Thanks for saying what I was trying to say better than I could ever say it.

@ Dblade

Things like Pokemon live on in other ways. Creature handlers in SWG for example. (Damn you, NGE, damn you!) Or my hunter in WoW.
Lim the saberooth tiger, Shellshock the turtle, Monsoon the gorilla can easily be Pichchoo or whatever that guys name is.

But Dblade, the point isn’t about farming games. The point is about the distribution channel. Here’s the mantra to wrap your head around it: Facebook is a CONSOLE. More specifically, it’s what Xbox Live/PSN wishes it were.

Sure, the first games on a console tend to suck. And sure, there will likely be a better console after Facebook. But the point is that the genie is out of the bottle. Something will replace Farmville — likely, something more to your taste, even! And something will be the Colecovision to Facebook’s 2600. But the market is here to stay.

I think you are underestimating the long term viability of these types of games. None of the games you mention were played by my mom, for example, or most of the people I referred to as non traditional gamers. I think the games you mention were big kid fad games, with maybe some splash from other groups. But facebook apps are bringing a lot of adults that would never think of playing nintendos or pokemon.

Yeah, I get it. But casuals and nontraditionals have always flocked to whatever the latest fad game is. Facebook games are pure fad-they are poorly made grindathons with no real redeeming value to keep them aloft past the initial craze. Everyone owned a tamagotchi as well. Sega even made the VMU for their dreamcast based on it.

I know they love the games, but one day the fad is going to end. It did with Nintendogs for one, and that game is a good example of how a nontraditional game can sink into the waters of obscurity. Heck it did even with pokemon, and even the clones stopped after the initial craze.

Raph:

I’ll bet you a pizza that in two to four years facebook games will be a memory, and people will look at them like how we look at full-motion video games now or those plug and play dedicated TV consoles. “People played that?”

By all means good luck at making your game, and I hope you make enough money at it to recoup losses and come out of it okay. I just disagree with the point, and i’ve seen tons of fads fail to influence people or the industry despite being targeted at traditional or non-casual gamers.

I’m always a little shocked at how many people people I know, including my mom for Pete’s sake, that would never think of playing WoW or SWG or UO but just love the heck out of little ole Farmville. They deck out their farms and plant things and never ever have to worry about if they have enough arp and other stats to switch to marksman or if they left one of their ore collectors neglected somewhere on Naboo.

It is a casual game that non traditional gamers love. Now don’t get me wrong, I love WoW, Dragon Age, and am positively DROOLING to get my hands on Mass Effect 2. But if you can’t see the appeal of Farmville to the masses you need to get off vent and go talk to some people in real life that you wouldn’t normally associate as being gamers.

Now I think

“Facebook games are the equivalent of bad Wii shovelware, and will have the same impact on the genre as it.”

Dblade, you’re just completely, mindblowingly, staggeringly wrong on this part.

-Noel Coward

1. Raph and co. try to make a browser-based second life/habbo/IMVU.

2. Raph and co. fail to realize that you either need a decent game or an unhealthy focus on Pr0n to make the concept work.

3. Metaplace opens, and people find that the tools can only make bad 8-bit games, and that no pr0n exists.

4. Metaplace underwhelms. Folds.

5. Raph needs to work, and converts game engine to make facebook games. Game engine is pretty good for such, since most facebook games are crap, and Raph designs good engines.

6. Announcement of such. Due to people thinking UO and pre-NPE SWG are the gods of the internets game, horror.

7. Silly arguments and justifications ensue.

It’s not about nerd games versus AAA games at all. Facebook games are cheap to make, and can attract a large enough audience to make profitable despite being crap. We already see this in the Iphone market and the F2P one.

Raph has to satisfy investors and make money, so it’s a smart move, and tbh he can probably make a not-bad game using that engine. But trying to spin this as anything more is silly. Facebook games are the equivalent of bad Wii shovelware, and will have the same impact on the genre as it. Now and then someone may make a fun timewaster out of the sea of crap.

Geldon, don’t forget that your friends at metaplace are currently in that indie bucket! Go play Island Life!

Maybe I would … if I ever bothered to register for Facebook.

You look at it as going from theater to film. A lot of people see it as Michelangelo deciding to paint velvet Elvises or dogs playing poker.

Michelangelo had the benefit in that, all the way up until post-modernism caught on, there was this focus on trying to capture life in great and magnificent works.

Some time around when post-modernism caught on, between the horrors of war and the din of overpopulation, the definition what’s truly “good” became a very ambiguous thing indeed.

Now, for all we know, velvet Elvises or Andy Worhol Eats A Hamburger is the highest of art.

Raph :
Am I, or Sid Meier, or brian Reynolds, or whoever, betraying theater, which gave us success, by going to a nascent Hollywood? Up to you theater fans.

You look at it as going from theater to film. A lot of people see it as Michelangelo deciding to paint velvet Elvises or dogs playing poker.