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.
