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By Locutus at 10/03/2010 - 17:48
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Edge Online reports that Brian Reynolds participated in a Game Developers Conference (GDC) panel discussion today to talk about his new job as Chief Designer at Zynga where he works on Facebook games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars. Focus of the panel was what makes this new genre of gaming so appealing to veteran designers like Reynolds. Brian on the subject:
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We’re suddenly reaching people who never thought of themselves as gamers. They still don’t! They think of Farmville as an activity they do on the Internet with their friends. … One of the things that make a social game good is that my aunt has to like it. You’re not talking to people in the narrower traditional gamer model anymore, and if you only get [that audience], you’re going to miss the entire boat on what makes a social game hit critical mass, which is that everybody is playing it.
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Brian and the other panelists discussed that the experimental nature of the genre appeals to them, and the huge amount of metrics that designers can collect on how players play the games, thanks to which: "Finally game design has become a game for game designers". The panelists discussed their desire to add more complexity to the games to make them more like the games they were used to designing in the past, but they realise that the genre owes all its success to its simplicity. In the future of this type of gaming they don't see more complexity, but rather more social interactions.
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Odd that he's going for the casual gamer demographic here. I'd have thought that's more of the CivRev target.