101–110 of 121 posts
This is great news for China. While the Silicon Valley gets rotten from inside, making this useless stuff, they will be buying bankrupt US chip companies and making their own microprocessors.
I think Google's worry about Facebook (partly justified, partly not) is starting to cause them to make pointless (and time wasting) decisions. If I had 5mins with Sergei and Larry, I would say (after taking a long sip from the free organic drink I just got from the snack bar we're standing next to) "Look, the real enemy is not FB but Apple (and sometimes your own engineering hubris, e.g. Buzz), so focus all your troo…
Farmville is evil; Zynga makes Farmville; Google invested in Zynga. Q.E.D. ;-)
Google bought DoubleClick. They were tainted from then on, as far as I'm concerned. DoubleClick had a known shady history, and executives from DC moved into positions of influence within Google.
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The games are designed to be addictive, not fun in the long term. You could argue the same about WoW but at least in that case there is a lot to do over a long period before you truly get into the addictive repetition phase. Something like farmville is pretty much that from the start.
The games are designed to be addictive, not fun in the long term. Sorry, but I think you're pulling that out of your ass. All (good) games are addictive to some degree, precisely because they're fun, and I bet if you surveyed all the people who play Farmville, virtually all of them would say they enjoy it and are having fun. Don't confuse "I don't enjoy it" with "No one enjoys it."
http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-gam... + http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3085/behavioral_game_d...
The techniques that I'll discuss in this article generally fall under the heading of behavioral psychology. Best known for the work done on animals in the field, behavioral psychology focuses on experiments and observable actions. One hallmark of behavioral research is that most of the major experimental discoveries are species-independent and can be found in anything from birds to fish to humans. What behavioral psychologists look for (and what will be our focus here) are general "rules" for learning and for how minds respond to their environment.
Just throwing this out there: I consider it unethical to invest in Zynga. Edit: They are essentially using psychology, social and otherwise, to ultimately trick people out of their money. A classic on the topic: http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-gaming...
I think Google's worry about Facebook (partly justified, partly not) is starting to cause them to make pointless (and time wasting) decisions. If I had 5mins with Sergei and Larry, I would say (after taking a long sip from the free organic drink I just got from the snack bar we're standing next to) "Look, the real enemy is not FB but Apple (and sometimes your own engineering hubris, e.g. Buzz), so focus all your troo…
And I like to think they'd respond, "Look Jun8, in 12 years we've built a company worth upwards of 150 billion dollars, and you've amassed roughly 844 karma points."
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No, actually, it is just a stupid waste of everyone's time.
Other than you not liking it, how is it fundamentally different from any other game?
I think Google's worry about Facebook (partly justified, partly not) is starting to cause them to make pointless (and time wasting) decisions. If I had 5mins with Sergei and Larry, I would say (after taking a long sip from the free organic drink I just got from the snack bar we're standing next to) "Look, the real enemy is not FB but Apple (and sometimes your own engineering hubris, e.g. Buzz), so focus all your troo…
And I like to think they'd respond, "Look Jun8, in 12 years we've built a company worth upwards of 150 billion dollars, and you've amassed roughly 844 karma points."
Seriously, I'd like to think that your comment was a joke. Because if a company cannot learn from foot soldiers in the domain and gets cocky, stagnation and eventually death is close at hand. I hope Google is not at that point (like Microsoft)
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>Look, the real enemy is not FB but Apple The first thing I thought of when I read this news was precisely that it was targeted at matching Apple. All of a sudden Apple has come out of nowhere as a gaming force, threatening even Nintendo's portable gaming systems. Google investing in gaming looks like a move to reinforce their offerings in this department.
And the funny thing is, Apple doesn't give a shit about gaming.
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No, actually, it is just a stupid waste of everyone's time.
Other than you not liking it, how is it fundamentally different from any other game?
1) no fine motor control involved
2) no complex puzzle solving
3) no storytelling
Those are just a few off the top of my head. I don't really play video games but it is pretty obvious that FarmVille is much different than games you'd play on your television.
And of course motivations differ, too. FarmVille makes more money by consuming your time and taking advantage of your impulses and desire for short-term rewards than most traditional games do.
Zynga isn't really a game company. They don't care about video games as an art form or even as an entertainment medium, they just care about behavior games and milking people out of money with as little effort as possible. It is like a casino that never pays out.