Creators: Zynga
Platform: Facebook
This game is one of the least popular games on the Facebook Platform and there are numerous reasons why that is so. Eventhough one of the earlier games on the Facebook platform that Zynga made and was like a build up to the more popular games to come such as Farmville, Frontierville and Cityville, you can tell that it is like a prototype. Reasons why:
Overly-Complicated: The game play and style is to overly complicated and you can get lost in what you need to do. The content seems to be cluttered and a bit everywhere. It gives the player of feeling lost and a player would have to play the game for long time to actually understand the mechanics and concept of the game.
UI Interface: The user interface though suiting the theme of the game and has a very gothis victorian style to it making it seem very dark and dreary, the content is a mess and just seems to have been placed anywhere they can as long as they can fit it in. No organisation to fit the style really brings the content that is actually good in the game.
Lack of Demographic: The look of the game and the audience it seems to really be targetting at one very secluded demographic audience. As with a social game, you want as many people as you can to play the game and interact with each other, the audience is really conentrated and lacks any space to brand out and bring in a new set of people.
Social Game: Phantasy Star Univererse Online
Creators: Sonic Team/ Sega
Platform: Xbox 360
The reason I included this game into my research for badly done social games on the market today is because of how they included online social gaming. Originally a single player game, they dedided to be elaborative and try to bring online socialisation and multiplayer into the genre of Narratively linear based RPGs. The actual concept and idea wasnt bad, but how they developed from the beginning concept, there seems to have been some bad decisions made and wrong pathways taken. These are:
Gaining Money: As this is the first time trying to make an RPG of its kind have an online compatibility, you would think the creators would research more into how other social based games have been created and how they gained extra money on top of the game. Apart form buying the game, the creators thought it would be a good idea to make it so you payed for the online part of the game. As an Xbox 360 game which most users already for to play on the Xbox Live, hardly any of the players are going to actually pay for an online part to the game when they have already bought the game and bought xbox live, having to spend more money is something the audience would gtenerally oppose to unless a real big fan of the game (which no'one will be so early into the game release)
Platform Extras: The Xbox 360 has always been a good quite good when it came to accessories to help players ion their games. Accessories such as headsets and attachable keyboards which helps communication in game and out of game. As this is a social game, you expect a way to socialise. They decided to use the typical type messages way of communication , whch is far enough as its simple and works, but when they didnt use attachable keyboard and didn't use it so players could type faster and easier when messaging people in the roaming world and out of the roaming world. Again they really didnt research into the demographic audience of the "traditional" gamers and how they generally can't be bothered typing for a long time, for short messages.
To conlude, in both games mentioned, I tihnk there's factors I want to stray away from on both games and keep to some more traditional methods, while if I can, developing them further to an extent where Facebook games and actually buying content for the games on the platform becomes more reasonable.
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