Inside Social Games

Earlier this month, there was discussion regarding the taxation of virtual assets in China. Unexpectedly, however, similar discussions have recently been happening in the US.

Apparently, there is a “gap” in the New York state budget, and in response to this, Governor David Patterson proposed a number of solutions. Most interesting of them all was the one dubbed the “iPod tax” that would impose both state and local taxes on “digitally delivered entertainment services.”

Essentially, this means that any and all downloadable content could be affected. This includes all major video game platforms, and could also possibly encompass virtual goods and currencies. It’s not clear what exactly will happen, but GamePolitics.com says:

“If you live in the state of New York, you could find yourself paying sales tax on downloadable content (DLC) for video games, beginning in 2009.

That’s because, much like the private sector, state and local governments have been hit hard by the current recession. In New York, Gov. David Paterson (D) has responded by proposing a budget that calls for layoffs, service cutbacks and new taxes, including one that will likely add to the cost of your DLC on Xbox 360, PS3, Wii or PC.”

Of course, this is all just speculation at the moment. The budget will still have to be approved by the legislature, but regardless of whether it passes or not, it is interesting to see this sort of suggestion appear at all.

[via Virtual Goods News]

By now most people who have used Facebook applications for any reasonable amount of time knows that the RPG genre of games is very stagnant. Regardless of whether or not you are in a mob, an enchanted forest, or if you are an elf, vampire, or zombie, they all use, more or less, the exact same game play functionality.

1. Create Character
2. Do Quest
3. Use Energy
4. Buy New Gear
5. …..
6. Profit

It will be a red letter day when the core mechanic of these games begins to change from the norm, but until then, creators of these types of games must look for ways to appeal to the masses in a way that the other RPGs do not. The game of the day is Hammerfall, and while the basic functionality is the same, it does incorporate the element of story telling as well as some extras into its game that does make it interesting.

In a nut-shell, you start out on a little island known as Summervale, but strange happenings have been occurring in the Kalamar Empire. It is a typical “hero’s journey” type of story, but it’s interesting, nonetheless, to do the quests and watch it unfold. However, while a good story does not necessarily make a good game, for the type of casual game Hammerfall is, the story is quite compelling. Furthermore, while it contains typical Facebook RPG elements, it does have some very nice additions to it.

When you start out, you have health, energy, and stamina. Stamina is your typical limiter for doing quests, and you have to let it regenerate passively in order to do more. As you play, you have to balance your stats between said stamina as well as health, power, energy, and toughness. Game play also forces you to carefully budget your different stats in order to proceed, meaning you have to make sure you have not only enough stamina to complete an action, but enough energy to actually defend yourself should you find yourself in some hot water.

The first bonus that is great is that there is an actual map of the world. It seems so minor, but having one gives the player a sense of the overall environment and even though games like this are not highly visual it does help in invoking a user’s imagination and lets them better see the world they are delving into.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Facebook game without some social prerogative. Like any RPG, you can invite friends into a guild that can reach up to five members when you first start. When you make a guild, however, you have to ensure that everyone is well equipped and prepared for raids. This is where the biggest social aspect comes in as raiding allows you to compete with other guilds. Unfortunately, this is a double edged sword, because if you can’t get enough people, you can easily become stuck. Regardless, there is still more “toys” to behold.

The coolest part about Hammerfall is the bosses. Yes, bosses. Unlike other RPGs where the results are always automatically generated, you can actually influence the outcome of a battle like in a traditional platform RPG. In fact, there is even a leaderboard that shows who defeated what boss in how many turns.

While it does emulate your typical Facebook RPG core mechanic, Hammerfall is definitely a very captivating game. It does have some issues, but what game doesn’t? The new features based on the standard core mechanic are great additions and the story is quite compelling. That alone makes the app worth checking out. Furthermore, there is a great deal of chatter about the game going about on its front page, and if the developers are listening in, then if there is a Hammerfall II, it ought to be truly great.

In the technical sense of the term, one could argue that most Facebook RPGs are MMOs. They are often massive, they are technically multiplayer, and they are online. So wherein lies the difference? Well, in general it is the multiplayer aspect as most RPGs are not live. The world doesn’t change, and that is one of the key elements to any MMO: A living-breathing-world.

Well, unlike its predecessors, a new title to Facebook, Sacred Seasons: Liberty, by Emerald City Games, is meant to go live mid-December, and is heralded to be a true, blue, MMORPG. While not everything has been revealed yet, the game does have some very interesting features to it. Perhaps most enticing of which is the mechanic of “real-time.” That’s right, real time; no asynchronous core, no challenges, and no “I can send you my high score so you can beat it, thus making the game social.” You actually explore (and not just stills, but an actual world you move about in), socialize, and fight with other players, live.

That alone should be enough to create a high expectation on Sacred Seasons’ potential, but there is far more to it than that. The game actually has a very strong premise and interesting story behind it. Unlike other RPGs on Facebook that just have you level and create your own story, this title is claimed to have a rather epic plot line to it.

The game was built with story in mind and the developers wanted the desire to learn what will happen next to be the primary driving force behind game play, rather than the simple desire to become stronger. From what was divulged, the game takes place in a world similar to the Heartlands of North America but on a larger and more extreme scale. To give you an idea, snow fall might as well be a blizzard, mountain ranges challenge the peaks of Everest, and the Mariana Trench might as well make up the United States’ western canyon systems. Furthermore, the game revolves around the four seasons. These seasons are the servants of what is called the “Great Mystery” and are the basis for everything that changes in the world. These forces are seen as spirits by the local populace, and the various playable classes are allied to them.

When you begin the game, you can select from 16 of these classes, and are capable of unlocking up to 80. Each of these classes reflect an elemental aspect, and their capabilities reflect as much, thus an association with Summer would display affinities towards earth, yellows, gold, harvest, and so on. Moreover, many aren’t your typical classes either (i.e. knight, paladin, etc), rather many of them are rather fresh and new such as a hypnotist or a clown (huh?). Of course, there are still some more traditional ones as well, such as a scout or shaman, but with so many, that isn’t to be unexpected. What is interesting though, is that players can switch between classes at any time and begin leveling skills for those classes. The big expectation with so many classes, however, will be whether or not they are distinctly different to play. If so, this would be an incredible feat by the developers, especially because that can add a tremendous amount of depth and possible strategy to battle encounters.

As was mentioned earlier, battles are all live. That in mind, players can join or leave a fight whenever they so choose. While it hasn’t been stated exactly how battles will play out, it has been described as working in a “traditional, Final Fantasy” sort of way. For those of you that haven’t played any Final Fantasy titles, that basically means you select a move and the opponent responds. Unfortunately, this means that the battles are technically turn based, but depending on pacing, is not a bad thing at all. RPG titles such as Knights of the Old Republic were turn based but so much was happening around the player that it felt live. Of course, this is only speculation, as most Final Fantasy games could have turn based (”wait”) battles or live (”active”) ones. Nevertheless, within the battle system, the developers do allude to class specific abilities that can be unlocked via combat that can turn the tide of each fight.

It certainly is a lot to swallow, but then again there aren’t many MMORPGs that are. Fact of the matter is, Sacred Seasons: Liberty looks tremendously interesting. First off, the game is live. That alone should be enough incentive to have a play as it is something that is not seen very often. Secondly, if the game does indeed have an engrossing storyline, this is yet another uncommon feature seen around Facebook. Most RPGs are driven by the desire to level and to become stronger. Rare is the game that encourages game play just to see what happens next (at least as far as social games go). Last, with up to 80 characters, there is enormous potential for depth and strategy in combat. Granted this hinges, on the need for each of these classes to be distinctly different and fun to play, but if it is pulled off, then there is little doubt that Sacred Seasons will be a major hit in the near future.

The MySpace social gaming world was a little more stable this month than with its Facebook counterpart. While none of the applications saw a decline in users, none of them broke the 1 million mark in new users like many of their Facebook brethren. Moreover, MySpace has displayed a rather different trend in the genre of games making the Top 25 - as most of them are RPGs with about a third of them belonging to Zynga.

• The top three games this month have held on pretty solidly, consisting of Mobsters, Mafia Wars, and Own Your Friends, with the #1, #2, and #3 positions. Surprisingly, the unknown developer of Mobsters, known simply as “The Godfather,” still continues to lead the competition with its Mob Wars-like title. This merely goes to show that you don’t have to be Zynga, Playfish, or SGN to make a hit game - but from what we hear, “The Godfather” is focused on what they’re doing and hiring out a team.
• Despite the fact that there are significantly more unknown developers for MySpace games than on Facebook, Zynga’s RPGs still continue to envelop the Top 25 with about eight (10 if you count the ones labeled “By Christina”) titles. Furthermore, each of these titles has grown and risen in the ranks over time - such as Street Racing that was once #17 back in September, yet is now #8 two months later with nearly 2.5 million players.
• The classic Werewolves and Zombies from Blake Commagere are no longer to be found as they continue to lose ranking, only to be replaced by some newer titles such as Prison Lockdown, Dog World, and My Green Garden.
• Also, Special Forces and Fashion Wars continue to do well since their appearance last month on the charts, and sit pretty at #18 and #20 positions respectively.

Overall, the major titles have stuck around in the Top 25 for a while and while their ranking tends to fluctuate, it is never anything too unexpected. This applies particularly to anything by Zynga, which has had several titles steadily in the top 25 for months now.

On the other hand, the lower ranks continue to shift to some degree as new apps by unknown developers surface each month. While none of these new apps have breached the Top 10 and usurped the reigning kings, the opportunity still awaits!

So how much were you or are you into school? How about school spirit? Well, while some could care less, there is a large portion of people that glow with spirit, and that has been a basis of any number of Hollywood productions. Football games, pep rallies, extra credit, even vandalizing rival schools have all been means of showing school pride (okay, maybe not the extra credit so much). The point is that these kinds of people participate, fervently, in the activities of their schools, and this participation has extended itself now into the Facebook space.

The game is called School Vandals, and you can probably guess what it is about. The app is like a team-based RPG (though you can play solo) in which you create or join an existing school and perform various tasks to earn school spirit and, in turn, level up your school. The primary objective of School Vandals is to go out and vandalize other schools while keeping your own clean. The longer a school remains vandalized, the more spirit the culprit earns.

Tagging other schools is fairly simple too. Simply by clicking on “attack” you are presented with a list of schools on your level (vandalizing schools that are lower level is less effective) and how clean they are. All you have to do is visit one and enter one of the classrooms via the directory on the left hand of the screen upon attacking. The player is presented with blank boxes (assuming they are clean) in which they can choose to tag using an item they select (i.e. crayon) and a design to place there. That’s all there is too it. Of course, if you are the victim of vandalism, you can clean the design off your school in exactly the same way. However, doing so causes you to become fatigued so you can only clean so often. As such, it is best to stay on top of it. Regardless, whether you vandalize or clean, both earn you spirit points towards your school.

Since the game is a Facebook RPG, it has the limiting factor of currency (in this case, “lunch money”). This is used to limit the amount of play you can do at any given time as you have to purchase the tools to clean and attack. It is a little disappointing to see the same mechanic that has been used dozens of times before, however. However, the game does allows you to level not only your school (hence the team premise), but you as well as you periodically receive “report cards” that grade objectives such as your vandalizing and cleaning capabilities. While still similar to other RPGs, this dual leveling element differentiates the app from your standard, run-of-the-mill, game.

Vandals also has a slightly stronger visual element. Granted, there are other games that have nice visuals (as opposed to text) as well, but there is something gratifying about physically putting a design up on a rival school. The game also includes achievements that appear when you do certain actions, which is also a nice addition that is less common to the RPG genre (at least on Facebook).

Nevertheless, this whole concept of graffiti has great potential, but one should let the players use their own graffiti in addition to the premade designs. There are plenty of games in which users can create their own content, so why not here? Yes, there would be the risk of vulgar tags, but by creating specific tools that limit capabilities; you can circumvent such a risk and still keep a creative flair. Give the different vandalizing items more capabilities as creation tools rather than just allow more premade designs. Of course, keeping those designs is fine, since not everyone likes creating their own stuff, but having the option to create would add a whole other level of depth to this game.

All in all, School Vandals feels slightly above average. It’s not bad at all, and it has some decent features, but it doesn’t have anything that will really make you go “wow.” However, it is still well made and designed, and if only the player had some more creative control, the game would instantly go from average to great. Nevertheless, if you are a person that loves things like school spirit or just wants to have some have some fun vandalizing school property, give School Vandals a shot, rally your friends, cheer those teams and go team go.

Considering that election time has just passed, it seems suiting to have game that has the player as a mayor. The game is Metropolis by Kramaley Games, and as the name suggests, you are building a virtual city, and of course, you are its mayor.

The game has the look and feel of your typical Facebook RPG, but while it dances precariously on that slippery slope, it doesn’t quite fall down it. It’s really more of a sandbox SimCity meets Facebook RPG. The game comes down to resource management as you build structures within your city in attempts to raise your culture, mitigate your upkeep costs, earn revenue, and keep your residents happy.

You start the game with a rather hefty chunk of change, a decent population, and you get to choose what type of city you will run (basically this determines if you want to get money, culture, or happiness faster). In typical Facebook RPG fashion, you purchase various items in order to grow your city, however in this game many have prerequisites (sort of like a tech-tree). For example, you have to buy an empty lot of land before you can buy, say, a grocery store.

As one might expect, the cost of everything scales up as you buy more, and resource management becomes more difficult as you unlock new and more expensive structures. Also, one can’t forget that there needs to be people to employ these new structures and plenty of jobs to go around, lest your city and its people end up in a predicament surprisingly close to the current reality.

For all intents and purposes, Metropolis is almost like a Facebook rendition of the well known, SimCity. Sadly, the game falls short of its predecessor not only because income and major changes are on a daily basis, but also because it lacks a distinct sense of style to it. You can’t see what your city looks like in anyway, and thus there is no way to really make it feel alive. Granted, the later would be rather difficult within the Facebook space, but it would be nice to actually see your efforts when you purchase that brand new park. Anything would be nicer to look at than the boring thumbnails of structures that exist now.

Of course, unlike the early SimCity titles, this game does directly include a social aspect. It’s nothing too extravagant, but you can connect your cities with those of your Facebook friends in order to help each other out. This is nothing special, as it seems like this is the default, cop-out social addition to any Facebook application.

However, there is an interesting “populate” feature that can put your city up for help from other players. Essentially, it advertises your need for new citizens encourages people whom you send a citizen to return the favor (or vice versa). This gives players a nice way to meet new people and work together with other players in the game that you may have not all ready known. Once combined with the previously stated “social” feature, the overall social outcome of this game is significantly greater: Not perfect, but better.

Despite the short-comings, Metropolis is a pretty well thought out SimCity-ish application. The resource balancing is done pretty well, and it is kind of fun to try and find those personal goals for your city (like trying to get the highest possible culture with the lowest possible upkeep costs). The social aspects are mediocre at best, but still better than the majority of Facebook games out there, and honestly the only real disappointment with this game is that you cannot see your city actually change and grow. Even if it were a static picture that changed from time to time, it would still invoke a significantly greater sense of accomplishment than the current collection of thumbnail images saying, “you have this.”

350,000 units sold on the launch day for Fable II. That is quite a hefty chunk, and there is no denying the success of the title thus far. For those that are not familiar with the Fable games, in a nut-shell, they are your 3^rd person, adventure type games, using a leveling type system to upgrade abilities and spells. However, the unique part of Fable, is the morality system in which every single action you take affects how good or evil your character is, and every single thing you do can also affect how your character looks as well.

In addition to the Fable II release, the developers have also released a miniaturized Facebook version of the title. While nowhere near as in depth as the actual game, this version creates a Facebook friendly rendition of the game’s well-known morality system. The game plays somewhat like your standard Facebook RPG: The player is granted daily gold and gold from performing quests. Furthermore, doing quests (and deeds) can increase your level.

Here is where the game gets a little different: Unlike other Facebook games, your gold is not used to buy new gear and equipment, but rather it is used to mess with your friends through the use of “deeds.” Deeds are the more effective means of changing your alignment to good or evil (quests do so as well, but are more limited in number). The deeper into good or evil you venture, the higher your level.

Regardless, be it deed or quest, the outcome is always amusing with some colorful flavor text. Sometimes you can perform a rather… vulgar and unsightly thrust to earn some gold, and then turn around and post your friend dressed in drag. What’s more, you are also presented with a quaint little mini-game to play in which your timing can increase the amount of gold you earn.

When you perform a deed on a friend, they have 24 hours to counter your deed with an increased wager. Should a deed be successfully countered the winner will gain an increase in the alignment (and in turn, their level) they have chosen and push the looser closer to a neutral alignment. As such, the game is all about being active and checking for those deeds.

Unfortunately, as interesting as all this is… it doesn’t seem to work too well. More often than not page errors seem to appear when performing deeds or attempting to invite friends. Whether or not this is merely coincidence is yet to be determined, but with no technical help, it is difficult to say for sure. As amusing as the “Oopsies” page is (some medieval looking guy dressed in drag), it does get old rather quick when you are trying to actually play the game.

Bottom line though, is that it is certainly a fun game to play, and the flavor text alone from quests and deeds is funny enough to really differentiate itself from other Facebook RPG titles. It really stands to say, that style, above all else, can really do wonders for a game. Unfortunately, as stylized and fun the game is (or rather is supposed to be), the fact that it doesn’t seem to work half the time does create a minor inconvenience (sarcasm). Nonetheless, assuming that the game does get fixed, it really is quite a cool game. Okay, not as cool as the Xbox version, but it is a nice addition to Facebook just the same.

When one spends a lot of time on Facebook, sifting through the various applications and games, it becomes easy to notice common trends. Perhaps the biggest trend that can be seen is the saturation in the RPG genre. Everywhere you look on Facebook, you see a “different” game that uses the same mechanics as so many others, and they begin to all run together in a blur of mediocrity.

Space Domination is yet another addition to the Facebook RPG collection. Perhaps it isn’t quite an “RPG,” but it is close enough. The point is that it reuses the same game mechanics as about two-dozen other Facebook titles.

In this particular game, the player begins with a small and relatively weak spaceship. However, it’s not just a spaceship, but rather a spaceship from your favorite Sci-Fi following. Essentially, the premise of the game is to pit Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, and Battlestar Galactica against one another to see, once and for all, if that Star Destroyer can truly beat the Enterprise or vis versa.

It’s a compelling premise for sure if you grew up on any of these shows or movies, which is a shame since the game is basically an exact duplicate of most other RPG’ish Facebook games currently in ciculation. You start out with a small amount of cash that you spend on new ships and ship upgrades, and if you need more, you can always visit the “Space Academy” and take a look at advertisements (not quite the Imperial Academy is it?) in order to earn more.

If that doesn’t excite you, then buckle up, because the next thing you can do is…. battle. You guessed it; players have 25 energy to use until it regenerates and they can battle their friends’ ships (or random people if that is what you like) to see whose franchise is better than the other. Each battle is determined by the stats of whatever ships you are using, the outcome is calculated with a little bit of flavor text describing what happened, and the winner earns some extra cash to put towards that new Jedi Starfighter they’ve been eyeing.

It needs to be clarified, though, that Space Domination is not a “bad” game. In fact, the Sci-Fi concept of finally pitting those old debates against each other is a great idea. The only real problem is it’s just the same thing everyone has seen a dozen times before.

The thing with these RPG/Battle/however you want to classify them games is that they are a lot like Monopoly. But if you’ve played one version of Monopoly, you’ve pretty much played them all. These different “games” are more about fitting a player’s personality rather than bringing anything new to the table, and many developers adopt “best practices” at the cost of originality.

Cloning games can often be a great business, but if nobody takes the chance to try something different, then the space becomes stagnant. If the space becomes stagnant, then players will stop using it.

During the Tokyo Game Show, Jim Crowley, head of MMO developer Turbine, revealed that the popular The Lord of The Rings Online would be introducing a new social networking site specifically for the game’s players using ideas for the site from Facebook and MySpace, Eurogamer reports.

Crowley went on to say that the site will be like “a version of Facebook or MySpace that sits directly on top of the gaming world. This is a fully-featured, rich, robust social network. It has every single feature that you would find in the major commercial social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.”

Since its release, Lord of the Rings Online has seen significant growth in its user base, and this new social networking site, hopes to expand even further when it’s released 2008 running up to the release of the future expansion, The Mines of Moria.

The site promises to allow registered participants to challenge themselves and their friends to earn special deeds that unlock unique rewards including exclusive videos, images, and in-game items that will aid them on their journey. There will also be some unlockables for characters, and unlike the MMO itself which needs to be installed, the site will be able to be accessed anywhere - making it a convenient way to get that little extra slice of LOTRO when players can’t login at a friends house, internet café, or work.

But is this something that will become the norm in the world of MMO gaming? As far as I’m aware, no other MMO in Europe or America has the same idea. However, it seems like the networking site has been well received by MMO gamers.

Games have invaded social sites for a while now, is it time that social sites invade games?

No honor, no creeds, no mercy - that is what being an assassin is all about. You are a hired gun. Your job is to take out the target at all costs, and hopefully get payed somewhere along the way. Okay, so maybe Assassin Paintball by 42 Friends isn’t quite that serious, but it does at least get the same point across… just, with paint.

Assassin Paintball is a social Facebook game that lets you put bounties on your friends and hunt them down. It plays a like a simple RPG (you do a job and the outcome is generated): You start out as a nobody assassin and have to work your way up to the top. Well, you don’t have to, but it makes it a little difficult to assassinate others if you don’t. Regardless, you begin with a little bit of cash and 10 energy and must accomplish jobs, tasks, and hits in order to level up and earn more money.

The jobs you begin with are simple, click and view the results sort of ordeals (”You went to get coffee - earned $X), but the training missions actually include short mini-games that test skills such as your reaction time and accuracy. Of course, each job or task uses up a pre-determined amount of energy so you can only do so many until it recharges. Since the recharge rate is extremely slow, you can only do so many tasks at a time (unless you are extrodinarily patient). This limits the amount of risk free cash you can earn at any given time.

Obviously, earning cash must have a point, thus you can spend it on items to upgrade your character that will help in your ability to take down your targets. In a nut-shell, that means the more gear you have, the more the random result generator will be in your favor.

This is where the key element of the game comes into play: Hunting down hits. The whole point to Assassins is to take out your friends and other competitors and collect their bounty, thus giving the player another means to earn some cash (beyond the jobs). The trick is, your character needs to be strong enough to have a chance, because many of the top players have some of the best gear you can get. Unfortunately, every shot you take uses up three energy, so you can only do this so many times as well.

Assassin Paintball is essentially a basic, PvP based online RPG. Yes, there are single player jobs, but the primary focus is easily on hunting down your friends (giving it a strong social aspect). This concept of “physically” being better than your friends adds a whole extra level of addictive game play, and with its casual design, you do not need to be a hardcore player to stand a chance.

In fact, this is the only major downside to this game is that it cannot be easily played for long periods of time, due to the limited energy. This is great for the casual player, but is rather limiting for those that would like to play more. However, it was never meant to be a hardcore game anyway. Assassin was meant to be a game where a player could log on for a few minutes, do a few things, advance a little bit and move on. The only real way to advance steadily is to simply log on every few hours for a few minutes. For that purpose, Assassin does its job well, and is most definately worth a try. Happy hunting fellow assassins.