FarmVille and brethren games designed to de-motivate players, generally suck

In a super-lengthy interview with game developer Jonathan Blow, Gamasutra uncovers the thought process that goes into the creation of the plague of social games on Facebook like FarmVille, Mafia Wars or FrontierVille.

It turns out the games are actually designed to ignite a part of our psyche that wants to be rewarded for boring, tiring tasks like fake-plowing, fake-animal feeding and fake-shopping. Blow says he feels the trend is not a good one for gaming, but that is has taken root regardless:

It’s only about exploiting the players and yes, people report having fun with that kind of game. You know, certain kinds of hardcore game players don’t find much interest in FarmVille, but a certain large segment of the population does. But then when you look at the design process in that game, it’s not about designing a fun game. It’s not about designing something that’s going to be interesting or a positive experience in any way — it’s actually about designing something that’s a negative experience.

It’s about “How do we make something that looks cute and that projects positivity” — but it actually makes people worry about it when they’re away from the computer and drains attention from their everyday life and brings them back into the game. Which previous genres of game never did. And it’s about, “How do we get players to exploit their friends in a mechanical way in order to progress?” And in that or exploiting their friends, they kind of turn them in to us and then we can monetize their relationships. And that’s all those games are, basically.

Blow said, however, that the opportunity exists to create more engaging, happy-making games on Facebook:

So I would say don’t make that stuff. If you want to make a Facebook game, there are a lot of very creative things that could be done, but the FarmVille template is not the right one.

He adds that it’s not just Facebook games that are contributing to the trend, and that a larger trend to draw interest from impressing fellow players is a negative force in game development.

[via Consumerist]