Exclusive: The Future Of Social Games Through The Eyes Of Frogdice
 

I was interviewed earlier this week about social and online gaming in general and this is the article that was written from that interview:



I am sure there are folks here who think I was dead wrong about some or all the things I talked about.

Thoughts/opinions?

Let it rip! :)

Re: Exclusive: The Future Of Social Games Through The Eyes Of Frogdice
 

Good Article!

While not as robust or detailed as I would have liked, I think your thoughts were on target though guessing the interest of players in the future is sometimes a very difficult task.

Re: Exclusive: The Future Of Social Games Through The Eyes Of Frogdice
 

There's not much in the article to disagree with. Browser-based games are definitely where it's at, and where it's going to be for a long while. Right now, there's a little bit of a schism/differentiation between traditional "hardcore" gamers who play their console games or more typical old-school type PC games, people who play MMOs (and those of us who still play their MUD predecessors), and casual gamers who will sit and play Bejewelled for 15 straight hours but call the rest of us gamer nerds.

Technology's come a long, long, long way, and today, you can easily play the equivalent of a fairly complex, hardcore, old-school type game using your browser, on a tablet. That means that the types of games us hardcore gamers played back in the day now qualify as casual games your wife's sewing circle might play through Facebook. I'm not quite sold on the idea that if my wife found Threshold or a similar, fairly robust, roleplay-required mud on Facebook, she'd get into it and learn all of the ins and outs, just because it's platform-independent, but a simple game or series of mini-games, like Coin n Carry? You bet.

Re: Exclusive: The Future Of Social Games Through The Eyes Of Frogdice
 

That's a large reason why we went ahead and made . We wanted to have at least one super casual friendly game in our library (even though the game does have a lot of layers and can be played pretty seriously if you want).

But even as casual friendly as it is, getting people to play off Facebook is a challenge. I hope that things will change in that area as people get more and more tired of Zynga's shenanigans, or having all their friends/family/boss know exactly what they are doing all the time. I also hope they will eventually want a bit more from their game than what Farmville and Bejeweled Blitz deliver, and as a result be more receptive to things like Coin 'n Carry or even MUDs.

Re: Exclusive: The Future Of Social Games Through The Eyes Of Frogdice
 

That's your new mission in life. You convince my wife that muds are cool, get her to find them herself somewhere she normally finds lame games, get her hooked, and get her to come tell me about this cool stuff she discovered on the internet. I'll do the rest by letting her think it's her idea that I start playing more muds.

Re: Exclusive: The Future Of Social Games Through The Eyes Of Frogdice
 

1) Sit your wife down in front of .

2) Once she falls in love with the simple but deep gameplay, tell her the game world of that game is based on a mud.

3) Then offer to play that mud with her ().

Mission accomplished? :)