0 XP: The Zynga Counterrevolution

The article inaccurately represents TF2: you <i>can</i> buy weapons for a few dollars (not 10), but random drops are common enough that even a new player can fairly easily trade them for any weapon he wants, and eventually you'll end up with most of the weapons in the game with no effort, so you never really need to pay. (I've made a point of never buying weapons simply because I think trading is fun.) High-end items like hats <i>are</i> highly priced in trading, making them more attractive to buy, and the rarest ones are worth hundreds of dollars, but they are (with minor exceptions that are around for historical reasons) purely cosmetic.

I would really like to play a Role Playing Game without any kind of XP mechanic. I think it'd be really cool to play through an epic storyline that my character came through about as strong at the end as it was at the beginning.

"There may be no shortage of commentators ready to decry pay-to-win grindfests as 'evil' design, but what’s still needed is a code of ethical game mechanics that provides a yardstick to measure which games and which game designers can be trusted not to unduly manipulate their audience."<p>Couldn't agree more. It's easier than ever to get games in the hands of eager/bored people via mobile and Facebook, and companies are thus capitalizing on these users by building shallow experiences while optimizing for revenues <i>instead of</i> fun.<p>Additionally, I think more game devs need to speak out against the "evil" design. I hear a lot of tech-savvy people talking about this stuff verbally, but is the common person really aware of the amount of time that is spent trying to engineer them into being addicted? I realize that as developers, we don't necessarily benefit from spending a lot more time building something just to end up making less money, but the line needs to be drawn somewhere.

Wow, Zynga seems to be proving a Poe's Law for videogame design. Cow Clicker seemed like funny satire, but it can no longer compete with this apparently <i>earnest</i> game design, which is literally a slot machine game, except that after inserting your "Bucket of Coins, $19.99", you don't even have a remote chance of getting it back.

Zynga aren't really designing games, they're designing drugs.

Nitpick alert: Minecraft lets you "manually adjust the number of farmable resources in your inventory"? I wasn't aware cheating tools should be factored into this game ethic. Unless something has radically changed since I last played it?<p>Honestly, I can only <i>hope</i> that this is accurate, and that the downward trends for slot machine games is real and will continue. It's ruining gaming and <i>fun</i> in general, and replacing it with causing - and then satisfying - an addiction.<p>I remain unconvinced that it will actually <i>happen</i>, though. This current crop of Zyngaville gamers may be tiring of the shenanigans, but I expect it to merely be replaced with something equally draining that people aren't desensitized to, hooking the next generation. We're still addicted to the TV, last time I looked. If anything, games provide <i>more</i> opportunity than one-way media, I would expect them to strictly out-last TV in lifespan and damage.

I doubt that Zynga's decline has anything to do with their flawed mechanics (I'd argue that it's flawed too), and everything with Facebook effectively killing it (specifically, 'Requests') in feed.<p>There's no feedback loop in there anymore for Zynga's cows.