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游戏深度会成为社交游戏持续发展的最大瓶颈吗

发布时间:2010-06-25 01:40:18 Tags:,,,

看到facebook游戏榜单上各个主体游戏正在遭遇让人烦躁的用户流失,不仅仅是玩家和评论家,开发者本身也在疑惑,社交游戏的游戏深度是否正在成为社交游戏持续发展的最大瓶颈。

frontierville

frontierville

来自澳大利亚的开发者Alistar Doulin就认为facebook上游戏的后续乏力就正是因为这些游戏缺乏一定的深度。

但是这个深度问题是指游戏设计方面的简易与复杂吗?Alistar Doulin表示facebook上依赖垃圾邮件推广游戏已经落伍了,增加游戏设置的复杂性和玩法的多样性才是解决之道。

诚然诸如Treasure Isle游戏设置是相当简单的,但是像Social City或者FrontierVille这样的游戏是有大型在线游戏那样的游戏深度的。FrontierVille是由Civilization back in the day主创者参与打造的,号称具有手持游戏和大型网页游戏的特征。特别是一些大型传统游戏社交化后,同样具有无可比拟的游戏深度。

当然道理很简单,做起来很难,除非能够像EA电子艺界那样拥有雄厚的财政实力。

Alistar Doulin, a game developer based in Australia, has posted an interesting editorial about casual and Facebook games on Gamasutra. His theory: the reason why Facebook games are slowing in growth now is that they lack game depth.

Though I disagree with Mr. Doulin, he does raise interesting points.

One, he points out that games over the years are evolving to feature less game play depth. By “depth” he means the simplicity versus complexity of a game design and the amount of actions a user can take in playing the game.

Whereas years ago traditional game developers used to bemoan Bejeweled as lacking game depth, today Facebook games such as Zynga’s Treasure Isle are so simple that such game developers look fondly back at PopCap’s casual games as more hard core in nature.

Two, he correctly asserts that Facebook’s notification changes mean that social games can not rely on growing and being spread virally through wall updates.

The solution, he says, is that social games need to add more depth in order to succeed. Basically, spam is “out,” more game play and increased complexity is “in.”

Here is where he loses me. Facebook games are already evolving to add game depth. True, a game like Treasure Isle is very simple. But games like Social City and the newly released FrontierVille have just as much depth as some of the online games coming out on consoles these days. FrontierVille was designed by the same developer who worked on Civilization back in the day, and it shows. If the way to increase Facebook game growth is to add more to the games then mission accomplished, it’s already happening.

My other issue with the editorial is the assumption that just because a game is casual, it lacks game depth compared to a hard-core video game. I’m sorry, but I’ll never understand why the traditional video games industry thinks their games are designed with more features than a casual game on any platform. Someone needs to explain to me how the design mechanic of a first person shooter (pick up guns and kill) is any more clever than a farming game (grow crops) or a puzzle (swap 3 gems to remove).

All successful games, no matter the label or genre have the successful formula of “easy to learn, difficult to master.” And game depth is a matter of economics. It simply is not worth spending 5 years and $50 million to develop a game these days. Unless you are EA, that is, and we all know what the hard core video game community think about that company.


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