Social Media and Games

Echo Bazaar had its interesting points. I felt compelled to find out what was going on in the story. I thought the fact that they had cards that you could play for different situations was cool. The whole ”chance of success” thing didn’t really stop me from attempting tasks, which really threw off my progress when I ended up failing. I thought it got dull after a bit because there wasn’t much you could do that offered a good chance of success (maybe I did something wrong). I ended up doing the same tasks over and over again to gain skill points. It seemed like a graphical text game to me

I like how the story line appears to branch out in random ways so it looks like each experience should be unique

I played Echo Bazaar and to tell you the truth i thought it was kind of boring, if you have played one browser game you have played them all in my opinion. The Facebook API is a little better i think but both sites are very similar in terms of social games. Everyone is asked to join their friends in playing but it still feels like a bother to others when you are constantly sending them requests to join you in your game.

I always had some sort of interest for browser games that allow the user a certain amount of actions per per real life day, or hour, or what-have-you. They always seem to be missing that element that keeps me in them. This game has a great writer for these random story events, but so far the game hasn’t sucked me in. I guess cuz I’m still in prison. And why does this game, like most other web browser games, want me to tweet, or facebook status my experiences? No one cares what other people are doing in these games. Do they? I don’t.

I didn’t play this game very far but when I read the descriptions of the story section it was pretty interesting. The main problem i found was that, at least in the beginning, you didn’t need to read the story descriptions to complete them. If you don’t read the story then the game just become mindless clicking of the mouse.

I also agree with everyone else that said they don’t want to pay to buy fate. I have never payed any money to play a social game and I don’t intend to any time soon.

I played this game for a little bit and then decided i didnt really get into. I used to play MUDDs when i was growing up on my black and white mac but this game was a little too much for me. The main problem is when i tried to play was that i needed people in my network playing to be able to do anything interesting and that it wanted me to spend money. both are big nonos for me to do something for school. It kinda felt like a really dumbed down version of DnD. Or put in another context. A single serving of DnD

I like the layout, there is something interesting going on here…oh crap now I need to find pre-existing friends from some other context.
This continues to be my problem with a lot of these games, they don’t have a built in method of building a social network within this context. Instead I’m required to go out and recruit people.
This one area where MMOs win out for me. I want to be able to compartmentalize my life. I am, apparently not designed for living in social networks or small towns. In an MMO I can be ”Some guy in our guild/party/world” without revealing what TV shows I like or my favorite restaurant.
On Facebook while playing Nightclub city I’m more than happy to come visit your club, check out your decor, I’ll send you a drink. But I don’t care what TV you like, or where you went to school. At least that is better than me having to get random people I know to come water my crops.
Echo Bazaar is already forcing me to make the same choices. To experience large sections of the game I have to either a) have people in my social network already playing, or b) get people to come waste time on (enjoy?) something I am playing.

I have played a little bit of the Echo Bazaar game and it is alright. I mean it is one of those old text-based games revamped. The fact that you are limited to how you can play makes the game boring as well as the limits as to what you can do. I kept getting asked to buy more fate, and I am not about to spend money on this game. In that sense, I would say that it is invasive because they are just trying to get your money. I don’t believe I will continue playing, just not fun for me.

There was only so much you could do in Echo Bazaar. Since the game was text based, there were a lot of unanswered questions to be answered at this time. I think that the game did a good job of showing different topics to us. It has an important agenda to the audience which is to get them to follow more people on twitter. It’s amazing to see twitter doing big things with technology.