Social Network Gaming: The Conclusion, Part 3

One of the more positive aspects of the social network gaming hobby, is that it lends itself to a progression over time. I thought it would be really cool to see the difference between day 1 and day 30 on the various games to see what progress was made, so as a send off to this hobby, I have posted sets of screenshots from each of the social networking games that I played over the last month. Some of the screenshots are from a little later for comparison purposes.

Bejeweled Blitz

Day 10

Day 30

FrontierVille

Day 3

Day 30

City of Wonder - Home

Day 3

Day 30

City of Wonder - Colony

Day 21

Day 30

FarmVille - Home

Day 3

Day 30

FarmVille - English Countryside

Day 16

Day 30

Mafia Wars - New York

Day 6

Day 30

Mafia Wars - Brazil

Day 24

Day 30

Social Network Gaming: The Conclusion, Part 2

 

The screenshot above was taken the first day of my FarmVille farm. I think, if I had the chance to do it all over, I probably would have done things a lot differently. 

Well, now that I have shared my experience and thoughts on social network gaming, lets see how I kept to my goals.

1. Play at least one game in each of the following social network game genre's: asynchronous competitive, simulation, and casual role playing.

• FarmVille: simulation
• FrontierVille: simulation
• City of Wonder: simulation
• Mafia Wars: casual role playing
• Bejeweled Blitz: asynchronous competitive
• Words with Friends: asynchronous competitive

 2. Games should incorporate one of the following gameplay elements: asynchronous gameplay, community, no victory conditions, and virtual currency.

• FarmVille: asynchronous gameplay, community, no victory conditions, virtual currency
• FrontierVille: asynchronous gameplay, community, no victory conditions, virtual currency
• City of Wonder: asynchronous gameplay, community, no victory conditions, virtual currency
• Mafia Wars: asynchronous gameplay, no victory conditions, virtual currency
• Bejeweled Blitz: asynchronous competitive, community, no victory conditions, virtual currency
• Words with Friends: asynchronous gameplay

3. Play at least 2-4 hours a week total for 4 weeks: Without tallying up the numbers, I think it would be safe to say that I spent about 1 - 2 hours a day playing the games. I would usually play each game for 10 - 15 minutes in the morning and 10 - 15 in the evening.

4. Purchase virtual currency: I purchased $10 of virtual currency in FarmVille, FrontierVille, and City of Wonder.

5. Games should be playable/manageable on a mobile device (iPhone 4) if possible: FarmVille and Bejeweled Blitz were both available on the iPhone to be played. the non-flash parts of Mafia Wars was possible, but it was not a good experience.

6. Games will be connected to the same social network, Facebook: All games were connected to Facebook. Each game was playable on the Facebook website with the exception of Words with Friends, which will be available soon.

I did really well with my goals. I went a little overboard with playtime, but I think that was to be expected. I expect that if I had only played one simulation game, my playtime would have dramatically decreased, but I doubt I would have had as much fun, or be able to speak to each game as well.

Next I want to compare day 1 to day 30 screenshots.

Social Network Gaming: The Conclusion, Part 1

I am very proud to say that I have finished the first month of One Hobby at a Time, and the very first hobby. I have learned a lot about social network gaming, time management and blogging. I clocked in 36 posts in a month, not to shabby for a guy with 2 kids, a wife, and a full-time job. I also learned a lot about the Blogger platform, including its advantages and limitations. I would go on, but I think I'll make that a separate post.

anyway, lets talk social network gaming.

Social network gaming, in my honest opinion, was the wrong name for this hobby. I should have called it "casual gaming". The social network part of these games have been large, but in the end, they are casual games that can plug into your social network. If anything, it makes them more like an MMO more than a social networking game.

Time Consumption: 7/10

By themselves, the social networking games do not necessarily take a lot of time (with the exception of FrontierVille), however adding 2 or 3 of them together can cause things to get thrown way out of proportion and 5 hours later you wonder how you could have possibly spent 5 hours planing corn, or clobbering snakes.

Many of the games employ energy, like Mafia Wars and FrontierVille, which from first sight appear to
cause the game to be less time consuming, but that could not be less true. Once you waste your energy, you have to wait for your energy to refill, and while your energy is re-filling the game is going on without you re-growing. If you don't login before your energy fills up, you will waste what could be energy, and end up getting behind. This forces you to have to login every several hours to micro-manage your frontier, or mafia.

The asynchronous competitive games probably require the least amount of time to play and enjoy. Which is fine, except for games like Words with Friends when you have to wait for your friends to play, which could take hours or days, causing you to loose interest.

Costs: 3/10

Cost is a slippery slope with social networking games. The games themselves are free-to-play, but in order to purchase special accessories, or complete certain quests, you need to purchase special currency that you can only buy with real money. You get a lot of currency for the little bit of money you spend, but you need to be careful because some of the games have so much content, you will easily find that the currency does not go far.

I found out that I spent about 80% of my paid currency to complete quests, that could have been completed with time, or help from friends. That left only 20% for actually buying things that you can't buy with in game currency.

Overall Enjoyment: 7/10

The more you play, the more you enjoy, it is as simple as that. The more you play, the more money you get, the more you can build, the more you can brag to your 5 friends that actually play the same game you do.

I was immediately drawn to the simulation games, and probably had the most enjoyment with them. next would be the asynchronous competitive and then dead last, casual role playing. I was never good at the Sims, but I felt that the simulation games I played were a good pace for me. There were lots of things to do, and very little consequences for neglecting things. I played 2 very different asynchronous competitive games, but felt that they brought a very similar amount of enjoyment. Whether it was getting a high score in Bejeweled Blitz, or hitting the triple word score in Words with Friends, I had fun.The casual role playing games just didn't provide a lasting experience. It became a mess of repetitive micro-management that doesn't seem to end.

Technical Skill Required: 2/10

If you can click a mouse, you can play social network games. Each game had its own way of teaching the user how to play the game.

I'm going to stop here, and put the rest in another post.

FrontierVille - Day 30

 

There are not a lot of things about FrontierVille that didn't annoy me. Hundreds of pop-ups, not enough stamina, wild animals constantly attacking, and very little to show for it all.

I originally loved the FrontierVille concept. With its pretty aesthetics, and rewarding quests, I didn't think there would be much to not like. The problem shortly became that this game requires a lot more time than I could give it. If I had hours and hours to burn playing the game, I could have enjoyed the experience much better, but alas, I did not. Every time I logged in, I had to spend half of my energy either scaring a bear, clobbering a snake, or clearing bushes and rocks that had magically regrown in a few hours. Basically, the game requires a lot of time to really get anything out of it.

I eventually built up enough food near the end that I could purchase around 10 plates of food and clear off a good bit of land. Can you see the difference?

FrontierVille - Day 29

FrontierVille - Day 30

I Think the place looks much nicer now, but 1/3 of my space is still giant trees which take 12 energy to chop down.

Early on, the quests and buildings only required you to do things like chop down trees and buy accessories, but later on, you need to get tons of materials that can only be gained by purchasing with Horseshoes or receiving gifts from friends. Were not talking about a few items either, were talking dozens of items, which add up very quickly. I spent probably 15 days trying to complete the land office by receiving gifts from my 6 neighbors, only to get so frustrated I just bought the rest with horseshoes.

The paid currency in the game is called Horseshoes and you can get 75 of them for $10, which works out to 13¢ per Horseshoe, which isn't bad unless you need to spend 50 - 100 to complete a single building like a simple storage shed. Besides spending money attempting to finish buildings, I bought a nice double rainbow with horseshoes, which can be seen above.

Like I explained above the social aspect included constantly begging neighbors and friends to send you parts. I hate to say it, but the other half of the social aspect I really liked. Each day you could not only go to your friends farm and help tend livestock, and plants, you could pay 50 coins to have them come to your farm and help out.

I was really excited about expanding my boundaries realizing that my plans backfired. Now I have to clear out the new grass and trees while keeping the grass and trees from growing back in my original territory and each tree or bush I clear brings another bear or snake that I have to clobber. A good analogy with the game is for ever 2 steps forward, you end up taking 1 step back.

If I had enough time, and friends who actively played the game, I could have really enjoyed it, and probably grown my frontier quickly and cheaply.

Words with Friends: Day 30

Like Bejeweled Blitz, I had experience playing this game prior to this July's hobby. I had been playing it with a couple of friends, so once the month started I just continued as I had previously.

I have mixed feelings about this game. I liked it because it required a lot of critical thinking and is based upon a highly thought after board game, but at the same time, it opens itself up to cheating and using the system. What do I mean by using the system? I mean if you can keep trying different combinations until you find a word it accepts. Also, your not playing face to face with someone, so you can go to a website like this one and become Shakespeare without lifting a finger.

When your doing well, your proud of yourself for being so smart, but when your doing poorly, you either think the game is after you, or your opponent is obviously cheating. A good bit of the game is luck however. Being able to get that "s" to extend a word while making a new one or pop that "q" on a triple word score and blow your opponents mind.

This game does not utilize social networks for anything other than finding players. Once the game is started however, its just between you and your opponent. I noticed that as time goes on, I'm getting tired of playing the game. Not necessarily because of loosing, but because I don't really feel like playing scrabble every day, I just don't; and based upon the involvement from my friends in the last week of the month, I think they feel the same way too.

Solid game, easy, but I think the next time I play scrabble, I would prefer to play it on a game board without the Internet and other methods of enhancing your game.

Here are Screenshots from my matches:

Bejeweled Blitz - Day 30

I knew what Bejeweled Blitz was about coming into this hobby, but it definitely evolved since I first played it over a year ago. For example, it never had "Boosts" when I first played it. It also didn't have metrics like it does now.

This game was perfect for when I didn't have much time, or was physically indisposed, like walking my daughter around the apartment to get her to sleep. I could just pop up this app on my phone, play a couple rounds then put it away without wasting much brain power or time.

It has proven itself to be a game of luck. You will play 30 games where you will get 25,000 points, but then you will have one game where all of the jewels line up and its like fireworks on your screen with jewels blowing up left and right, and your just sitting there watching your score skyrocket.

Bejeweled Blitz - Day 30

It made me very hesitant to purchase boosts. They cost several thousand coins to purchase and only last 2 - 3 games and when you only make a couple hundred coins per game at best, it made me not want to waste them. My highest score was 257,600, whereas some of my friends would score almost 500,000 points. I spoke with them about their secrets and their answer was basically to use the boosts.

The ability to play this on the iPhone was definitely a plus, in fact, I think I only actually played it on the iPhone, but would login on the computer to take the higher resolution screenshot.

FarmVille - Day 30

I want to start off by saying that FarmVille has a bad rap. Even years after its release, I still hear people complaining about the game, but honestly I like it. It was simple, clean, and addictive. I guarantee you that most of the people who protest the game have never played it.


The social aspect of the game includes helping friends farms, sharing gifts, and receiving items to complete buildings. I know Zynga loves fishing for new players because they make it ungodly easy to share dinky useless items. It is the sharing aspect that most of my friends hate the most. Constantly being reminded that FarmVille has a gift for you can be a little much if your an avid Facebook user.

FarmVille (Home) - Day 30

 In the beginning, FarmVille is a numbers game. You plant the crops to get the most amount of money. Once you build up enough capitol, you can use it to buy pretty things for your farm. Here is a list I pulled off from farmvillegametips.

2 hours - 5.5 cents/hr raspberries
4 hours - 6.5 blueberries; 2.5 strawberries
6 hours - 3.3 aloe vera
8 hours - 7.25 tomatoes; 2.875 pumpkins
12 hours - 6.25 carrots; 3 rice
16 hours - 6.75 coffee
etc...

If you know anything about math, even though coffee yields 6.75 money per hour, you can grow 8 crops of raspberries in the time it takes to grow one crop of coffee. Even though coffee has the highest rate of cents per hour, the raspberries have the potential to be more profitable. I clocked switching up my crops at about 6 minutes. That's about the time it takes for a medium sized farm to be harvested, cleaned, and re-planted (If you have fuel and some of the farm vehicles, you can cut that 6 minutes down into 1 minute). This is fine if you can log into FarmVille every 2 hours, which I cannot. Basically, the more you play, the more money you can make, which is probably the reason why the game is so addicting.

In FarmVille, you can use the money you gain from crops, or you can use "Farm Cash" which is the paid in game currency, which runs about $10 for 55 Farm Cash. That's about 18¢ per dollar of Farm Cash, which is a better ratio than the other game, but don't worry, Zynga is doing just fine. They grabbed 20 Farm Cash from me because I wasn't paying attention. I performed a free dart game, and it asked me to play again, but I did not notice the "for 20 Farm Cash" in tiny print below the play button. Most of my money went into finishing my crafting silo, which I never ended up using, and on some decorations for the farm.

FarmVille (English) - Day 30

I have thoroughly enjoyed my English farm. Not only do I get new crops and English aesthetics, I get new buildings like the brewery that allowed me to turn crops into fuel for my vehicles.

After 30 days, I felt very accomplished with the game, and had fun beautifying the farm.

City of Wonder: Day 30

 City of Wonder was my favorite of the Social Network Games by far. Between the global economy, quests, UI, and aesthetics, I was never bored with the game. It used just the right amount of social networking and gaming to keep me coming.

The only limiting factor of the game was the requirement for more allies to expand your civilization. I don't necessarily think it was unreasonable for the game itself, but rather because not enough of my friends play the game.

In comparison to the other games, City of Wonder did not require as much time to play. I was satisfied logging in twice a day. I would usually collect my crops, then replant then logout. I am sure that as you ad more colonies the micromanagement required would be more.

 The social aspect of the game was divided into 3 functions:

1. Expansion: In order to expand your territory, you were required to have x amount of allies. I would be upset by this but FarmVille, and probably a dozen others require this.
2. Quests: Certain quests required you to receive gifts from allies. It was a simple process that used the Facebook system to do it. The only problem was that, unless all of your friends played regularly, you would either have to wait a long time to complete simple quests, or you would have to dish out real world cash.
3. Economy: Allies provided economy that is equivalent to properties in Mafia Wars. About once a day, you can visit your friends property and collect money from them.

City of Wonder used "Gold Bars" that you could purchase and use in game to finish quests and purchase unique items. For $10, you can buy 42 Gold bars which works out to 42¢ per Gold Bar, which is consistent with other games. A majority of those Gold bars had to go into finishing the Zombie quest chain, 32 in fact. What made this worst, was the fact that even with all those Gold Bars spent, I never really got that close to completing the chain. You could easily dump a lot of money into this game without thinking. T

City of Wonder (Colony) - Day 30

The ability to expand to a Colony was a nice feature for the game and extended gameplay, but the colony experience was only a fraction of the main civilization. Most of the items in the colony required Gold Bars, and did very little for the overall experience.

I really enjoyed the workshop feature of the game. Using goods collected from your various farms and quarries, you can build very nice properties that have vastly superior stats to other that you have to buy.

City of Wonder (Home) - Day 30

The researching of the game started out as a simple, but then quickly grew to be complex and limiting. Not necessarily because of the cost, but because of the time involved. Later in the game, certain researches needed days to complete. My inability to complete the zombie quest chain was because I didn't have the knowledge to build certain goods until I researched them.

There are 2 types of quests involved with City of Wonders:

1. Hero Quests: These are simple quests that require you to buy items, attack, or perform actions that lead to you gaining a hero. Heroes provide things like faster research time, better attack, cleaning buildings, etc.
2. Special Quest Chains: These are long quests chains that require you to buy or craft buildings s well as other special tasks. I chose the Zombie chain which was pretty cool, however it didn't exactly help the overall aesthetics of my civilization. I gave them a nice area to the west that they can use to slaughter innocents for brains and whatever zombies do in their free time.

 Once again, I was very happy with this game, and will probably miss it the most.

Mafia Wars: Day 30

It seems that I have amassed $593,739,202 in New York. I would be happier with that number if I actually could use it to purchase anything other than more properties. Overall, I felt the Mafia Wars experience to be a bit lacking. This is very hard for me to say considering I spent a majority of my childhood playing role playing games, and have played the good and the bad.

This is one of those games that had to be played back in the day. Starting out years down the road only makes things harder as most of your opponents have had years of time to level up and buy good equipment.

As far as the "Social" aspect of Social Networking Games, this one had probably the least. You had the ability to join mobs and send gifts, but other than that, there was no real interaction. Games like FarmVille and City of Wonders allow you to visit your friends colonies and farms and help out.

Mafia Wars (New York) - Day 30

Mafia Wars (Brazil) - Day 30

I never actually purchased any in game money, but I did spend a little of the pity points you get from leveling up. Mafia Wars offers "Reward Points," and for 10 dollars you can get 42 of them. This works out to about 42¢ per reward point. I purchased the following equipment with the free RP:

•  4 RP to finish a quest
• 8 RP for a nice rocket launcher that had better defense then offense

I think this will be one game that I will be happy to say goodbye to.

Social Network Gaming: Day 29

I was able to squeeze in a couple minutes of play time before going to see HP7. I started working on my City of Wonder civilization, and am very proud of how everything turned out, I should be able to post it tomorrow.

Check out the daily screenshots after the break:

Social Network Gaming: Day 28

I didn't have much time last night to play, so I mostly did my harvesting, and collecting for the various games. I did some RP in Mafia Wars to get the second level of a property in Brazil, but I doubt it was worth the cost.

Check out the daily screenshots after the break.