Inside Social Games

There are two reasons why most people stop playing a game. The first is I become frustrated by the game’s complexity, and the second is that I become bored with its simplicity. The Facebook game Battle of the Bands by Ryan and Cory Emmerson falls into the former category.

As a Facebook game, it makes excellent use of social networking capabilities, allowing you to invite friends, create bands, tour, and battle other rival groups for fame, money, glory, and groupies (okay, maybe not the groupies). Furthermore, the balancing of the game mechanics is well done, with a sort of resource management type of system that uses money, stamina, energy, and so on, where you use one to increase the other and such.

The designers have presented the player with any number of options (practice, shows, battle, tours, etc.) they can choose from to raise their band to the top and display themselves with in the “coveted” Top 40 list that is integrated into the game, but since Battle of the Bands is an older game, these Top 40 are so high above you it seems almost an impossible task to accomplish. And you can display your achievements in your Facebook profile, but I think that’s an expectation now for Facebook games.

However, While Battle of the Bands well balanced, it is also filled with complex resource management, and doesn’t align itself well with the demographic it is trying to reach. This demographic may not have the patience to learn how everything works – and with the wide breadth of mechanics, even I found myself bored trying to sort it all out.

This game could do a better job of giving me something that I can learn in five minutes  – and then a lifetime mastering. As a general design rule, all core game design features for a game should be able to fit on one piece of paper and should at least start with simple rule sets. Even complex and epic games like World of Warcraft have a simple core set of features that anyone can learn in just a few minutes: the player targets an enemy and clicks a spell. All other features are built around this basis, and as it gets more complex, the game teaches new players baby step by baby step.

Battle of the Bands, on the other hand, is neither easily or intuitively learned nor does it really teach you how to play. Sure there’s a help page, but honestly, who ever reads instruction manuals anymore?