You may next enjoy yourself in 8 hours.

[Cult of Jared]

I've been messing around with Echo Bazaar.

Exceptionally well written, but frustrating because of the schedule it enforces. Not really recommended.

All social games enforce some sort of play schedule. They vary from onerous to impossible, but without restriction the game and profit model would break.

Are there games that avoid this? Are there examples of daily limitations that aren't a pain-in-the-ass? Is it practically or theoretically possible for a game to be social, but not limit play?

Edit: Made less terrible.

Edited November 15, 2010 by Cult of Jared

[toblix]

Holy crap, I was sure this thread was spam. It must be the text density and the inconspicuous link. Also, it was a little rambling. What is this, and why do I have to give it my Twitter or Facebooks?

[Cult of Jared]

Sorry about the poorly written question.

It is a game that I don't especially recommended, which I was using to access a question about cock-blocking social games.

'You may enjoy yourself in 8 hours' does sound vaugly, uh, medical.

Edited November 15, 2010 by Cult of Jared

[Raff]

Social games...

When I played the original Harvest Moon and a few of its sequels years ago I found parts of it so undeveloped and full of potential, I wanted to run my farm as efficiently as possible, build it up and hire people to collect the eggs every day, buy bigger machines to cover bigger areas. I remember being so surprised and disappointed that I couldn't make my children do tasks for me, the child just stays as a baby until the game unavoidably ends. It didn't make any sense to me. Also, in this day and age, wouldn't a HM game with an online economy and co-op be the obvious next step? Instead they just kept rereleasing the same game with budget game production values. (and now they do those RPG spinoffs which are the total opposite direction)

Then Farmville (or whatever game Zynga cloned) came along. It has a sort of co-op and is much more about maximising your efficiency and making money. Problem is that it's exploitative shit for idiots and utterly reprehensible in every way.

If somebody ever makes my proper farm game now (which they won't) it'll be called a Farmville ripoff.

Are there actually any 'social games' that aren't utterly reprehensible exploitative shit for idiots that don't feel as if they're built around a business model? Because I'm not hearing about them and I've not seen application spam on my facebook feed for years.

[juv3nal]

I've been playing a lot of Echo Bazaar. Not so much now that I've reached the content cap, but I think it's pretty great. Haven't paid for a blessed thing. The action limiting doesn't really bother me as it's not something I sit down to play for extended periods of time. It's just something I check in on once in a while and it doesn't bother me, for instance, if I missed out on using all my turns for the day.

Emily short talked about it a bunch which is why I got into it in the first place.

In fact, it was what got me into finally having a twitter account at all.

[Cult of Jared]

Are there actually any 'social games' that aren't utterly reprehensible?

Many: Neptune's pride, Die2Nite, EchoBazaar, Kingdom of Loathing, even World of Warcraft if you are feeling glib.

My problem with social games is they oblige you to play for exactly 15 minutes every day. 15 minutes is a terrible amount of time. If 15 minutes were a porridge, it would always be too hot or too cold.

It is theoretically possible for a social game to not have this restriction, but it would need randomly generated content and a clever reward system. I was asking if anyone had seen something like that.

Maybe no one else here plays these things. If that is true you should find some and play them briefly, if only to check what the future will look like.

Emily short talked about it a bunch which is why I got into it in the first place.

Apparently Emily short just wrote her first piece for it. Who is Emily Short?

[juv3nal]

Emily short is a pretty huge name in interactive fiction circles.

I mean off the top of my head I'd say Adam Cadre, Adam Plotkin and her are probably the three most well known people currently working in the medium.

She's worked on the Inform 7 language and has won a whole mess of awards for her own interactive fiction.

edit:

also regarding

It is theoretically possible for a social game to not have this restriction, but it would need randomly generated content and a clever reward system. I was asking if anyone had seen something like that.

Action limiting obviously gets them a monetization carrot, but there are a couple of other reasons to do it:

1) it lets them spread server load out across the course of a day. If they dropped your 70 actions in one lump sum, they'd get a server spike as everyone showed up at the office/had their lunch break/whatever.

2) slowing people down. it takes time to make new content and if they force you to play little bits of it throughout the day, some people might decide not to bother playing in the daytime and only have a look at it when they get home. This avoids them having a bunch of people butting up against the content cap and losing interest because there's nothing new to see/do.

[toblix]

So, can I keep doing the same storylets over and over? I just finished one, and it appeared in my list again.

[juv3nal]

Yep. You end up *having* to do repeats as there are some grindy bits where new stuff won't unlock for you until your ability scores reach certain levels.

[toblix]

That's disappointing. Really breaks the illusion of any sort of storyline.

[Cult of Jared]

Action limiting obviously gets them a monetization carrot, but there are a couple of other reasons to do it

Those other reasons are more likely primary reasons. The game would immediately break without the daily limit. Though the current limitations imply play should be occurring on the hour every hour, which is mad.

These games suffer a creeping sense of obligation, which I can't tolerate. Somebody is going to figure this stuff out, and make it look obvious. Maybe the Facebook game Sid Meier is working on.