addictive games, more info on My Guests

[charmian]

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-completely-addicted-to-a-stupid-facebook-game-2009-12

For those of us too lazy to go through 41 slides, basically in Fishville you buy fish, and raise them and sell them to get more $$$, which you can use to upgrade your tank or buy more fish. The main way to get cash is selling the fish, but you can also get cash by inviting your friends and "helping" them.

This is a multi-million dollar business where much of the profits come from people buying the virtual money (and previously, scammy offers, but Zygna has now renounced them). This approach, now even more widespread in the more profitable Chinese social-network sphere, seems to be catching on in America. Will virtual goods end up being the salvation of profit-seeking social networks?

Also, does anyone else find the My Guests thing at LJ sort of useless since the majority of visitors are invisible? Also, I found out by looking at the Russian news comm that all of the users who used Cyrillic services before Dec. 15 get to keep using full stats (whereas to non-Cyrillic users the stats besides My Guests are paid/perm only features ahaha)

In other news, I am jonesing for Sengoku Musou 3, but even if I bought it now, I couldn't play it cause it is Wii only so far. :(

Comments

[holyschist]

I've played a couple of those Facebook games, and they were fun for a couple weeks (although I was never tempted to spend money on them), and then I lost interest. They're all basically the same.

On the other hand, I spend something like $7/month to get a game from Big Fish Games, some of which have pretty similar mechanics. But I get a lot more playtime out of those games with better mechanics and interface and easier use, and only have to pay once.

So I'm sort of baffled that the Facebook game scheme is working. Perhaps with people who wouldn't think of buying a downloadable game? I don't know.

[charmian]

I don't understand it either, because like it seems as if there's no way to "win" these games and you have to keep playing them, or your fishies or whatever will die. It's like a tamagotchi, I suppose (mine died cause I forgot to feed it)

Yeah, who knew. But apparently it works? And also, it's possibly because it's within FB, or because it involves people's FB friends? The social element and "doing things for your friends" also seems to be a big factor.

[petronia]

Well, you can come play Farmville with me and then you might see the appeal, she says drily.

(I haven't played any of the others, but I'd say the virtual stuff within Farmville is pretty tempting, because it is "decorating your personal space" - i.e. it taps into whatever it is that makes ppl pay for LJ icons.)

[charmian]

Eh, but I only have one icon, so I'm not sure I'd be that interested...

I suppose it's sort of like the Sims? Haha, so do you have a huge farm now? Do you get points for having more friends?

[holyschist]

I'm kind of inclined to think that a) they're probably not actually making nearly so much actual profit and b) a fad that will eventually pass.

Most of my Facebook friends don't play the games, so I may be missing out on the social element. But it's wayyyy less social than, say, something like WoW. The social elements are pretty minimal.

I do like the concept of the games, and I play similar games offline (I'm also obsessed with time management games, which are all very similar in strategy and mechanics). I just would rather plonk down $7 for a game I own and can play forever than feed money into a similar but less feature-rich game on Facebook that doesn't have a "pause" setting.