition tool. People who really play your game, rather than merely use it like an affect-less junkie, will find their way to your stand-alone version on the web to do the biggest transactions, with only a 2.5% credit card fee to cramp your style. While they might spend more play-time on the mobile version, they might post and find newsfeeds and requests from games on Facebook via FB Connect, the core data defining their investment and performance will be centrally processed in your own data base. There's no reason why you can't take advantage of the multiplicity of distribution channels and make yourself a master rather than a slave. Commoditize these competing corporations, find your people.
Find your people.
Well duh...
That's not meant to sound sarcastic (well, not very, at least.) But the semi-vicious circle that is Facebook could never lead anywhere else. Facebook is now clearly a commodity merchant, not a niche marketer. That's fine for them but rarely good for the consumer if the consumer has more than two brain cells to rub together. And definitely not good for the developer.
Sure there are game models which have evolved within FBs ecosystem, but there's no reason to think that they should be the rule rather than the exception. The sole advantage as far as I can see is that FB takes care of the infrastructure issues which, if you are a commodity, is quite important since you need to be able to handle the constant churn of casual players. Whereas if you are interested in long-term stability (but probably niche size) then FB would surely be the last place you would use as yout base platform?
Trying to find the Like Button
but those goddamnblog software companies still haven't added that "innovation". So here:
L I K E
I still dream of having a Dislike button in Facebook.
Well said
Very Good post!
Although this is kind of really obvious for Total Indies (make, distribute and sell the game by itselves), the whole scene is rushing for AppStore and/or Facebook, like damn brainless zombies.
Your last paragraph says it all, "People who really play your game, rather than merely use it" should be the target, after all, a supermarket was never the place for an indie game.
Loathe Button
I don't want a "Dislike" button. I want a "Loathe" button. I would use it a fair bit.
But then, I'm a notorious curmudgeon, apparently.
Nasty metaphor, come on!
@Novack: Your metaphor of "rushing for AppStore and/or Facebook, like damn brainless zombies" was plain nasty. Look at the profits that indie games that have an audience can make via such distribution channels. Compare it to the profits that self-published indie games generally make. Even the minecraft devguy, who was perhaps the biggest exception from the typically financially under-achieving self-publishing indies is rushing to these channels of distribution now.
Some indie devs would like to make good games and some money at the same time, and a self-published indie title for PC has the least chance of financial success. Why be generally nasty to those people who attempt to lower their risks? If you want to be nasty, target those who are obviously just trying to clone the current high profit games, and those who do the very same games over and over again – if anyone, such people can justly be compared to zombies, and you don't have to go the the A(ndroid|pp) Store or Facebook to find such devs.