I thought I’d had all of the ridiculous games on Facebook blocked from my feed. No Mafia Party, no Crochet Wars, no Farmville, no Zombie Paper Route or whatever the fuck it is that people think is fun. It was a comforting existence. I’ve lived my life without playing any of these games and I feel like my life is rich and full and that’s probably a lie if I want to be all dark night of the soul with myself, but I just don’t need to know every time you fertilize your corn or whenever your castle needs a fucking gargoyle knight or whatever.
I already play a game on Facebook. I Poke my girlfriend and then she’ll Poke me back and we will continue this dance until one of three things happen and one is a murder and the second is that Facebook shuts down permanently. You can’t not Poke back, because you (I mean I here) fear invalidation deep inside your secret heart and also because Poking is Serious Business. It has to be, because you have to confirm that you do indeed want to Poke. It’s easier to buy prescription drugs on the black market than it is to Poke someone. And I still don’t understand the significance of Poking. I hope that shit is in the Facebook movie, because I need to know.
Anyway, I thought I had filtered all of this inanity out of my feed and that I could live like a joyless curmudgeon in the online world in the same way I do offline. And then I saw that one of my friends “just clobbered a gopher.” No.
This is Frontierville. It’s a game from the same war criminals who created Farmville and Farmville, based on what I know about it, is like that scene in A Clockwork Orange. It is, as you would guess in a world where self-hate is more abundant than oil in the fucking Gulf, immensely popular. A high school friend recently reconnected with me and when we had drinks and dinner, she asked me to be her Farmville neighbor. Maybe people were bored of Farmville and so they decided that maybe if it had different hat and vest options, people would be more interested. This is the same principle that EA uses in its yearly sports games. And thus – Frontierville.
I started playing Frontierville. I stopped after twenty-five minutes and if I ever go back to it, I have instructed Natasha to sneak up behind me with a garrote and end things.
The only more elegant way to make money off of a surfeit of human hope would be to release a Kobayashi Maru simulation and charge players a dollar to try again. Frontierville is equally unwinnable.
The game is designed to give you exactly just a bit less than you need to actually accomplish anything. At least not by yourself. As you solicit friends to help you clobber gophers and bale hay or what have you, your ability to do other stuff increases, but the whole thing is a bit of a joke as you can never play the game in such a way that you can thrive, only have just enough to need to have your friend give you some horseshoes so you can buy a meal so you can beat up a rattlesnake so you can harvest corn so you can make food so you can get more energy so you can clear a tree stump so you can plant pumpkins so you can murder every person in the vicinity of your farm oh my god the monotony is overbearing. You give them gifts and experience points to get them to do shit around your farm. You develop a trade economy. This is like playing Animal Crossing and being in a cult at the same time, except you don’t get to be a cute animal and there’s no messiah to have sex with.
There are people who play this game, I’m sure, who look down their nose at people who play World of Warcraft. While I don’t play WoW anymore and kind of look down my nose at WoW players, I’m just being a single hypocrite. You people are double hypocrites at least. Your farmer can’t turn into a giant bear and none of the antagonists in your game are anywhere near as terrifying as a murloc.
After about a half hour worth of this misery parade, I felt the need to stab myself in the eye. I didn’t actually do that – I’ve got a thing about ocular trauma – but that I considered it is telling. This is as fun as walking on a treadmill in a windowless room with beige walls. The key to any massively multiplayer game, no matter what the presiding mechanics or the genre, is to fool the players into thinking that the game they’re playing isn’t the game they’re playing. When I was playing Frontierville, all I could think about was how not fooled I was and about how much the monotony hurts. But I DID have a cowboy outfit, and maybe that counts for something, right? There’s no cowboy outfit in Mass Effect 2.
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My secret hope is that the Oregon Trail people sue them for copyright infringement, but knowing my luck, they bought the rights.
I once tweeted out a link about some shady stuff the company was doing, and about 2 seconds later, one of their marketing people tweeted back at me with a crappy attitude and telling me to believe their side of the story. Then I asked said person a question and never heard back.
Yeah, I block all those apps too.
You know, I think this is the first time I have seen angry Jeff blogging. I like it. It’s dangerous and sexy!
I guess I should apologize now for inviting you to play Mafia Wars. I might have even mentioned it to you in person. If I did, a double apology to you.
Mafia Wars was fun in the beginning. You do jobs, you get prizes you can use at other jobs, and so on. Then there came the whole “Fight” thing (or whatever it was called). I’d log in to do my jobs, and I’d have zero energy, no money and all my businesses would be down because some kid in Indonesia repeatedly attacked me overnight. I’d try to fight him or put a hit out on him and then he’d have all his friends gang up on my and I’d be screaming at my computer about how I was going to fly to Indonesia and scalp the futhermucker.
That was my first sign I should back away.
The second was I got to such a point in the game that I needed a untraceable cell phone to finish one level, but the UCP’s are nortoriously hard to get, so I end up stuck on the same level, hoping I get an UCP in one of my jobs, all the while getting attacked by kids in the Jakarta.
Yeah, I backed away from that game. And resisted Farville, Cafe ville, and all the rest. I feel much saner for it.
Seriously, that isn’t Oregon Trail?
I’m actually kind of fascinated by the psychological techniques the game designers use to get people to keep playing. I find myself thinking about this more often than I’d like.
Full disclosure: I play both Farmville and Frontierville. I worked a receptionist job for 5 months and sometimes you just need to do some mindless clicking while you’re waiting for a phone call. I don’t invite anyone who isn’t already playing, and I try to keep the status updates to a minimum (mostly, I post to share things with other players who WOULD care, figuring those who don’t can scroll on by). Farmville has also improved my relationship with my mother; I initially started playing because she wanted more neighbors, and it gives me something to talk to her about. It’s shady and ridiculous and fascinating and if both games disappeared tomorrow I’d shrug and move on with my life, but they’re entertaining enough for the time being.
But I don’t look down my nose at gamers of any sort, so I’m going to remain unhypocritical and content in my life choices over here.
It’s a distraction, right? At least, it is for me. I don’t play Farmville or any Facebook games and I don’t like them only because they really clog my feed and I just want to catch up with my family and friends over by there.
But I’ve tried a few of the iPhone equivalents–We Rule and Godfinger–and enjoyed them for what they were, which is just as Jennifer said, a low-key way to distract yourself. There are surely many many better ways but not many you can easily accomplish while sitting at a mindnumbing desk job, or waiting in line for burritos at a restaurant.
I think it’s that “you always need something” that keeps people coming back, of course, and it is annoying. What drove me nuts about the iPhone games is that they had all these timed functions, and I have a job so I can’t stare at my phone waiting for a notification that my medieval farm was built, so I”d check in after work and all my buildings would be in chaos and I’d have all these problems to deal with. Not cool, Godfinger. Not cool.
I warned you about the Poking. I told you it was a vicious cycle with no end.
I have the piano wire on standby…
“This is like playing Animal Crossing and being in a cult at the same time, except you don’t get to be a cute animal and there’s no messiah to have sex with.”
I can’t stop laughing at this.
Skippy,
Yes. That is a screenshot of Oregon Trail. For comedic value.
Jen: God bless you. And I’m glad to hear that the monotony of Farmville has helped you to bond with you mom. That good can come from bad is always reassuring.