This, basically. I use FB daily and none of those games appeal to me. My friends who play those games wouldn't play PC/Console games anyway.

I do play poker on FB however, but it's not really a FB game.

True, but still, it may not be as bad as Farmville, but it is going down. Good point though.

Yea farmville and Oblivion?Sure I will agree Morrowind was much more in depth than Oblivion and "crowd friendly" but from Oblivion to Farmville. As long as there is a market for the video games we all play, Farmville, Anrgy Birds etc. will never be the the only games around. They are two different genres that will not completely take over one another in our lifetime.

I am not so sure about this. Why spend a million dollars on a game when you can spend a hundred thousand instead for a wider audience?

Look at Bethesda, they already did the "common gamer" mentality. I also believe they still have stuff for us gamers who want more as well, the thing is, how long will it last? Again, will Zenimax dish out the Millions of $$$ for a small percenatage of gamers when they can do cheaper for a wider range of the "common gamer"?

So yeah I am worried. What I don't understand why spend all those millions of dollars on a company, just to fire everyone and scrap the games that were in developement. Why not at least finish what was started and then stop any future endevours. What a waste of money.

A market is ONLY so big. Once that one fills up, why.... there's this quite wide open demographic who have no interest in casual games. Would be a good business opportunity, more so with less competition.

Edit
There's a difference between ease of use, and sheer utility/game play. I happen to like 95% of the things Bethesda did to Skyrim. So your not going to get much sympathy from me. I'm a middle ground kind of guy.

I think that games like Farmville are of a different sort. They appeal to a unique segment that I don't think are the majority. Farmville is essentially an MMO with a microtransaction based model. Spend time or spend money to become "better". They'll only really appeal to people who feel like they have too much of one or the other.

The kinds of games that could catch on would be like Plants vs Zombies, or Angry Birds. Extremely simple and easy to play for a few minutes at a time. The more portable, the better. Being released on the smartphones is also useful because it's cooler to own an iPhone than a Nintendo DS.

Wait, really? So while the PC gamers express anger and fear toward console games dumbing down the market, the console gamers are feeling threatened by encroaching casual games? Ah, the circle of life.

nope. Flat out nope. However, if they got rid of the stupid "get more friends to unlock this," or "get more friends to be able to expand this," or how when at first Zynga puts all the items to buy up for free at first (buying the stuff with your money earned on the game), then makes you start paying for everything with your own real money, I think the games would actually go a long way. Just don't make them free to start out with (sell for $20 to $30) and they will make a huge profit. Seriously. they would

A part of video gaming's future? Yes.

But I see it as a new genre of gaming piggy backing on the advent of social media networks.

Is there a fee to play these games like mafia wars, farmville, etc?

I don't have a facebook account and I have never played those types of games. So if a gaming company wants my money there going to have to keep putting out console / pc games.

*reads tittle*


:rofl: :rofl:

If what some of you are describing happens. i might have to give up gaming.

:rofl:

Yeah, you're right. There's only over 30,000,000 people playing Farmville, not to mention all the other Zynga games.

A danger? No, not really. As long as there are consumers willing to buy traditional games, there will be traditional games. That is to say that unless Farmville players start murdering Elder Scrolls players, I don't see an issue. It's kinda like saying that bicycles will replace the car. Sure, they're both technically modes of transportation, but they're in different markets, and the sales of one has little impact on the other.

I'd laugh my ass off as well if I read "tittle", that's for sure.

no.

Is Farmville the future of video gaming? No, but casual gaming and f2p games are. I'm not a big fan of f2p games and microtransactions but it seems every recent game is adopting it. You can call it DLC instead of microtransactions if you want to but it's really the same thing.

A lot of new games have DLC available on day 1. Many games have in-game item shops such as Team Fortress 2.

I'm at school right now but when I get home I'll try to dig up a list of interviews with major game designers talking about how f2p+microtransactions is the future.

True, but don't expect gamers that profess the childish mentally that they're somehow better than other gamers because they play so called "hardcoe" games to see reason, if they had the mental capacity to do so, they'd no better than to engage in such nonsense.

In the end, we have our Facebook games, and we have other things, and each offers a different experience that appeals to different preferences, and there's room for all to coexist, and so long as there's a market for other things, games like Farmville will not replace other genres. Certainly, there's a larger market for some types of games than others, so naturally, more developers will want to make that kind of game, that's just smart business there, but that doesn't mean only those types of games will be made, it just means that there will generally be a larger selection of games that appeal to a larger market, you know... like in every other industry. Social network games may be a fairly large market in gaming, for now, at least, but that doesn't mean they'll replace other games, just as MMORPGs were able to become quite popular while not replacing other genres (Admitably, it seems in the MMO industry, what often happens is that one game or a few select games will dominate the market and although many competitors are replaced, they continue failing to usurp said dominate position, just look at WoW.) And I also wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people that play such games are not really "serious gamers" (By which I mean, in this case, simply people who play games extensively, as opposed to just having played a game at some point, what I say has nothing to do with the "hardcoe vs casual" nonsense that is disturbingly common on these forums.). Obviously, they're primary target demographic is people who use social networking websites, and a lot of people who use Facebook or whatever are not gamers themselves, it may be that their first experience with video gaming came from such games, and it may be that this will later lead to them experimenting with more conventional games. After all, every gamer must start somewhere, and I'd say it's likely that for most gamers, that would have been a game that's reletively easy to get into even for someone who has never touched a video game before. Certainly, I don't see other games failing as a result of Farmville or whatever other social network game you can name.

Dunno if it's been mentioned but the upcoming Age of Empires Online game asks in the registration for the beta if you have ever played Farmville. Pretty much because it's been completely dumbed down to play like Farmville. So yeah it's pretty much cemented into the industry now. The future of video games is bleak.