[Former Civ IV project lead and Spore designer/programmer Soren Johnson gives an in-depth round-up of social gaming at GDC -- and the complex, often contentious response from developers.]
GDC 2010 is now in the books, and it will be a hard one to forget because the whole conference seemed to be obsessed with one thing, which I summed up in this tweet. Or, as designer David Sirlin puts it here: “Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook.”
Off the top of my head, here are the highlights and lowlights of this fixation:
-The long-running Casual Games and Virtual Worlds Summits have vanished entirely from the conference, presumably eaten up by the new Social Games Summit.
-Ngmoco’s Neil Young describing the growth of free-to-play online games as “the most significant shift and opportunity for [game developers] since the birth of this business.” This shift fundamentally changes the way game are made because developers can now launch early and adjust based off play patterns and user metrics.
-Zynga’s Mark Skaggs, formerly of EA, praised metrics as the answer to most game design problems. Much has been made about their discovery that pink was the best color for advertising Zynga’s other games, but the telling point was when Skaggs said that “if a player repeats something, it’s fun.”
-My old Spore teammate Chris Hecker railed against external rewards as a true motivator as they can mask an otherwise dull game. Further, focusing primarily on metrics can actually make the game worse because they can overvalue external rewards, which are easier to measure. Chris also leveled this broadside at metrics-focused companies: “If you are intentionally making dull games with variable ratio extrinsic motivators to separate people from their money, you have my pity.”
-Carnegie Mellon’s Jesse Schell walked back from the ledge of his now-infamous DICE talk on pervasive rewards systems, saying that doomsday is not inevitable. He went on to explicitly draw the line in a new war between persuaders (developers who want players’ money) and the rest of us (who want to give the players joy). When addressing persuaders, Schell actually used the phrase “you know who you are.”
-Zynga’s Bill Mooney offended the entire independent games community in his acceptance speech for Farmville at the Choice Award by defining the Facebook game as “just as indie” and then trying to recruit everyone in the audience, many of whom have open disregard for Zynga. Josh Sutphin had a message for him: “Learn some fucking tact.”
-Brian Reynolds, who is now Zynga’s Chief Designer, showed up on no less than three panels to point out repeatedly that social games need to be social first and games second. Farmville’s crop-withering mechanic, in particular, was referenced as a not-fun mechanic that compels people to play out of a sense of shame. (What if my real-life friends see how poorly I am maintaining my own farm?)
-Daniel James of Three Rings puzzled over the phrase “social gaming” as he felt that his old games (such as Puzzle Pirates) were far more social than Farmville, which is a primarily single-player game in which players pass around “tokens.” At multiple times during the conference, James expressed his serious ethical qualms over the path social gaming was laying for the industry. So many of the methods for making money are thinly-veiled scams that simply exploit psychological flaws in the human brain.
-At a panel on why “dinosaur” designers are flocking to social games, Reynolds, Slide’s Brenda Brathwaite, Noah Falstein, and Playdom’s Steve Meretzky all praised social gaming as a new frontier where radical and rapid innovation exists, in contrast to the more conservative world of AAA retail games.
-Sid Meier only briefly touched on Civilization Network, his new Facebook project, in his conference keynote, but what else needs to be said? Sid Meier is making a Facebook game! (Quite literally, in fact, as Sid is doing his usual designer/programmer thing.)
-Further, the three primary designers of the Civilization franchise (Sid, Brian, and myself) are all now making social/online games.
What is to be made of all this? Meretzky made a key point in the dinosaur panel that, with free-to-play games, there is no more separation between game design and game business. Every change to a game’s balance might immediately and significantly affect revenue.
Will it go down because the virtual items for sale are now less desirable compared to the free ones? Or will it go up because the player is now inconvenienced enough to buy a boost? Or will it go down because the inconvenience has driven away enough of the core fanbase? (I made a similar point in my Nov 2008 column on designing for free-to-play games.)
-The question on most developers’ minds is the following: what is the role of the game designer in this new world where business and design mix in such fundamental ways?
The answer to this question drives fear in the heart of the boy and girl beating inside most professional game developers. Brian Reynolds himself often pointed out that the role of Zynga’s chief designer is not actually as important a position as one might imagine. At the VCON Summit, Eric Goldberg of Crossover Technologies suggested that companies “use the tactics that make the most money possible… that your staff can live with.”
At that summit’s keynote, David Perry talked about the morally dubious “treasure chests” of ZT Online, which provoked a visceral response from Sirlin:
"This egregious, unethical practice is the kind of thing he should have presented as extremely dangerous. If you are “playing to win” in business, yeah, you’d do that. But doing so is damaging to the lives of our own customers… I mean personally, I’m embarrassed to be part of an industry that so blatantly manipulates people like rats in a skinner box, and isn’t he embarrassed about that too?"
This debate over business-vs-design spawned a thread at Quarter to Three in which game developers and other industry observers are expressing their feelings over Farmville and its ilk:
"It’s not social games as a threat to game design, it’s money-driven treadmill games that [are] a threat to game design. A coworker identified a similar problem with a money-driven free-to-play social game, in which they specifically destroyed the balance in key ways at times in order to persuade the players to pay money to fix their own game balance. It is a war. It’s suits versus the creative people." (link)
"I can’t believe one of the most important figures in strategy gaming [Brian Reynolds], the guy who had a major hand in bringing us absolute classics like Civ 2, Alpha Centauri, Rise of Nations, and Rise of Legends is now chief designer for those creeps at Zynga." (link)
"I don’t like that at all. It turns my art into a business intent only on making as much money as possible. And while making money is the goal for the large industry, the fact is that we’re still as much about creating great experiences first and foremost, and the money is a happy second. With Farmville and such, the premise is to make a lot of money, and that is the drive that informs every single decision." (link)
"Making the game worse can make it generate more revenue. The lesson is to focus on generating fast bucks over improving the artistic quality of your game. Enjoyment isn’t as important as long as they keep paying and playing. The dividing line flaring up is an old one; are games an artistic endeavor furthering culture or are they just slot machines to be designed for revenue maximization?" (link)
"Farmville makes overt use of known psychological techniques to influence and control behaviour and ties that directly into revenue generation... When you have games industry professionals from large companies arguing that we shouldn’t worry about making a game less enjoyable as long as it generates more revenue – to me that is something to be concerned about." (link)
"Farmville’s formula is simple. Make it easy to scream forward to the point where you can’t properly spend your coins anymore without spending real money... Do not misunderstand me, I am saying, without any ambiguity, that doing this is wrong. I see very little difference between this and tactics at stores such as raising the price of something, removing functionality, and slapping a “On Sale 40% Off!” sign on it." (link)
"The question will be, when it comes to tuning Brian Reynolds' Facebook game, will the guiding principle be increasing Zynga's revenue or making the game more fulfilling?" (link)
"The Zynga guy said you need to identify what people are doing most often in a game, because that’ll be the most fun activity. If that were true, the funnest activity in Starcraft is building Zerglings and the funnest in late-game Civ IV is clicking END TURN." (link)
Obviously, developers are wary of how Facebook gaming will change the industry in the years ahead. (Compare the importance of business metrics now with 1997’s Ultima Online, which lead designer Raph Koster points out “wasn’t designed around any business model in particular.”) The irony is that Facebook games typically share four characteristics that really do promise great things for both gamers and designers:
-True friends list: Gaming can now happen exclusively within the context of one’s actual friends. Multiplayer games no longer suffer from the catch-22 of requiring friends to be fun while new players always start the game without friends.
-Free-to-play business model: New players need not shell out $60 to join the crowd. Consumers don’t like buying multiplayer games unless they know that their friends are all going to buy the game as well. Free-to-play removes that friction.
-Persistent, asynchronous play: Finding time to play with one’s real friends is difficult, especially for working, adult gamers. Asynchronous mechanics, however, let gamers play at their own pace and with their own friends, not strangers who happen to be online at the same time.
-Metrics-based iteration: Retail games are developed in a vacuum, with designers working by gut instinct. Further, games get only one launch, a single chance to succeed. Most developers would love, instead, to iterate quickly on genuine, live feedback.
These four pillars are the reason why many game developers are flocking to Facebook. (Of course, many of these characteristics are not exclusive to Facebook, but combining them together with such a large audience makes Facebook the obvious choice right now.) However, Jesse Schell is right; a war is brewing over who will call the shots.
The question is not simply one of suits-vs-creatives. The question is will designers take the time to learn the business, to learn how to pay the bills while also delivering a fantastic game experience? As BioWare’s Ray Muzyka put it during a panel on connected gaming, ultimately all decisions are made with a goal to make money, but the goal may be short-term revenue (“can we sell more blue hats tomorrow?”) or long-term growth (“does our community believe in what we are doing? are we creating life-long fans?”).
The successes will not come from open conflict between design and business but from developers who internalize the tension and attack the problem holistically.
I have to admit my own reservations about this transformation; game design itself simply might be not as much fun as it used to be. I cannot easily sum up how enjoyable brainstorming a game is during the early, heady days of blue skies and distant deadlines.
With a release-early-and-iterate mentality, these days are now over, for good. Games will no longer be a manifestation of an individual’s (or a team’s) pure imagination and, instead, will grow out of the murky grey area between developers and players.
The designer-as-auteur ideal is perhaps incompatible with this model, but I believe the best game designers are the ones willing to “get dirty” – to engage fully with a community to discover which ideas actually work and which ones were simply wishful thinking. Loss of control is never fun, but as Sid is fond of saying, the player should be the one having the fun, after all, not the designer.
[Soren Johnson is the former project lead of Civilization IV and a designer/programmer on Spore, a columnist at Game Developer magazine, and is currently working on browser-based titles at EA2D. This post originally appeared as part of Soren's Designer Notes weblog.]
Thanks for this wrap up. I have been following the rise of the social gaming for the past year or two, and its actually quite surprising to me that the industry has such negative reaction to games like Farmville. Seems to me that the phenomenon that is Farmville is just challenging the status quo. Always something that causes reactions from those who believe its approach is without merit. You can argue the ethics of creating a slot machine masquerading as on online game. But, it seems that many good things are coming out of this new approach to game design, such as the ability to use metrics to make games that more people are willing to pay for.
The idea of WHAT games are, WHERE you play them, WHO you play them with seems to be fundamentally changing, and expanding. As a person who has played games all his life, and is now attempting to break into the scene as a designer/developer, this is incredibly encouraging. The barriers to entry are scaled down, so that, even small, garage level teams with great ideas and sometimes limited (or nonexistant) budgets can put their product out there for relatively low cost and overhead.
I have to say though, that much of the characterization of developers like Zynga as vampiric, psycho-manipulative bottom feeders is a bit harsh. At the end of the day, we can't dictate what people think is FUN and we shouldnt judge them if they choose to spend a couple of bucks for that extra tractor or harvester. If the consumer wants to do nothing but collect virtual schwag, who are we to tell them its wrong? If thats not your cup of tea as a developer then fine. It seems like its a bit insulting to the people who are playing these games. As if they are some mindless, drones with no free will, helpless to the deliberate and evil mechanics that hypnotize them into pulling out their credit cards. These people know what they are doing.
I want to first and foremost, make a game that is fun -- and yes I will say it, addictively fun. I also want to make a game that has a clear dividing line between the experience that is free to play, and the opportunity to enhance or extend their experience that costs money. I think thats fair. What I wont do is set them up to hit a wall that guilts them to pay to climb over it and continue their experience. What I sincerely hope is that my audience finds they love the game so much, that, when the time is right, I present them with an opportunity to reimburse me for all the fun they've had (or want to have) they are willing to drop me a buck or 5.
What I think is really important is that all of us continue to educate the consumers out there to NOT expect something for nothing. Free games, are NOT free. They take time and energy to develop,
Great read and a nice summary of the "fun vs. revenue" tension that a lot of developers must be experiencing. I've kind of tried to be neutral about the use of psychology to influence player behaviors in my own writing, but others are certainly reacting strongly to it and making some good points. I need to go catch up on that QT3 thread.
You're kindof pointing out one of the core debates in games (one that has been around forever, but the social and "Free to Play" games are really throwing into relief). The idea that some developers are making games to bring joy to the player, while others are developing to make a pile of cash.
I think, because so many of the "social" games out there seem to fall into the second category, they are hilighting this issue. A AAA title shows a lot of "love", details here and there, elements that give the player a sense that the designers/production team were building this as much because they enjoyed it as because they were being paid. The "social" games have an insanely short dev cycle, they are often lacking that extra touch and as such feel very churned out to make cash. Granted, the "social" games evolve over time with changes and updates until they get this depth, but the speed at which they are delivered and the lack of polish often count against them.
I love the article. However, I don't agree with the statement "With a release-early-and-iterate mentality, these days are now over, for good." While this might be true for these kinds of games, the old-fashioned way of making games still exists. The industry is changing and this new model of making games is gaining a foothold, but I don't know of a reason why these models cannot co-exist.
Maybe there won't be another Modern Warfare 2, maybe the revenues of these kinds of "distant-deadline" games will shrink -- I would guess they will, but there is no reason yet to think they are going to go away. Even when there is a reason, old ways of doing things still have a way of hanging around (e.g. the FAX machine).
I'd add to what Kimberly said by expanding her observation to various other debates within the industry (or other industries, for that matter). The bottom line is that people are different, and thus we like different things. That's diversity, and the games industry (and others) will not be mature until those within (and without) simply accept diversity rather than insulting and accusing each other.
Frankly, I'd point out that various traditional retail games are at least as guilty of underhanded, money-grabbing techniques as any free to play game.
Note that free to play is NOT equal to social gaming, per se. Consider the global market. Free to play games are the norm in East Asian markets, especially Korea and China, as people like Frank Yu have pointed out here on Gamasutra and elsewhere. In addition, I still see posts here and elsewhere that question "is PC gaming dead?" when the fact is that gaming in Korea and China are almost entirely based on PC not consoles, and the PC game industry in Japan is very vibrant and offers content of almost any kind for any audience (very similar to the other two legs of their entertainment media, manga and anime, of course).
I think it's also important to remember the 80/20 rule for free to play. That is, 80 percent of your community will not pay for anything you offer, but the other 20 percent will pay for lots of stuff and actually support the entire community. In other words, do not attempt to force people to pay for your game because doing so will simply eliminate the vast majority of the community, and thus undermine the worth of the experience for the people who can pay and are willing to do so. This leads the people who would pay to stop paying and go elsewhere, so it's a recipe for disaster.
I disagree with Muzyka's view of short term versus long term profits being the issue. Both are critical. Look at Bioware's failure to fix some of the basic flaws in Dragon Age: Origins while continuing to push out more DLC and even full blown expansions (Awakening). This has not exactly endeared them to consumers, by any means, and even long time fans of their works have become very irritated. If this was free to play, at least people would not be out $60+ for their experience of playing a game with obvious flaws, and it is very likely that fixes, patches, and adjustments would be far more frequent to address the problems reported by the community.
In addition, of course, there's the issue of allowing players to customize their experience, especially the visual aesthetics, so that they can have the experience that they desire and present themselves virtually as they actually see themselves without being unduly restricted by developers' preconceptions. Of course, you must offer such a scope for free while offering even more options for payment. Game cards are also important because many people do not wish to use their credit/debit cards online. Even Xbox Live has paid cards, after all, so certainly developers and publishers can use the same mechanic as Nexon's products, and others such as Aeria, etc.
At the very least, the facts of consumer behavior should offer a wakeup call to publishers such as EA and UbiSoft in their efforts to attempt draconian DRM and "always on" schemes. No, we won't tolerate such attempts, and yes, games that use them will fail even if we actually like the franchises that are involved.
This is really an exceptional summary of the things that I observed at GDC 2010. It was my first GDC, and I was impressed by several things: (1) the sheer numbers of people in attendance; (2) the quality of the presentations; (3) the candor of many of the presenters; and (4) the "elephant" in the room (social games) during so many of the presentations and conversations.
I think Søren's summary of the four common characteristics of Facebook games is a critically important starting point for thinking about the future of gaming in general and social games in particular. We now have, courtesy of Facebook and the web, a mass audience (comprised of a surprising number of non-gamers); instrumented games that offer unprecedented feedback that, coupled with agile and lean development methodologies, offers the ability to tune the games and the gamers' experience in near-real-time; an ability - via asynchronous play - to engage users who cannot play for protracted periods; and a monetization mechanism that seems to work (at least for now).
While there are certainly be ethical implications and controversies to be wrestled with here, the dichotomy between art and business or good games vs. profitable games is less helpful than it might be. A prediction: the "social games" space is a large enough tent to include compelling games of all types, and some of the most creative game designers will find ways to deliver game experiences that justify every penny paid by those who play the games. And great game companies that create social games need not be in it only for the quick buck or the short term.
A final thought: show me a game that doesn't leverage at least one "psychological trick," and I'll wager most of us would describe that "game" as boring, not fun or . . . not a game at all.
Such an incredible amount of tears re: Farmville and social games. I really cannot understand people having huge personal ("ethical") problems with games giving "external rewards" or "exploiting psychological flaws." Isn't the whole point of a game to be fun to the person/persons playing it? Does it really matter how that fun is derived?
It just smacks of people being mad that a) they didn't think of it first/didn't make tons of money off of it first, and at the same time, b) designers being elitist and saying "well my game/method of having fun is more valid than yours because it's not a cheap trick." Grow up. We are supposedly all designers here but I have a strong suspicion that I can say 100% of everyone in the comments and reading this plays some kind of game; pretending that what you like is better than anyone else's is asinine to the extreme. It's like debating music preferences.
Personally, I have no concern whatsoever that someone else thought of Farmville before me. However, what *does* concern me is when the money people start telling all the other game designers that what they are doing is now irrelevant unless it is a Farmville clone or somewhere thereabouts.
I think the issue isn't the use of psychological exploits...that's an inherent part of game design (you want people to have objectives so they finish the game otherwise they won't play it or any other game like it). I think the issue is the exploits and the rewards system isn't entirely about playing the game. It's about figuring out a way to make people play out of guilt or reasons other than just having fun. But, in a way, it's more about how you balance a game's fun and creativity with the business model that has to sustain it. Look at MMOs. A lot of gameplay is all about the grind. MMOs are designed to make you take a certain amount of time to get to your objective. Otherwise, you could level to the end game in a day. But if it only took a day, then people wouldn't pay that monthly fee (or for F2P, buy all those items in the shop).
The reality is the game industry (much like other creative industries such as film and music) are always a tug-of-war between the suits who are trying to make a successful business (which of course means making money) and the creatives who want to create something they can be proud of. It's not like you're creating productivity software where the goal is to make money solving some problem. Not a whole lot of creativity required there except in finding the novel solution to the problem at hand.
There's no right answer except to just keep trying to balance both sides out as best as you can. You've got to make money but what you're making has to be fun. Zynga's got it's own issues along with a number of other Facebook games because of how they try to make money (see the whole TechCrunch crusade against Farmville: Scamville) though that represents a portion of their business and is more about being unscrupulous about who you choose to do business with.
Facebook gaming represents two relatively new areas of gaming: casual and social. Casual's been around for a while but only really started hitting its stride in the last few years. Social's been around for those last few years and is currently hitting its stride. Combine that with iPhone gaming and the platform's broader reach (the excuse is the phone, then you end up with a gaming machine in your pocket), and you're definitely looking at a "boom" in the market. What do you expect?
In the end, you've got to do what you've likely been doing your whole career. You've got to push back where you can and pick your battles. Maybe you won't have time to get that one cool feature in the game. Which is better, though? An incremental increase in potential revenue from the X% of people interested in that feature or getting your product out in the market before 20 others push out a similar game and cut your potential revenue in half?
The problems are the same (remember the glut of WW2 games that came out along with COD and Medal of Honor?)...they're just happening on a different platform and a faster rate. Honestly, you can't ask for a better opportunity right now. There are two major markets (mobile and Facebook/social) with a lot of potential and lower development requirements than PCs and Consoles. The only problem I see is given the froth, this is going to be a much shorter cycle than PCs and Consoles have seen. The market's going to mature a lot faster (think a handful of years versus a decade or longer) and then we'll be back to square one.
Then, we'll get to the convergence crap again (this time your phones with your TVs) and we'll start over with something new (neural implants? :) ). In the meantime, get ready for some more churn...the iPad's almost here...
Unlike a year or two ago when the money people start telling all the other game designers what they're doing now is irrelevant unless it's a Halo clone. Success breeds cloning, whether in the social scene or in traditional games.
"Except it's not new - the arcade games of old were all about the same thing - getting players to put coins in the game."
...and eventually the arcade business suffered a horrible death, as the experiences being created were limited by the need to optimize for maximum revenue generation. I wonder if we will see a similar rapid decline in "social gaming" if we remain at current course and speed? Without deeper, more engaging and well balanced gaming experiences, will players ultimately gain awareness of the emptiness of the mechanical systems they are playing and lose interest in the activity?
The most alarming session that I went to at GDC was a players panel for social games where 3/4 participants were unemployed and described their social gaming addictions as fulfilling their need for a sense of accomplishment. It was a tragic look at the real world implications of these experiences and the ease with which the downtrodden masses can be controlled.
What an amazing article and blog discussion!! I like Tim Johnstons comments. Change is here and we need to embrace it, not fight it. Have TIm contact me about a possible position helping us design our games. mark@artistsinhollywood.com Whether we like it or not, Social Gaming on Facebook is hot and here to stay. People are having fun playing. Maybe part of it is that people are busy and find it easy to get involved with these games with less effort than more sophisticated ones. I play for free so I know you don't have to whip out your credit card if you don't want to. The question I have is: Where is this going? Whats next? Maybe we should think about steering this new style in a positive direction - making it better, and profitable at the same time.
Many great points made in these responses, but Kimberly and Dave really said it all for me and how I feel about this issue.
My final thoughts are these. Game Design as a field, business and art form has so much changing and evolving to do. It is still in development.
But we've all seen it happen before. Something we genuinely love was taken by the mainstream and now lies lifeless in the arms of corporate money hounds who've sucked it dry and left it to rot. They never cared about it.
That doesn't have to happen with the game industry. It must be allowed to grow in many directions. We can't be so afraid to lose it that we suffocate it.
Besides, it is not like console gamers are putting down their controllers and turning to Farmville. It is attracting many new players to the world of video game play. That is a good thing, isn't it?
If all the money made by social games went to donations for charity nobody where arguing and pulling out their hairs and having pity for their colleagues.
I have shame when read dose game designer senseis I grew up with missing the whole point. What we have to learn through social games is the mechanic, the way the syntax is used on the game language of this type of games. Let´s stop talking about money and producers and how dirty a game designer could end, this taking was already done and solved on the the movie business several years ago...
What is important is to understand the language and have enough modesty to learn how it work on social games and then use it on what you want, need, communicate, art..
As I start saying maybe YOU could use this social game mechanics to make something YOU think is fair for you and the world.
The faster we comprehend the language the earlier we wold have freedom to do.
Always reminds me of HK-41 from Star Wars: KOTR.
The idea of WHAT games are, WHERE you play them, WHO you play them with seems to be fundamentally changing, and expanding. As a person who has played games all his life, and is now attempting to break into the scene as a designer/developer, this is incredibly encouraging. The barriers to entry are scaled down, so that, even small, garage level teams with great ideas and sometimes limited (or nonexistant) budgets can put their product out there for relatively low cost and overhead.
I have to say though, that much of the characterization of developers like Zynga as vampiric, psycho-manipulative bottom feeders is a bit harsh. At the end of the day, we can't dictate what people think is FUN and we shouldnt judge them if they choose to spend a couple of bucks for that extra tractor or harvester. If the consumer wants to do nothing but collect virtual schwag, who are we to tell them its wrong? If thats not your cup of tea as a developer then fine. It seems like its a bit insulting to the people who are playing these games. As if they are some mindless, drones with no free will, helpless to the deliberate and evil mechanics that hypnotize them into pulling out their credit cards. These people know what they are doing.
I want to first and foremost, make a game that is fun -- and yes I will say it, addictively fun. I also want to make a game that has a clear dividing line between the experience that is free to play, and the opportunity to enhance or extend their experience that costs money. I think thats fair. What I wont do is set them up to hit a wall that guilts them to pay to climb over it and continue their experience. What I sincerely hope is that my audience finds they love the game so much, that, when the time is right, I present them with an opportunity to reimburse me for all the fun they've had (or want to have) they are willing to drop me a buck or 5.
What I think is really important is that all of us continue to educate the consumers out there to NOT expect something for nothing. Free games, are NOT free. They take time and energy to develop,
I think, because so many of the "social" games out there seem to fall into the second category, they are hilighting this issue. A AAA title shows a lot of "love", details here and there, elements that give the player a sense that the designers/production team were building this as much because they enjoyed it as because they were being paid. The "social" games have an insanely short dev cycle, they are often lacking that extra touch and as such feel very churned out to make cash. Granted, the "social" games evolve over time with changes and updates until they get this depth, but the speed at which they are delivered and the lack of polish often count against them.
Maybe there won't be another Modern Warfare 2, maybe the revenues of these kinds of "distant-deadline" games will shrink -- I would guess they will, but there is no reason yet to think they are going to go away. Even when there is a reason, old ways of doing things still have a way of hanging around (e.g. the FAX machine).
I'd add to what Kimberly said by expanding her observation to various other debates within the industry (or other industries, for that matter). The bottom line is that people are different, and thus we like different things. That's diversity, and the games industry (and others) will not be mature until those within (and without) simply accept diversity rather than insulting and accusing each other.
Frankly, I'd point out that various traditional retail games are at least as guilty of underhanded, money-grabbing techniques as any free to play game.
Note that free to play is NOT equal to social gaming, per se. Consider the global market. Free to play games are the norm in East Asian markets, especially Korea and China, as people like Frank Yu have pointed out here on Gamasutra and elsewhere. In addition, I still see posts here and elsewhere that question "is PC gaming dead?" when the fact is that gaming in Korea and China are almost entirely based on PC not consoles, and the PC game industry in Japan is very vibrant and offers content of almost any kind for any audience (very similar to the other two legs of their entertainment media, manga and anime, of course).
I think it's also important to remember the 80/20 rule for free to play. That is, 80 percent of your community will not pay for anything you offer, but the other 20 percent will pay for lots of stuff and actually support the entire community. In other words, do not attempt to force people to pay for your game because doing so will simply eliminate the vast majority of the community, and thus undermine the worth of the experience for the people who can pay and are willing to do so. This leads the people who would pay to stop paying and go elsewhere, so it's a recipe for disaster.
I disagree with Muzyka's view of short term versus long term profits being the issue. Both are critical. Look at Bioware's failure to fix some of the basic flaws in Dragon Age: Origins while continuing to push out more DLC and even full blown expansions (Awakening). This has not exactly endeared them to consumers, by any means, and even long time fans of their works have become very irritated. If this was free to play, at least people would not be out $60+ for their experience of playing a game with obvious flaws, and it is very likely that fixes, patches, and adjustments would be far more frequent to address the problems reported by the community.
In addition, of course, there's the issue of allowing players to customize their experience, especially the visual aesthetics, so that they can have the experience that they desire and present themselves virtually as they actually see themselves without being unduly restricted by developers' preconceptions. Of course, you must offer such a scope for free while offering even more options for payment. Game cards are also important because many people do not wish to use their credit/debit cards online. Even Xbox Live has paid cards, after all, so certainly developers and publishers can use the same mechanic as Nexon's products, and others such as Aeria, etc.
At the very least, the facts of consumer behavior should offer a wakeup call to publishers such as EA and UbiSoft in their efforts to attempt draconian DRM and "always on" schemes. No, we won't tolerate such attempts, and yes, games that use them will fail even if we actually like the franchises that are involved.
I think Søren's summary of the four common characteristics of Facebook games is a critically important starting point for thinking about the future of gaming in general and social games in particular. We now have, courtesy of Facebook and the web, a mass audience (comprised of a surprising number of non-gamers); instrumented games that offer unprecedented feedback that, coupled with agile and lean development methodologies, offers the ability to tune the games and the gamers' experience in near-real-time; an ability - via asynchronous play - to engage users who cannot play for protracted periods; and a monetization mechanism that seems to work (at least for now).
While there are certainly be ethical implications and controversies to be wrestled with here, the dichotomy between art and business or good games vs. profitable games is less helpful than it might be. A prediction: the "social games" space is a large enough tent to include compelling games of all types, and some of the most creative game designers will find ways to deliver game experiences that justify every penny paid by those who play the games. And great game companies that create social games need not be in it only for the quick buck or the short term.
A final thought: show me a game that doesn't leverage at least one "psychological trick," and I'll wager most of us would describe that "game" as boring, not fun or . . . not a game at all.
It just smacks of people being mad that a) they didn't think of it first/didn't make tons of money off of it first, and at the same time, b) designers being elitist and saying "well my game/method of having fun is more valid than yours because it's not a cheap trick." Grow up. We are supposedly all designers here but I have a strong suspicion that I can say 100% of everyone in the comments and reading this plays some kind of game; pretending that what you like is better than anyone else's is asinine to the extreme. It's like debating music preferences.
Personally, I have no concern whatsoever that someone else thought of Farmville before me. However, what *does* concern me is when the money people start telling all the other game designers that what they are doing is now irrelevant unless it is a Farmville clone or somewhere thereabouts.
The reality is the game industry (much like other creative industries such as film and music) are always a tug-of-war between the suits who are trying to make a successful business (which of course means making money) and the creatives who want to create something they can be proud of. It's not like you're creating productivity software where the goal is to make money solving some problem. Not a whole lot of creativity required there except in finding the novel solution to the problem at hand.
There's no right answer except to just keep trying to balance both sides out as best as you can. You've got to make money but what you're making has to be fun. Zynga's got it's own issues along with a number of other Facebook games because of how they try to make money (see the whole TechCrunch crusade against Farmville: Scamville) though that represents a portion of their business and is more about being unscrupulous about who you choose to do business with.
Facebook gaming represents two relatively new areas of gaming: casual and social. Casual's been around for a while but only really started hitting its stride in the last few years. Social's been around for those last few years and is currently hitting its stride. Combine that with iPhone gaming and the platform's broader reach (the excuse is the phone, then you end up with a gaming machine in your pocket), and you're definitely looking at a "boom" in the market. What do you expect?
In the end, you've got to do what you've likely been doing your whole career. You've got to push back where you can and pick your battles. Maybe you won't have time to get that one cool feature in the game. Which is better, though? An incremental increase in potential revenue from the X% of people interested in that feature or getting your product out in the market before 20 others push out a similar game and cut your potential revenue in half?
The problems are the same (remember the glut of WW2 games that came out along with COD and Medal of Honor?)...they're just happening on a different platform and a faster rate. Honestly, you can't ask for a better opportunity right now. There are two major markets (mobile and Facebook/social) with a lot of potential and lower development requirements than PCs and Consoles. The only problem I see is given the froth, this is going to be a much shorter cycle than PCs and Consoles have seen. The market's going to mature a lot faster (think a handful of years versus a decade or longer) and then we'll be back to square one.
Then, we'll get to the convergence crap again (this time your phones with your TVs) and we'll start over with something new (neural implants? :) ). In the meantime, get ready for some more churn...the iPad's almost here...
Unlike a year or two ago when the money people start telling all the other game designers what they're doing now is irrelevant unless it's a Halo clone. Success breeds cloning, whether in the social scene or in traditional games.
"Except it's not new - the arcade games of old were all about the same thing - getting players to put coins in the game."
...and eventually the arcade business suffered a horrible death, as the experiences being created were limited by the need to optimize for maximum revenue generation. I wonder if we will see a similar rapid decline in "social gaming" if we remain at current course and speed? Without deeper, more engaging and well balanced gaming experiences, will players ultimately gain awareness of the emptiness of the mechanical systems they are playing and lose interest in the activity?
The most alarming session that I went to at GDC was a players panel for social games where 3/4 participants were unemployed and described their social gaming addictions as fulfilling their need for a sense of accomplishment. It was a tragic look at the real world implications of these experiences and the ease with which the downtrodden masses can be controlled.
My final thoughts are these. Game Design as a field, business and art form has so much changing and evolving to do. It is still in development.
But we've all seen it happen before. Something we genuinely love was taken by the mainstream and now lies lifeless in the arms of corporate money hounds who've sucked it dry and left it to rot. They never cared about it.
That doesn't have to happen with the game industry. It must be allowed to grow in many directions. We can't be so afraid to lose it that we suffocate it.
Besides, it is not like console gamers are putting down their controllers and turning to Farmville. It is attracting many new players to the world of video game play. That is a good thing, isn't it?
I have shame when read dose game designer senseis I grew up with missing the whole point. What we have to learn through social games is the mechanic, the way the syntax is used on the game language of this type of games. Let´s stop talking about money and producers and how dirty a game designer could end, this taking was already done and solved on the the movie business several years ago...
What is important is to understand the language and have enough modesty to learn how it work on social games and then use it on what you want, need, communicate, art..
As I start saying maybe YOU could use this social game mechanics to make something YOU think is fair for you and the world.
The faster we comprehend the language the earlier we wold have freedom to do.