He addressed exactly why I hate playing social games. I like avidly playing whatever games I pick up and I hate nagging my friends for help in order to get farther along in the game. My sister talked me into playing Cityville, and it was amusing, but I can't raise my population without harassing my friends. I hate it. At least Ubisoft had the kindness to not involve that in Project Legacy, the only game I play on my Facebook.

bahumat42:
I have to say im always surprised how successful theses "games" are considering iv never spoken to anyone who has plunked down real money on them

Few people do. But those people that do usually spend a LOT of money. That's why "free" games and MMOs are so profitable. You go from taking a monthly fee from everyone to taking fortunes from a few. People who play casually don't care enough to lay down money. But the people who want to be competitive for pvp, raids, or what have you. They normally have to lay down large amounts of money, regularly, for each character.

Hah! JB is using evil in a sense that was described in the tabletop gaming article a few weeks back about alignment. I couldn't agree more with his description too. It doesn't enrich anything, and it doesn't add any new social aspects. "Treating your friends as a resource" is about the summary of the entire game.

Moronic, really, to catalogue a game that is intended for a public that is not interested in forging new relationships as blatantly machiavellian because they seek to fulfill a different need.

Games lie FarmVille are incredibly well designed; they do not seek to offer a strong narrative or introduce incredibly intricate mechanics, but just offer a very approachable product that one the is not trying to dedicate a lot of time to can penetrate very easily, and play for 15 minutes a day. They don't actually diminish the artistic potential of games, because they aren't encroaching the territory of "Hardcore" games. If anything, I know a lot of people who started playing Farmville, then eventually moved on to other more intricate games.

"Social" games are a completely different branch off the games we play, and there's nothing to fear about them.

Well, he sure has arguments to back up his claim, although some might take it too literally. Only hope that fanboys don't jump at his throat for it now :P

gonna have to agree with him, completely evil.

It's hard to argue with his logic. Casual games usually don't add any experiences to the player and they suck money out of said player.

I don´t know anything about social games, but i do know it is at least as evil to flood the market with overprized crappy artsy fartsy indie games and the 800´th incanation of some tower defence game.
If i want art i go to a museum, if i want to game i turn on the PS3 or Xbox. I don´t need them to be the same.
And that brings me to what i really dislike indie dev´s for. Thinking they are better than everyone else. Smells like envy.

The monetary system is intrinsically exploitative. Anything created to make money is intrinsically exploitative.

true story.

PhiMed:
I love how people are saying the games aren't evil because "some people have fun playing them." People having fun playing the games doesn't automatically make his claim that they are evil invalid. Evil can be fun. If it weren't fun, it wouldn't exist.

These games, though, are completely mindless entertainment. They tell no story, develop no skills, encourage no growth, and thus have no redeeming value. They are a mind-melting time waster, like twiddling your thumbs or masturbation.

And if someone you knew spent as much time masturbating as most of these people spend playing social games, you'd probably be concerned, wouldn't you?

So he's right. These companies have created a socially acceptable way for people to mentally masturbate, for several hours a day, in public. Rather than do something constructive, informative, or at least actually pleasurable, they're doing this. Productivity decreases, and stupidity expands.

Both the player and the human race are worse off, all because someone figured out how to use psychology to make a game that would make people continue to play, and continue to pay, because damn it, they can almost reach that carrot.

Evil.

Meh there's good games and bad games. Many people here like Echo Bazaar, which is actually a pretty good social game.

Right first time. Evil. They take friendship and pervert it to another resource to be mined. If you don't count all the sock-puppets that help.

Or they CAN be...

Farmville: Evil. Any game that rewards you due to how many "friends" you have? Evil.

Anything that lets you play with friends and doesn't judge/waylay you. Good.

See Valentine's Day, Xmas and other "SOCIAL" festivals.

Zyphonee:

Games lie FarmVille are incredibly well designed;

By people other than the ones actually making money from them now.

Danish rage:

If i want art i go to a museum, if i want to game i turn on the PS3 or Xbox. I don´t need them to be the same.

If i want art i go to a museum, if i want to listen to music i turn on my CC player.

If i want art i go to a museum, if i want to see a movie i pop in a DVD.

I hope you see where I'm going here

Jesus fucking Christ.

So things are only social now if you can use them to meet new people? Even as crazy one-sentence definitions of words like "social" go, that's pretty goddamn absurd. I would hazard a guess that the overwhelming majority of social situations people find themselves in involve established friends and few, if any, strangers.

But don't worry guys, even though you're idiots with no idea what's being done to you, this brilliant "auteur" is here to help you out of your dark and ignorant ways.

AND HORROR OF HORRORS IT TURNS OUT THE GAMES ARE DESIGNED TO MAKE MONEY. Because auteur developers always scorn money and real games should be commercial failures. And wanting to make money could never lead developers to make a good game because making good games is never something that crosses their minds as a way to make a commercially successful game.

TL;DR: Jonathan Blow remains an amazing designer with all of the pretentious bullshit that seems to go along with that quality.

He ain't wrong though is he? They do just make you use friends as resources to further your tiny greedy little farms.

ciortas1:

Verlander:
snip

It's also about having standards. You can have fun watching the latest Cliche Derivative Romantic Comedy No.2391, doesn't mean it's not exploiting people who don't know any better.

And have you read what the guy said? It's bad because it's an effortless money grab. It's bad because it's exploitive. It's bad because it appeals to the wrong human, how shall I say, attributes. It's bad because it doesn't add anything.

Hell, you can have fun with anything, enough of this bloody apologetic nonsense.

Everything in business is exploitive to a certain extent-that's the point. People get out what they put in. "Social" games require little investment, either intellectually or monetarily. Just because some people prefer them, only means that that they have exposed and filled a gap in the market. Nothing more.

Argue all you want about how much better films like The Godfather or Citizen Kane are then the latest installment of Jennifer Aniston's flailing career, there are people out there who will prefer to watch the latter than the "classics" because that is their honest, personal opinion. That's not over-exploitation, that's good business sense. Jonathon Blow overestimates how important his media is

Mornelithe:

ciortas1:

Taawus:
And he's right.

Second that notion.

As far as Facebook games go, they have absolutely no redeeming values, and the friend exploiting mechanic that ranges from pretentious to cruel (depending on the amount of friends you have) is just icing on the cake.

Thirded.

Fourthed :) Calling the design evil isn't an overstatement. Does anybody else see capitalism? lol

You get all these people bashing social games for this, and that, and the next thing. Someone finally hit the nail on the head. EVIL might not be the best word, but everything else he says is undeniable

It's impossible to deny that social games are designed to make money out of their players - Zynga's recent multi-billion dollar is a testament to how effective that design is - but to call them evil seems a little excessive. Blow might not like social games, but to say that they degrade the people who play them is verging on hyperbole.

No, he is exactly right.

What else do you call games where the developers hired a psychologist to assist them in playing off peoples compulsions so that they are as addictive and predatory as humanly possible?

LMAO I agree, they are sickly addictive... THATS evil >v< thanks god I havnt facebook O.<

PhiMed:
I love how people are saying the games aren't evil because "some people have fun playing them." People having fun playing the games doesn't automatically make his claim that they are evil invalid. Evil can be fun. If it weren't fun, it wouldn't exist.

These games, though, are completely mindless entertainment. They tell no story, develop no skills, encourage no growth, and thus have no redeeming value. They are a mind-melting time waster, like twiddling your thumbs or masturbation.

And if someone you knew spent as much time masturbating as most of these people spend playing social games, you'd probably be concerned, wouldn't you?

So he's right. These companies have created a socially acceptable way for people to mentally masturbate, for several hours a day, in public. Rather than do something constructive, informative, or at least actually pleasurable, they're doing this. Productivity decreases, and stupidity expands.

Both the player and the human race are worse off, all because someone figured out how to use psychology to make a game that would make people continue to play, and continue to pay, because damn it, they can almost reach that carrot.

Evil.

You realize some people say things almost exactly like that about video games in general, don't you? "They bring no value to society". These things are subjective, and it'd be a good idea to check on your prejudices.

Lemme just sum this all up:

Advertising a game as having been designed primarily for your enjoyment,
and then offering a game that has IN FACT been designed primarily to subtly addict and exploit you, for the purposes of profit,
is not morally right,

by my own definition -- and, it would seem, by the definitions of Mr. Blow and the majority of people commenting in this thread. It's a deceptive, predatory use of both game design and human psychology.

If it is 'evil', it is no more or less so than a film which purports to offer an entertaining piece of narrative art, but which actually offers carefully-crafted propaganda.

I myself would consider such to constitute an artistically-based 'evil', depending on the scope and severity. Others might settle for 'wrong', 'bad', or simply 'misguided'.

I repeat again that most of the addictive methods employed by these games (WoW requiring ten-hour timesinks for farming, TCGs and freeware MMOs offering better 'equipment' for paying players) would typically be considered terrible design in and of themselves. Inserting them into an otherwise well-designed and addictive framework, and then linking them to monetary imperative, is pretty fucking shady.