As I mentioned to fellow classmate katdiogo in a comment on a recent post about Farmville on Facebook, there are very few games available on Facebook that appeal to me. Though I clearly enjoy playing videogames, as someone with regular access to other gaming platforms, Facebook does not tend to draw me in.
However, the news of Civilization coming to everyone's favorite social-networking site, for me, could be a (no pun intended, honest) game-changer. When I grew up, the bread and butter of my videogame experience was half Doom, half Warcraft and Command and Conquer style RTS (real-time strategy) games -- until I was about 8 years-old and started playing online games.
Civilization is a game which defines the RTS genre for many people. Much like something in Farmville, the game is based on progression (rather than say, Pacman or Tetris -- you are generally building off of where you left from. The idea is to take a group of people (normally sorted by nationality) from their start as simple gatherer-hunters, up to their pinnacle as world-dominating superpowers.
I initially heard about this game via Twitter, when all the gaming sites I follow suddenly went crazy as they broadcasted the news. Then, I had gaming friends who similarly tweeted and retweeted the information. I know I just made the point about buzz driving games on social-networking sites, but this is a prime example of what I meant. Already, without having to do anything other than pump their story into the right channels, many people in the target audience (people who have enjoyed past Civ games and would be likely to try out the Facebook version) have this news on their radar.It remains to be seen if the game would have any more power to retain a player-base than the usual Facebook game-application fare, but given Civilization's (well-earned, in my opinion) good reputation amongst avid gamers and even an older audience (the first Civilization game was published in 1991), I have high hopes already.
I can say I will try this.
ReplyDeleteI've always wanted to play Civ games but have been too cheap to buy it/too lazy to acquire it.
One thing that probably helped Farmville keep going is it's relationships between players (I started because all my friends played and such). You could be neighbors with other players, help their farms for coins, gift items, etc. I'm wondering if Civ for Facebook will have anything similar.