Game designer Denis Dyack, who labored on action game Too Human for years, thinks that social gaming is a bubble waiting to burst: “The trend that I see is it’s probably going to be one of the biggest bubbles and explosions that our industry’s seen in a long time and I think when it crashes it’s going to crash very hard.” [IndustryGamers]
Civ
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 9:10 PMDenis Dyack has credibility now?
mambodog
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 9:13 PMHe’s only Human…
ShiggyNinty
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 9:59 PMA little…Too Human. *shades on*. YEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Peter
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 10:48 PMWell done sir
milali
Friday, May 13, 2011 at 12:28 AMahaha tidy work there lads
indeed any section hoping the other blows us is destined for failure
coverage
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 9:10 PMWhat does it he mean by “social gaming”. Does he mean games like farmville? Or games like Team fortress 2? “social gaming” could mean so many different things.
Don Danbury
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 9:22 PMwell i’d expect him to know a fair bit about crashes and bubbles bursting from his past efforts.
mccawsome
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 9:40 PMNice!
LOL
Jamie
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 9:47 PMblah blah blah “social sucks1″ blah blah blah
The amount of butthurt from mainstream devs over ‘casual’ games never ceases to amaze me.
Kromblonkern
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 10:06 PMI sure hope so.
Bait
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 11:18 PMI’ll drink to that.
Steven Bogos
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 10:36 PMAs soon as a new hair product or car show comes around, all of the casual gamers will leave
Ben J
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 11:11 PM100% agree with him. all it’s going to take is something else to come along.
Retro
Friday, May 13, 2011 at 3:17 AMI wonder what the talking heads for tabletop gaming companies said back when the Atari started getting huge? It may have sounded similar to what’s coming out of Dyack’s mouth now.
Seegrey
Friday, May 13, 2011 at 6:27 AMAh.. not social gaming, facebook and farmville-esque gaming.He’s also probably right, I think.
Farmville doesn’t count as a game – it’s a program designed to be a psychological addiction, non-abusive annoyances(the cooldown times), and seemingly “cheap” methods of annoyance circumvention. In short, it’s job is to be as unfun as possible so you’ll buy the unfun parts out. Even the most boring mmo is designed for fun, regardless of how much is achieved.
Given all the facebook related child deaths, I see lawmaker types stepping in soon to put a limit on this sort of design. As much as it pains me to admit it, there is a line you can cross with games and they have. You generally don’t make games which have the *intentional* end result of psychological damage. At least, not for money(some indies are kind of twisted).
Social gaming itself, I expect to take off – where social gaming is short, co-operative play from single players. If you’ve played rift, the invasions are what I’m talking about – 5-6 minute “group” work with objectives, but also fairly freeform. I suppose minecraft could go in here, but I’m not entirely sure it’s a game yet.. more of a tool, or activity.
Mobile gaming is going to explode, I think we can all see that. Quality is the variable..
Licketty Split
Friday, May 13, 2011 at 9:21 AMI doubt it’s going to burst. Financially wise, I have $4 to spend on sword & sworcery but not $100 to spend on LA Noir (Which sucks since I really want to play that).
v4next
Friday, May 13, 2011 at 10:53 AMStatistics cant predict the natural occurance of synchronised boredom, on a mass scale, so it could be true.
Snacuum
Friday, May 13, 2011 at 10:56 AMIt depends on what you mean about bubble bursting. Like fashions and fads, things come and go all the time, it’s not exactly like economic ‘bubbles’ where the entire economic structure of society feeds and grows upon it. More likely that social gaming will just become less popular or fragmented. The thing I’ve seen in the last 20 years is that there is just too many people in the world now for ANY particular medium, style, theme, social activity, etc. to actually burst and disappear.