Social Network Games (aka, games that nobody wants to play with you)

Ok, I mentioned this in my very first blog... I think... not sure, I meant to anyway. Social network games are here and they're being played a lot. The system that Farmville made famous, the time sink style of game play is here to stay.

It's really annoying.

Mafia Wars, and Mob Wars and any other kind of wars... play a little bit then wait for a couple of hours until you get enough energy to do some more jobs. Or, say you want to build a castle... it'll take 2 days for the castle to be built... 2 days, real time. Oh, and make sure your crops don't die.

Meh, you know, I've played these games, and got sucked into them. I guess my problem isn't that these games exist because there is a market for the microtransaction game; rather, I think my problem is that there are sooo many of them coming out in lieu of a different style game... more social networky I guess. On top of that, they are coming out with games that prey on your nostalgia and brand appeal.

Off the top of my head, Family Feud, Price is Right, Monopoly, Oregon Trail, Madden, FIFA. Of those four, Price is Right came closest to a different style of game, a more socially oriented game. The other three, you all play by yourself. Think about this for a second, aside from sending your friends gifts and visiting their game board, you never actually interact with each other.

Call of Duty, there's a social game... Civ V, there's a social game... shit, Ikari Warriors 2 for the NES is a social game; you're actually interacting with people. Right now I'm sitting across from my wife; she's playing some random game and I'm testing out this Monopoly game... even if she were playing the Monopoly game too, we'd still be playing the games by ourselves.

Facebook games have the potential to allow us to interact with each other better... Myspace is the ghetto of the internet now, but they had some cool games back in the day. I used to play one with my buddy where there were two towers with numbers as the blocks, and the point was to destroy the numbered blocks to the point where the towers would fall down... bam, you win. You would take turns, and after a particularly damaging shot, you'd talk shit to the person.

In comparison, I play the Madden Facebook game with him... I play a game against him one time a day... and when I say play, I mean I click one button, the software calculates the outcome and I either win or lose. Then I send him a message like, "oh damn, I beat you, LOL!". Then two minutes later I get a status update from him, "SNAP, I BEAT YOU NOW!?!?!"

One time a day we get to "play" this game together... if I got Madden 2011, we could play all day.

I do have hope for the future though... I'm hoping that Sid Meier's Civilization Network game that is in beta will change this trend up a little bit. I love the Civ games, and it's an awesome feeling playing with your buddies, starting wars with the computer and then having them steal your allies' worker (and then have him start a war with EVERYONE AROUND YOU so they attack you). Or work with someone the entire game and then nuke their main city... I love it, haha. Hopefully Civilization Network fosters the social network aspect to make it a legitimate social experience.

Otherwise expect to see "Brandon needs you to help build the Hanging Gardens!"