MMOFan.com takes a look at Zynga's FaceBook time management game, Cafe World.
An American woman has been sentenced to 10 years in prison, after her 13-month old son drowned in a bathtub while she played Café World.
Seriously who the f*** leaves a 13 month old baby unattended seems that newer generations get dumber and dumber as time passes.R.I.P baby.
Honestly looking at this here....I don't see how putting her in prison would actually help. Is she dangerous to people on the street? Does she steal?
But then again I don't know how else she could be punished for her stupid mistake, her baby is dead because of it.
Based on what was coming out of GDC it sounds like more and more developers are going away from developing console games to creating games that belong on Facebook or an App store. They cost less, and are mostly likely going to have a higher profit margin. It seems for the smaller developer trying to compete with Activision and Call of Duty may be a thing of the past. Goozernation wants to know, in the future, could console games be in trouble?
I went to an amazing panel at GDC that was full of great game designers who said, basically - look, there are crap games on EVERY generation of hardware, and social games are just another platform. There are crap games, and there are great games, and they allow great game developers to make a living at doing what we want them to do - make great games. I don't think social games mean the doom of consoles, any more than the Wii meant the doom of PC gaming. There's plenty of room and space for great games whatever the platform.
It's stated in the article that the very definition of gamer has changed because more and more people have found this casual games that they can play for mere minutes at a time. If the "gamer" base is expanding because of these casual games it doesn't necessarily mean that consoles are in trouble:
For the sake of argument there is only one console manufacturer in this example.
If we have a gamer base made up of 20 people and they all consider themselves "hardcore" gamers, the console manufacturer depends on them to buy their console and games and can reach 100% of their audience.
If casual games turn 80 more people into "gamers" then the gamer base has grown to 100 though the console manufacturer can't guarantee that all 100 will buy their console and games, though they do know that 20% of the gamer audience will buy the console.
In this example the expansion of the gamer base suddenly made the numbers look bad for the console manufacturer who went from hitting 100% of the market (20/20) to a mere 20% (20/100) but the amount of consumers they're providing for hasn't changed.
My point is that the social games will not destroy console gaming because, though they're all "gamers", they're catering to different demographics.
Social games are filling a niche; they're providing entertainment for people who find entertainment in that sort of thing. Video games didn't kill board games; WoW didn't kill D&D, etc.
Chris Forbis of Platform Nation asks about social network games in his weekly feature, Stir. Are social network gamers in the closet?
