About a year ago I wrote an article about whether you are a gamer that prefers to game alone, or whether you prefer to play together with friends. (article here). Playing with friends became very easy when gaming consoles and handhelds started to use wifi to connect you to the other side of the world. Still, not all games use this feature, even newer games like Rune Factory 4 (3DS) and Atelier Rorona (Vita) don’t let you interact with others.
App games however have made it a priority to game together with friends, especially freemium games. Having friends in the game enables you to help each other out, buying or selling produce, or sending extra lives. Some gaming companies use their own network to enable you to do so, or use the GameCenter in iOS, but most games let you link to your Facebook account (or Twitter). And that’s where it gets annoying!
For instance, let’s look at Tribez & Castlez. A friend of mine diligently kept her little people at work, providing project after project for them so they didn’t get a chance to be lazy. Exchanging items back and forth with friends found on the GameInsight network. Only, Tribez & Castlez updated, and forced it’s players to play with friends through Facebook. Now my friend has stood staunchly in refusing to sign up for Facebook. But after a while it got very lonely, playing all by herself, and after two years of playing every day, she quit.
You could argue that there’s nothing wrong with connecting to Facebook, I guess some people even use their account solely to play games. But how often do you get an invite in Facebook to play some or other app game with a friend? Or send an item their way? And there are those app games that want you to post every level reached in Facebook, as you have no doubt seen that some of your friends do. App games can be mightily aggressive that way, even promising you gems, jewels or other in game cash for posting to your timeline.
I don’t know anything about how it works with games on an android device, but iOS has a perfect alternative in the GameCenter. Nice and anonymous, you can go as far as to post your picture to it, but other than that, fellow gamers only see what games you play. So why do lots of games insist on connecting to Facebook or Twitter, and just end up annoying its users?
I personally prefer playing alone, so none of the possible perks to connecting apps appeals to me. It is okay if it’s optional, like most of the spotpass features with 3DS games, but if it’s forced then it’s a no-no. Like your friend I refuse to get a facebook account and while I do have a twitter account that is now practically abandoned, I still refuse to fill it with garbage like that.
It’s definitely something I think everyone finds annoying, the facebook game spam, but I guess the free advertising companies get from that must still be worth it for them to keep doing it. It’s even worse for some sites that now almost force you to login and connect with facebook/twitter/google. Hell no, I like to keep my stuff neatly separated thank you very much.
You definitely sound like my friend! She is adamant too, that she doesn’t want to have anything to do with Facebook. So I understand, she has explained the reasons and the need for privacy to me many times.
I don’t mind having a Facebook account, but I don’t want to be forced to connect everything to it!
There’s nothing more annoying than getting spammed on Facebook by a game that your friend is playing. It’s just a cheap way of advertising the game to more people.
True on all accounts!
As others have said, the insidious part is that the company is relying on it’s customer base to do all of it’s advertising and promoting. I guess that’s why I tend to stay away from those types of experiences. I don’t work for your company, you don’t pay me to help your product be successful, do your own advertising! And with my limited knowledge of such games, it doesn’t seem like the community side of them is robust enough to justify it. It just doesn’t seem like you’re really playing with other people, only nagging them to play the same thing you are.
I like that, you’re not playing with other people, but you’re more asking them for things to enable you to play!
Maybe that’s why all of these games are so fleeting, their fame can be gone in a matter of months!