FarmVille is "made by bad people"

@GunslingerPanda said:

...There's microtransactions; a ton of games do this now. Blizzard do this with WoW. Tribes: Ascend does this. Team Fortress 2 does this. Mass Effect 3 does this. Where's your vitriol for them?...

I can't defend WoW, but Tribes/TF2/ME3 games depend on small amounts of money from large amounts of players. Zynga's business model depends on large amounts of money ($1000+ per person), from a small amount of players. It's a different thing. Everyone is vulnerable to $10 DLC, but the only people who would spend thousands of dollars on Farmville are people with biological problems with the reward centers of their brains. Mass Effect 3 players aren't losing their homes because they can't keep up with the bills. They're not seeking out psychiatrists and support groups to help them with their Mass Effect 3 addiction. And if that person does exist, it was never EA/Bioware's goal.

@bybeach said:

...In fact I would prefer a society that allows for it than not....

I do too. But the important thing to remember is that just because something should be legal, doesn't mean it's right. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's immune from criticism.

I'm flagging this thread because it's resorted to some really gross name-calling. I think that you have a point, @dylantarre , but people clearly don't want to discuss it in a civil manner, or simply yell that other companies are worse and therefore more worthy of derision.

Everybody in here, get off your high horses. Zynga, as a company and not as individuals, designs games that play off of psychological addictions in the same manner as the games of Blizzard, Activision, EA, Capcom, and many more. The idea that nobody raises vitriol about Project $10, online passes, Call of Duty Elite, and the like is absurd. But the comparison to drug dealers is hyperbolic and extremely rude. They're a company; unless you dislike television, cinemas, GameStop, and other forms of psychological "reinforcement" to consume, you really ought not to care so much about what Zynga does. Those of you yelling at the people who dislike Zynga are acting even worse, though, resorting simply to calling those who don't care for Zynga "shitty people."

This thread disappoints. Move on, don't stay long.

You've created digital meth for lonely housewives. For shame

You probably are a bad person a little.

@Little_Socrates said:

I'm flagging this thread because it's resorted to some really gross name-calling. I think that you have a point, @dylantarre , but people clearly don't want to discuss it in a civil manner, or simply yell that other companies are worse and therefore more worthy of derision.

Everybody in here, get off your high horses. Zynga, as a company and not as individuals, designs games that play off of psychological addictions in the same manner as the games of Blizzard, Activision, EA, Capcom, and many more. The idea that nobody raises vitriol about Project $10, online passes, Call of Duty Elite, and the like is absurd. But the comparison to drug dealers is hyperbolic and extremely rude. They're a company; unless you dislike television, cinemas, GameStop, and other forms of psychological "reinforcement" to consume, you really ought not to care so much about what Zynga does. Those of you yelling at the people who dislike Zynga are acting even worse, though, resorting simply to calling those who don't care for Zynga "shitty people."

This thread disappoints. Move on, don't stay long.

Oh hey I found the actual bad person in this thread.

He also said "anime is for jerks" dont listen to him if you think he is wrong.

@tooPrime said:

@Hilbert said:

@dylantarre said:

Keep in mind, people would not pay us money or play our game at all if they didn't find some sort of enjoyment in it, even if you (and even us sometimes) just don't understand why they do.

We love our players, and they've enabledus to give back to the world in ways that most game companies don't have the ability or desire to do.

What was your function at Zynga?

Because if you had any real function worth mentioning at all, I find it hard to believe that some fast bottom feeding yuppie takes the time to listen to a 3+ hours long pod cast.

Not to mention coders, who would never spend their time on game sites.

I'm having a hard time articulating in a constructive manner how douche-y this post is.

Some @Hilbert primes "modulo" word lengths in phrase using common lisp :D

If Zynga is bad because housewives play it and think about it when they are away from the game then so is every multiplayer game ever that features microtransactions and/or subscriptions. Zynga is a game, it's fine. If you want to pick on Zynga for copying other games or whatever that's one issue, but some of you, including Johnathan Blow, have presented entirely specious arguments as to why Zynga and Farmville are actual problems. While an ideal universe would have everyone funneling their energy into vast undertakings of profound artistic creation Zynga is simply a reality in the video game world and arguing that it is evil makes about as much sense as condemning dime novels as though they prevented the publication of Hawthorne, Whitman, Thoreau, Melville, and Longfellow.

Hell, under the criteria some of you have presented I think GiantBomb might be evil. I'm sure these forums provide space for shut ins and social failures to congregate and get themselves all riled up about why Facebook is evil, and it's not like GiantBomb are putting out video content that's Bela Tarr quality and their criticism isn't quite Hegelian analysis.

@SeriouslyNow said:

@gladspooky said:

"It's made by bad people" does not contain an absolute. Not everyone who makes FarmVille is bad.

Just some of them.

Actually, no. Jeff is a person of some authority in this industry and as such his statement needs to be qualified otherwise it may be taken as is.

And as is, it contains no absolutes. There's literally no other way to read it unless you add words.

It is not made by bad people. It is made by smart business people. Whilst the games they make might be hard to admire, for me it is easy to admire the way in which the business is run and it's success.

All this stuff about addiction and business models is just as true for Blizzard as it is for Zynga.

FarmVille just engages a different demographic.

@dylantarre said:

But we're not forcing these people to buy every new horse we draw, or tree, or gnome we drew yesterday. We draw it, put it into the game the next day, and users buy it. Yeah, its crazy, but who are we to deny folks what they like to spend money on.

wow. really sounds like you're proud of what you're doing. "we're not FORCING anyone to buy this crap, these retards just keep buying it so we keep making it."

And crack dealers are just trying to make a buck.

@dylantarre said:

Jeff made the off-hand comment that FarmVille is "made by bad people" - This hurts me personally, as I have worked for FarmVille for the past two years. This job enabled me to come to live in work in a city I've always loved, San Francisco. It's afforded me a comfortable, steady job, with great benefits, one in which I'm not worried about being laid off after my game is done its development cycle.

'How can they be bad people if they pay me so well?!'

C'mon, you know he's just kidding around. If anything it's that a lot of people feel like games are starting to rely too much on carrots, sticks and credit cards. Not that you should be on trial for war crimes. It's not a huge deal.

@SeriouslyNow said:

@gladspooky said:

"It's made by bad people" does not contain an absolute. Not everyone who makes FarmVille is bad.

Just some of them.

Actually, no. Jeff is a person of some authority in this industry and as such his statement needs to be qualified otherwise it may be taken as is.

And as is, it contains no absolutes. There's literally no other way to read it unless you add words.

I think he was talking about the higher-ups, but yeah, I totally admire where you're coming from.

Would it have been okay if he said "FarmVille is made at the behest of bad people"?

@SeriouslyNow: No, that's not the same. It's pretty obvious in context that Jeff was referring to the people that make the decision to copy other companies' games.

A decent parallel would be if I said that people who make negative campaign ads are bad people. Do I think that every cameraman, actor, and boom mic operator is a piece of shit? No. Do I think the people that decided the course of those ads are pieces of shit? That's probably more accurate.

Shouldn't your PR people handle this instead of you venting on an open forum?

@SeriouslyNow said:

@gladspooky said:

@SeriouslyNow said:

@gladspooky said:

"It's made by bad people" does not contain an absolute. Not everyone who makes FarmVille is bad.

Just some of them.

Actually, no. Jeff is a person of some authority in this industry and as such his statement needs to be qualified otherwise it may be taken as is.

And as is, it contains no absolutes. There's literally no other way to read it unless you add words.

So if Barack Obama said that Republicans are bad people, that would be OK?

Nailed it.

@dylantarre said:

Some of us are Giant Bomb fans who walk around in I'm A Wizard and Lincoln Force shirts, and watch Quick Looks on lunch breaks.

And that's how I ended up getting a job at Zynga.

@dylantarre: skip to 32:00. Or to 41:00 if you want to hear specifically about FarmVille

I present my rebuttal. Notice the subtle effect of the slightly sideways "M" that makes it look like two "B"s and the thinly veiled "With friends" that reminds us all of another game out there...

Nothing wrong with the day to day workers of that company. Everything wrong with their business practices.

@Hilbert said:

@dylantarre said:

Keep in mind, people would not pay us money or play our game at all if they didn't find some sort of enjoyment in it, even if you (and even us sometimes) just don't understand why they do.

We love our players, and they've enabledus to give back to the world in ways that most game companies don't have the ability or desire to do.

What was your function at Zynga?

Because if you had any real function worth mentioning at all, I find it hard to believe that some fast bottom feeding yuppie takes the time to listen to a 3+ hours long pod cast.

Not to mention coders, who would never spend their time on game sites.

I'm not sure what you think 'coders' are but I know many of the people that have graduated a Bachelor of Computing and Mathmatical Sciences (and other in some of the same papers) who are very much keen on gaming and will spend time all up in gaming sites, whether you mean sites like Giant Bomb (I assume this) or on sites like Facebook playing games (not Zyangs so much)

@TheHT said:

@SeriouslyNow said:

@gladspooky said:

@SeriouslyNow said:

@gladspooky said:

"It's made by bad people" does not contain an absolute. Not everyone who makes FarmVille is bad.

Just some of them.

Actually, no. Jeff is a person of some authority in this industry and as such his statement needs to be qualified otherwise it may be taken as is.

And as is, it contains no absolutes. There's literally no other way to read it unless you add words.

So if Barack Obama said that Republicans are bad people, that would be OK?

Nailed it.

Not really. It's not the same sentence and doesn't carry the same intent. Look at the subjects of each sentence.

We're not saying EVERYONE AT ZYNGA IS A PIECE OF SHIT. The people at Zynga who are running the show (basically, the core of Zynga) are pieces of shit.

"It's made by bad people" does not contain an absolute. Not everyone who makes FarmVille is bad.

Just some of them.

@MEATBALL said:

It was an off-handed joke about the higher ups at Zynga, I wouldn't get too upset about it.

@TheHT said:

@SeriouslyNow said:

@gladspooky said:

@SeriouslyNow said:

@gladspooky said:

"It's made by bad people" does not contain an absolute. Not everyone who makes FarmVille is bad.

Just some of them.

Actually, no. Jeff is a person of some authority in this industry and as such his statement needs to be qualified otherwise it may be taken as is.

And as is, it contains no absolutes. There's literally no other way to read it unless you add words.

So if Barack Obama said that Republicans are bad people, that would be OK?

Nailed it.

Not really. It's not the same sentence and doesn't carry the same intent. Look at the subjects of each sentence.

@Gilsham said:

@Hilbert said:

@dylantarre said:

Keep in mind, people would not pay us money or play our game at all if they didn't find some sort of enjoyment in it, even if you (and even us sometimes) just don't understand why they do.

We love our players, and they've enabledus to give back to the world in ways that most game companies don't have the ability or desire to do.

What was your function at Zynga?

Because if you had any real function worth mentioning at all, I find it hard to believe that some fast bottom feeding yuppie takes the time to listen to a 3+ hours long pod cast.

Not to mention coders, who would never spend their time on game sites.

I'm not sure what you think 'coders' are but I know many of the people that have graduated a Bachelor of Computing and Mathmatical Sciences (and other in some of the same papers) who are very much keen on gaming and will spend time all up in gaming sites, whether you mean sites like Giant Bomb (I assume this) or on sites like Facebook playing games (not Zyangs so much)

You know.

I was typing and typing, thinking about all kinds of clever things to say as counter arguments to what you where typing.

And then I thought.

Why did I start this shit? Why do I care? Do I care? What kind of idiot am I to start some weird conversation with random people? Is it Monday already?

Facebook Games. Jesus Christ..

@Stache said:

It's afforded me a comfortable, steady job, with great benefits, one in which I'm not worried about being laid off after my game is done its development cycle

as they say, there is always another game to clone just around the corner

@ManicMyna said:

@Stache said:

It's afforded me a comfortable, steady job, with great benefits, one in which I'm not worried about being laid off after my game is done its development cycle

as they say, there is always another game to clone just around the corner

Good artists copy, great artists steal. -Pablo Picasso

I can't pass judgment on you based on your employment. If a job is good, take it. But farmville, the game, sucks. In any case, so long as you didn't and do not envision what farmville was and will be, you're fine.

Does Zynga rape children?  This thread confuses me.

@RuthLoose said:

@ManicMyna said:

@Stache said:

It's afforded me a comfortable, steady job, with great benefits, one in which I'm not worried about being laid off after my game is done its development cycle

as they say, there is always another game to clone just around the corner

Good artists copy, great artists steal. -Pablo Picasso

Good artists cut off their ears and give them to those they admire. -Van Gogh

@BrockNRolla:

@Spoonman671 said:

Does Zynga rape children? This thread confuses me.

That's the "give back to the world in ways that most game companies don't have the ability or desire to do" part.

I kid.

@TheDudeOfGaming said:

I can't pass judgment on you based on your employment. If a job is good, take it. But farmville, the game, sucks. In any case, so long as you didn't and do not envision what farmville was and will be, you're fine.

You can definitely pass judgement on someone based on their job. I certainly pass judgement on the CEOs that ran their companies into the ground with bad financial practices only to get bailed out by the government for being "too big to fail." There needs to be a moral element to your work. If you think killing people is inherently wrong, don't join the army just because the pay and benefits are good. If you think it's wrong to give predatory loans to the poor, don't work at a Paycheck Loan place. "It pays" isn't justification for absolving someone of an evil in their job.

That being said, I wouldn't say farmville fits into any sort of villainous category. It's just a crappy product. I think I think Best Buy is a terrible store, but I don't think the people working there are bad people.

So you must be a bad person then.

Building a school in Haiti is cool and all, but I assume the million it cost to do so wasn't Zynga's net profit for that year. Doing Samaritan work doesn't absolve one of all sins, such as the sin of funneling money out of the pockets of addicts. Point is, you don't make games - you make colorful spreadsheets. I'm sure you as an entity harbor no ill will towards your players, but your function as a cog in the machine that is Zynga isn't commendable or beneficial to the gaming landscape. People who say social gaming is a way to introduce the concept of games to new audiences are lying - they don't want to 'introduce people to gaming', they want to 'introduce people to moneysinks'. You have boiled games down to their basics and amped up the monetization factor. This reminds me of a Penny Arcade comic in which a developer suggests selling a device which scans your credit card and, depending on the charge, does appropriate damage. I imagine- no, I know that, if they could get away with something similar, they totally would. The bigger the company/organization, the smaller the soul factor. Once you get as big as Zynga (and have shareholders, which is the key to this whole thing) you lose any kind of human perspective on your actions, looking only to push your stock price up, "introducing people to gaming" be damned.

PS Another thing: companies don't "give to charities" - they use a legal loophole to get a tax write-off.

The Zinga model is basically preying on the compulsive addicts of this world (it’s like gambling with no chance to win).

Last December my girlfriend spend over 70 $ in a single week on castleville (it does not seem like much but for us it was a lot), she still spend 5-10-20$ from time to time.

The problem with it is that it has no limit, unlike a mmo where you pay 15$ a month to play.

One of her co-worker spends even more according to her.

Zinga needs a Block credit card transaction option for their compulsive players.

Wow, this thread is still going? Really? I'm pretty sure what can be said, has been, so please can we just let this die?

@RuthLoose said:

@ManicMyna said:

@Stache said:

It's afforded me a comfortable, steady job, with great benefits, one in which I'm not worried about being laid off after my game is done its development cycle

as they say, there is always another game to clone just around the corner

Good artists copy, great artists steal. -Pablo Picasso

Picasso was a no good, junkie bastard. Just check out his "My First Experience With Drugs" which you can find here.

Are people just mad at zynga because they're more open about manipulating DOPMAINE feedback loops than the competition?

I still cant fathom who these people that spent so much money on these games are. When I come to think about it, the people at Zynga are kinda awesome, they are taking money from stupid people.

@Dtat: I just watched the whole thing. That was a neat video. Great to see someone talking seriously about a lot of the problems games have as a medium.

@huntad: Yeah he's a pretty smart dude. Makes me excited to see how The Witness turns out.

@Dtat: I'll keep an eye out for it. I still haven't played Braid, so I gotta do that too.

@SeriouslyNow said:

@gladspooky said:

@TheHT said:

@SeriouslyNow said:

@gladspooky said:

@SeriouslyNow said:

@gladspooky said:

"It's made by bad people" does not contain an absolute. Not everyone who makes FarmVille is bad.

Just some of them.

Actually, no. Jeff is a person of some authority in this industry and as such his statement needs to be qualified otherwise it may be taken as is.

And as is, it contains no absolutes. There's literally no other way to read it unless you add words.

So if Barack Obama said that Republicans are bad people, that would be OK?

Nailed it.

Not really. It's not the same sentence and doesn't carry the same intent. Look at the subjects of each sentence.

Oh sorry, Barack Obama : "Republican candidates are made up of people." or "The Republican demographic is made up of bad people." or "People like gladspooky are bad people." It's all the same.

I'm sorry, but ff you can't tell the difference between "Republicans are bad people" and "The Republican demographic is made up of bad people" then you need to take English again.