Oct
16
The Fun Theory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw
posted at 2:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sep
22
Farmville analysis
The game I played all week: Farmville
1) Who's playing - what's their motivation?
Mostly I tried Farmville to see what all the hubbub was about, as well as the fact that it was the game that most of my friends were playing and/or tried at one point or another. And, a week later, I can honestly say that I think that "because my friends are" is the ONLY reason people are playing this game because I genuinely cannot fathom any other reason to do so. Maybe I just don't get it. But it explains why a few of my friends, who I perceive as being more independent and self-contained than others, may have started playing Farmville but quickly dropped it due to complete lack of interest in the game goals and finding the social motivators too minor to continue playing.
2) What's the core mechanic(s) for earning points? What does this say about the game's values?
This is easily one of the most interesting things about Farmville that I realized. In most typical RPGs, the player gains XP by participating in equal level battles: the higher level you are, the more XP you require to level, but you gain more XP per battle because the enemies you are fighting are more presumably more difficult than they were when you were lower. Thus players gain levels at a relatively linear or perhaps logarithmic pace.
In Farmville, there are several design decisions that break from this typical formula. "Higher level" crops (defined as crops that require a higher level to plant) do not actually give you any extra XP, so despite the fact that you still require more XP per level, you cannot keep pace with your earlier leveling pace, which makes the leveling feel much more "out of your control". Instead, the only way to level is to continually plow/plant, constantly: most XP will come from plowing.
This demonstrates that the Farmville designers value the activity of continually coming back to your farm and growing new things. They want people to be attached to their farm and taking care of it and to almost ignore the leveling aspect. It also allows players to pick crops based on values other than how much XP they give (when it's going to be done growing, etc.) ... which encourages visual variety. And maybe people just want to grow their favorite vegetables!
There are also some interesting conflicts between prioritizing money or XP, so the players who are trying to obtain one or othe other or both can do some math to figure out what they should be growing to get what they want.
3) What's the length/frequency of your play sessions?
At the beginning, the play sessions were very short. I was actually incredibly baffled after my first session, which may have lasted only five minutes: "is that all there is?" was the question I asked myself. After a couple days, I quickly got the gist of things and eventually expanded my farm to encompass the entire board that I was given, in order to maximize my farm's efficiency. This leads me to play sessions which are an aggravatingly solid five minutes of clicking (which makes those upgraded tractor/seeder/harvester tools look REALLY good...) ... but they're still generally very short.
I, too, end up picking crops based on the times I think I'll be around to properly harvest and replant something new.
4) What makes the game social? How do people communicate, and connect?
These mechanics were by far the most interesting ones I've encountered, since I didn't have a lot of Facebook app gaming experience prior to this. I found the constant notices of "hay look what I got!!1" that you could post to your wall to be both exasperating and exciting: they were really somewhat annoying when they popped up and interrupted my experience, but the concept of allowing your friends to pick up rewards based on something you did (and subsequently seeing them take advantage of it) was really satisfying. I may have just been irritated by having to click a single button to send the post in the first place (it's admittedly not much to ask) because I am very wary of spamming my wall with stuff people don't care to read -- anyone who is not into Farmville would probably stop reading my wall entirely.
It would have been nice if Farmville somehow managed to update walls so that rewards that were already claimed would say as such (I could've saved myself some disappointment when I didn't get a friend's Ugly Duckling or Black Sheep :( ) ... but perhaps this is purposeful oversight in order to trick people into checking on their farms.
Overall, very fascinating game and mechanics, but if it weren't for the fact that I have a very specific non-game-oriented goal in mind which requires reaching level 19, I probably wouldn't continue playing. >_>
posted at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | ctin 482
Sep
16
Schism Google Group link
http://groups.google.com/group/schism_thesis
Request membership and I'll approve you right away. (probably. cookies help. >_> )
posted at 8:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sep
11
>_>
An abbreviated Schism presentation.
posted at 4:22 PM | Permalink
Sep
8
World of Warcraft Rehab
Guess it was only a matter of time?
Rehab available in U.S. for Web addicts.
