i’m going to post this comment on various forums and blogs i’ve been following where this topic has come up. so don’t be suprised if you see this exact comment somewhere else on the web… this is a fairly long post so bear with me.

the key issue that a lot of pro-facebook individuals are overlooking is the fact that facebook games are INFERIOR goods, therefor the common thinking that an increase in quality leads to an increased demand is simply not true. inferior goods behave the exact opposite.

In consumer theory, an inferior good is “a good that decreases in demand when consumer income rises, unlike normal goods, for which the opposite is observed. Normal goods are those for which consumers’ demand increases when their income increases.”

lets use an inferior good that most people can relate to, Ramen Noodles. i love Ramen Noodles, as a college student i can’t tell you how awesome Ramen Noodles are… but, as soon as i start making enough money to afford something better, i’ll gladly never taste another Ramen Noodle again.

Like Ramen Noodles, facebook games are only going to be consumed when we can’t afford anything better (in this case the cost is time and energy). so we’re only going to play facebook games when we don’t have enough time or energy to do something better… as soon as we have more time and energy available to us, we will stop playing facebook games and move on to other “better” games. (just like how we only purchase Ramen when we can’t afford something better, and as soon as we can afford something better, we stop buying Ramen.)

it’s the same as if you went to a store and there was the regular old Ramen, and sitting next to it on the shelf was a New and Improved Ramen… regular Ramen is 15 cents a package, while the New Ramen is 25 cents a package… which one are you going to buy?

well the fact that you’re in the market for Ramen means that the most important thing to you is COST (lowest time and energy investment).. so you’re going to buy the cheapest product, quality doesn’t matter to you. (otherwise you would have headed for the steaks instead of the ramen)

quality games require a time and energy investment not found in facebook games… and it’s this lack of investment that makes facebook games appealing… as soon as you cross that threshold into a “good” game, then the cost (time and energy) required to participate in the “good” game becomes too high, and the demand for that game will drop off… because once a game becomes “good” then it is a NORMAL good, and facebook users cannot afford normal goods… they don’t have enough time or energy.

facebook games are inferior goods… “good” games are normal goods. facebook users WANT inferior goods because it suits their playstyle and it’s all they can afford… normal goods will not perform as well because facebook users simply cannot afford them… it’s like trying to sell a steak to a poor person who only makes $1 a week, he can either buy an extremely tiny steak that would last him less than a day, and he’d go hungry the other 6… or he can buy a week’s supply of ramen… which would you choose?

i’m not saying you won’t see good games on facebook, but good games won’t benefit anything by being on facebook.

besides, would you really rather log into facebook to play civilization? and deal with all the extra crap that facebook brings? or would you rather play the game like normal, but have an app that connects the game and facebook?

personally i’d rather have the regular game, and then an app that automatically searches my facebook for friends that also have the game, and then adds them to my in-game friends list. then i can easily interact with my friends in-game, but i don’t have to deal with all the ads, spam, random messages, that i’d have to put up with if the whole game was played through facebook. also an app could be like the PSN app that shows what you download from PSN in your facebook feed.. so in this way you could easily share your accomplishments in-game with your facebook friends, without all the intrusive facebook stuff… i see more benefits in keeping the game and facebook at arm’s length, than you could get by tightly integrating them.

do you really want your civilization gaming to be interrupted by random friends telling you about the awesome party they went to last night? do you really want pop ups notifying you of all the farmville gifts you just got intruding on your gameplay? do you really want ads in the sidebar distracting you from your gaming? or even worse, ads IN the game itself?

all of the above things are what make facebook games successful. these things are fine when you’re playing something with little to no gameplay, like Farmville, but when the gameplay becomes more engaging and more interesting, and requires more of your attention, like Civilization, are you really going to put up with all this extra crap distracting you from the “good” gameplay.

basically what i’m trying to say is that facebook is a platform for inferior goods, not normal goods… so the thinking that higher quality leads to higher demand, which is generally true for normal goods.. is not true for inferior goods and therefor facebook.

i hope this makes sense, it’s the best explanation i could come up with.

– Logan

I believe a lot of these eastern MMORPGs work the way they do because they were developed under a different mindset. In the West, we tend to prize individuality more, and consequently we demand more ways in which our characters can personally excel. In the East, there’s generally a more communal mindset, and consequently shallow gameplay of the individual play experience is just fine because they’re really more interested in working together.

And against one another, too; especially that, I’d think. Group together to beat the hell out of the other guys. I can’t forget how the main demographic in Shadowbane, when it was free to play, came from China. They were on record as having wrecked three servers by steamrolling across them, which led to some pretty nasty stuff on the servers that remained competitive.

Piracy has absolutely nothing to do with this. You can read pretty much any book you could possibly want for free from your local library, and yet books still make money – lots of it.

Do I really need to poke the obvious holes in that for you? Well, I’m not going to, that’s less a real argument and more a declaration that you’ve cranked your stubbornness dial to 11 on the matter.

But I will go so far as to say that piracy is a novel thing to blame for the games going overly casual. I’m really more on the side of saying it may have been a contributing factor that is making things worse-than-usual on the PC platform in particular. The more universal factor that pushes for more casual games is simply knowing there’s a whole lot more dosh to be made servicing a a wide body of gaming newbs than there is a small niche of gaming veterans.

Although, I am hearing a lot of talking heads these days saying that going casual has backfired. Nintendo went that way and is now regretting it. The trouble with making your games deliberately simple so first timers can pick them up is you’re left in the lurch when it comes time to deliver a follow-up product (or, in the case of MMORPGs, any kind of lasting appeal). Not even a gaming newb finds being spoon fed for an extended period of time to be all that entertaining. On top of that, those who prefer not to play games can’t be expected to be regular customers.

As the easy cash grab is becoming a whole lot less successful than it once seemed, it’s seeming like reducing attention on the core audience of gaming may well have been akin to killing the goose that was laying the golden eggs. Just how many hundreds of thousands of gamers might have given up the habit because they simply couldn’t find games that entertained them anymore?

And the Korean grindfests, tell me about it

One thing I’ll say about Korean grindfests: they’re not casual friendly games.

I believe a lot of these eastern MMORPGs work the way they do because they were developed under a different mindset. In the West, we tend to prize individuality more, and consequently we demand more ways in which our characters can personally excel. In the East, there’s generally a more communal mindset, and consequently shallow gameplay of the individual play experience is just fine because they’re really more interested in working together.

So I don’t knock Korean grindfests. They work great for their original demographic. There’s dozens of Eastern MMORPGs that have several times more players than World of Warcraft ever did.

Actually, when I ran into Dragonica Online, it actually caused me to feel that Western MMORPG developers are really far behind the curve. A full action platform RPG game, very well realized and stable, with visceral action and properly balanced instancing, an effective item economy… well, the other game I was playing at the time was Cryptic Studios’ Champions Online and I had to face facts: I actually found the Korean grind more entertaining even on the individual gameplay level. It’s not a good sign for Western MMORPG developers when we’re beaten at our own cultural specialty.

““cash grab” schlock from the Korean grinders and the Eastern European/Russian 90s throwbacks.”

Oh yeah; even more amazing is that they do it openly. Allods Online and such. And the Korean grindfests, tell me about it: I’ve returned to Navy Field for a while, and it’s precisely that, now that I’ve hit the grinding spot between a light cruiser and the next class ship. However, what they don’t do is to milk every little franchise in their portfolio to death with three times the number of sequels people would really like to see. Americans like numerals after titles.

Not sure if piracy plays a role. More DRM, on the other hand, just annoys customers, when it isn’t downright abusive.

Piracy has absolutely nothing to do with this. You can read pretty much any book you could possibly want for free from your local library, and yet books still make money – lots of it. Furthermore, what are the piracy issues related to online games of any sort? It is nearly non-existent.

The CoD/MW franchise has made billions of dollars now. And what about Guitar Hero and its ilk. Sorry, there is still a freakishly huge amount of money being made. Piracy isn’t stopping that.

Wow, America bashing. Because no American game developers make deep, high quality games, eh?

I have to chime in that I’m actually on the side of finding American games have largely gone for the easy cash grab as well. However, lets not be so kneejerk as to imply that this means 100% of American game developers. Braid was made by an American developer, for example.

Personally (at the risk of hijacking this comment thread more than it already has been) I blame the prevalence of piracy on the PC platform. About 9 out of 10 people are stealing their games. How many of those 9 out of 10 would have actually bought those games if they weren’t able to pirate them? Nobody knows. However, if I’m expecting to take up to a 90% profit loss, it seems reasonable enough that I’m going to try targeting a huge audience to make up for it. It would also help if they’re too computer naive to know how to pirate.

Although the far more popular approach appears to be to either leave the PC platform entirely or find some alternate way to make money from your game other than one that requires the customer actually buying the software.

http://www.frogdice.com/muckbeast/arrogance/are-zyngafarmville-types-games-damaging-the-market.html

My thoughts are far too spammy to post here.