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Braid Creator on 'Evil' Social Games

Posted by Soulskill on from the i-don't-care-about-your-virtual-farm dept.

PCGamer recently spoke with Jonathan Blow, creator of the popular indie platformer Braid, about his views on the rise of social games over last few years. He thinks many games in that category aren't actually very social, and when asked if he thought such games are evil, he replied, "Yes. Absolutely." Quoting: "[With certain social games] it’s about the game exploiting your friends list that you already made, so it’s not really about meeting people. And it’s not really about doing things with them because you’re never playing at the same time. It’s about using your friends as resources to progress in the game, which is the opposite of actual sociality or friendship. Maybe not exactly, but it’s not the same thing, right? They’re really just called social games because they run on social networks."

2 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Sort of... by Aladrin · · Score: 5, Informative

    He's right to a point.

    But I have actually met people on Facebook games like Castle Age (Mafia Wars clone) and got to know them a bit. We cooperated on some things in the game without ever being on at the same time.

    My mother met a lot of people playing Farmville. (Or one of those farm games.) She would meet them in the chatroom and 'work' on their farm and stuff, and get to know them while she did it.

    So yeah, they can be played anti-socially, but they don't have to be.

    --
    "If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
  2. Re:Couldn't agree more by thasmudyan · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yesterday I removed a friend because I got a notification that he answered a question about me on some Facebook application. I didn't join this app, and a friend who is willing to give details about me out to a third party so casually isn't someone I am willing to share a link with on this type of system.

    Sadly, those apps are lying. Chances are, nobody answered anything about you. It's a ploy. I can almost guarantee you that the app only had access to that person's friend list and used the friend list to contact you. It's probably not your friend's fault at all. Most of the time, when you're trying out a new FB game, it wants access to your friends list before you can even find out whether the game is legit. Even if you remove the app again immediately, it still had enough time to siphon off your data.