Stop calling Farmville the future of PC gaming.

[MinisterofDOOM]

I'm sick of hearing it. I'm going to garrote the next person who says it with my shoelace.
Farmville, facebook apps, social gaming, everyone keeps claiming they're the future of PC gaming.
But they're not.
And I'm not getting at what you probably think I'm getting at.

What I am getting at is that they aren't PC games at all. They're web games.

Facebook has become the newest game console. And it is THAT game console, and the multitude of browser-based consoles like it that are sure to follow, that these games are the future of. The only thing Farmville has to do with PCs is that some of the browsers used to access the console on which Farmville runs are on PCs. That's a pretty huge separation.

I think it's pretty funny that everyone's running around talking about how Farmville is the future of PC gaming like they've made some monumental discovery, when in fact that discovery isn't even accurate. Step back and take a look. PC gaming isn't being revolutionized. Something MUCH bigger is happening. A new, SEPARATE platform has arisen. THAT is what's being revolutionized.

Web games are going to be huge. Just don't mistake them for PC games. Because their reach is far greater than that.
Farmville isn't changing the PC gaming landscape. It's creating it's own landscape.

[ProudNissanFreak]

Farmville isn't changing the PC gaming landscape. It's creating it's own landscape.

Pun intended?

[MinisterofDOOM]

I never intend puns.

[marlin29311]

Farmville isn't changing the PC gaming landscape. It's creating it's own landscape.

Pun intended?

[RCA]

I have never heard any one say that.

Who is saying that FB games are the future of PC games?

[MinisterofDOOM]

EVERYONE. Ubisoft, Peter Molyneaux, This dork. Pretty much everyone in the gaming industry keeps spouting that line.

[marlin29311]

Tons of sites.

Honestly, farmville pisses me off. I can't stand it.

But like MOD said, it's not a PC game...pc games are giant files that cost you $50 or so dollars. Farmville is free. There's no comparison and the demographics are completely different.

[ProudNissanFreak]

I love how he stops to laugh and nobody else is laughing with him.

[Ar878]

am i missing something?
free web games have been around for a long time.

[88Z+2010Rogue]

Funny because I think it's the worst game out of all the facebook games.

[Ar878]

facebook games suck.
sure they're a great way to kill time, but a lot of them are just collecting information from your facebook.

[MinisterofDOOM]

am i missing something?
free web games have been around for a long time.

Right, but Farmville isn't just a free web game. It's socially oriented, which is basically self-promotion. People get their friends into it. And it's not free. To succeed you have to either spend money or participate in advertising offers, both of which create revenue for the developer. The thing that's scaring a lot of people as far as impact on the games industry as a whole is the fact that Farmville cost next to nothing to develop, but makes crazy amounts of money. So why spend real money to make real games if you can just crap out garbage and rake in the dough anyway?

[BusyBadger]

Ugh. I'd hardly qualify Farmville, or any other web based (or the trendier sounding "cloud based") game as a "PC" game. Hell, I don't even refer to a Xbox/PS/Wii game as a PC game, videogame yes, PC game no. But Farmville isn't even that. Like the DRM that MoD hates so much from Ubi, you have to be connected to the web to play Farmville. And Molyneaux has lost any credibility he had with me (and more than a few friends) by integrating Natal with Fable 3 (but that needs another thread).

It does remind me of being forced to listen to Kim Komando during a road trip and in a countdown of the most popular/most widely played computer games fantasy baseball/football was listed in the top slot.

[flohtingPoint]

Sadly, crap like this is the future of PC gaming. Actually, it's idiots that are the future of PC gaming. All this stuff is tailored to them.

Long gone are the days of needing to know how to write boot discs, hunting down the correct drivers on a dial in BBS for a certain game company, needing to know how to operate a terminal session to do multiplayer, blah blah blah. The computer world let the morons in (ie: everyone that doesn't know what CMOS stands for or wouldn't know a jumper from a dip switch) and now the folks that were originally there beforehand (all the nerds) are paying the price because stuff is getting dumbed down, becoming trendy and overall s***. It's a lot like how the original settlers came to America, learned some tricks from the Native Americans and then ruined their whole existance after that. You're experiencing ethereal Manifest Destiny.

[MinisterofDOOM]

Nah, PC gaming isn't going anywhere. It seems like every time a big dev goes for the "cash cow" approach, a new indie/smalltime dev steps in to fill the empty space. So yeah, there's a lot more crap. But there's still a lot of gold.

It's just that there's a new casual/web genre that has sort of split off from PC gaming. But they're not the same thing. The interest groups for Farmville and Gratuitous Space Battles do not intersect. They're different worlds. That's what I mean by "not the future of PC gaming." Farmville is definitely part of the future of gaming, but it isn't going to interfere with PC gaming as we know it. Because PC gamers don't want Farmville, just as Farmville gamers don't want "real" PC games.

And in regards to your comments about "the good ol' days"...have you played "Digital" yet?
http://scoutshonour.com/digital
PLAY IT. You'll love it. It's free.

[marlin29311]

http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plug ... le/1401804

No s*** farmville and the like are down...college is out right now, so kids aren't playing during english class on their laptops...

[AppleBonker]

The rest of the article explains the fix, though. iPhone 4 with farmville available on it. It even uses the push notifications so you can be know immediately when whatever happens in that game happens. I'm gonna start stealing iPhones from people who are too focused on farmville and not on the real world.

[xekushnr]

BRB GOT TO FEED MY DOG

[Looneybomber]

I had to google Farmville. I hadn't heard of it till this thread, but I can see how it would be so popular. Free game, simple to play, good time killer, etc...

Oh, and just an FYI, the DoD has approved the use of social networking.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/190457/u ... rking.html

Social networks leave a sour taste in my mouth. I devoted a lot of time getting my Myspace page setup, looking good, finding my friends, and then everyone jumps ship to facebook.

[HashiriyaS14]

Farmville is the future of stupid.