Facebook Games - Mafia Wars, et al.

[Signe]

He announced it somewhere around here.

[Grimwell]

Well now, that's interesting. 

[schild]

Hi!

[Grimwell]

My title can be fixed BTW. I forgot to mention that.

[Signe]

What will your title be?  I think "Light and Airy" would suit you.

[Grimwell]

"Stays Crunchy in Milk"

[LK]

I'm glad Frontierville failed to load. I saw the opening graphic and thought "Oh jesus shit not a Farmville clone."

[Nonentity]

I'm glad Frontierville failed to load. I saw the opening graphic and thought "Oh jesus shit not a Farmville clone."

I'm kind of terrified, but schild has convinced me it is WoW meets Farmville. Won't load for me either, though.

[LK]

I got in. I would have preferred if my first 5 minutes of the game didn't involve a dozen offers to notify my friends of how awesome Frontiersville is.

I mean, shit, at least get past unzipping my pants before you want me to spread the word about your prostitution skills.

[Samwise]

The loading screen needs to have an option to mute the loud obnoxious music.  Especially if it's going to hang at about 70% progress.   

[LK]

For a company experienced with running Facebook games with multi-million users, they sure seem unable to keep their network running. It may have to do with Frontiersville having more than simplistic game mechanics.

You can mute the music once you're inside.

[Samwise]

You can mute the music once you're inside.

I figured.  Bad form to start blaring the music before showing me the option to turn it off, though.  IIRC Restaurant City did the same thing and it always pissed me off.

[Krakrok]

I played Frontierville the first day it was out. Got a couple levels and then I guess it crashed. Logged in now and that character is gone 

Scaling social games is hard 

[Grimwell]

You might notice that "Beta" part on the screen.

With Zynga, there is no such thing as a soft launch. You open the doors and it's not a few hundred or thousand people that trickle in to see what's next; but a few hundred thousand who pour in like a raging torrent and consume the game whole.

No matter how much testing any company does behind the scenes, there is a point where you need real users playing. That old notion of a beta and whatnot.

Frontier didn't get one of those.

I know, wah, wah.  

The game team has impressed me with what they have accomplished over the first live day. It's not perfect, but it is much more stable and I'm not seeing anything near as many reloads that cost me a few seconds of play results.

Also, come fertilize my crops. :D

--edit: my numbers aren't internal science. I work on FarmVille and don't have a specific idea of how many people hit it on day one. It wasn't a small number though.

[schild]

Frontierville, whether I work for Zynga or not, is the most impressive thing on facebook - period.

Assuming that team gets the stuff behind the signs done in a reasonable amount of time, I dare say it will be as full featured as any MMOG.

[Xanthippe]

Damn you.  Yet another Facebook game I'll start that has no end to it.

I think I've let all my islanders/villagers/people starve, my plants wither and any pets/animals I'm responsible for die.

There isn't any way to really start over in these things is there?

[Xanthippe]

How do I populate my wish list in Frontierville?

[Samwise]

With some difficulty.   

I think you can only do it from the spot where you see the hole for the thing you want.  So you can wishlist collection items from your collection screen, or construction items when you're staring at a construction screen with holes in it.  But as far as I can tell you can't, for example, add a hammer to your wishlist if you don't have an incomplete building sitting around.

Also, I need more Frontierville friends.

[Raph]

A while back I said that the hope for worldy MMOs was Facebook. Frontierville is just about there.

[LK]

Still can't reconcile the number of pop-ups the game throws at me, some of which are actually detrimental to the "game" by keeping the disappearance timer going while you're doing Facebook stuff. If the game had its way your entire wall posting of every Facebook page would be nothing but Frontierville updates.

Like Schild's.

[Samwise]

Yeah, the popups are complete ass.

[Signe]

I'll look although, like Xanthi, I've abandoned all my Facebook games and very nearly almost Facebook in general.  I think I've maybe said two things since I've threatened to hurt IainC if he didn't feel better.  I'm afraid to look to see what's happened in those games I played for fear of some sort of Facebook shock horror.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Re: game status updates - you know you can set filters to allow people to only see certain status updates, right?  I finally went in and created friends lists for each of my games after the MIL made a crack to the husband wondering if the employers I'm applying to can see how much Farmville I'm playing.  Which compared to some of my other friends, isn't that much, tbh.  So I set up the friends list filters and cut her out of any updates because I was feeling snarky.  Anyways, I think it does help, unless you're one of my friends who plays multiple games as I do.

And I could use more FrontierVille and Farmville neighbors as well.  I promise to toss out an occasional status update as a teaser once in a while. ;)

Oh, the whole friends lists thing makes me wonder why FB doesn't allow you to set up these custom lists and have them be available on the first level when you're posting an update.  Instead, you have to choose customize, then specific people, then type the name of the list you want.  Would it really be that hard to just let you create a list and then have it be available when you choose your privacy options?

[Grimwell]

Apparently yes. :)

I just taught a coworker that whole flow and it has too many steps for sure. Must be a lot of code or something. 

[RhyssaFireheart]

I wouldn't be surprised is that was the reason it's not been changed yet in FB - too much code to fix or something.  I need to code my friends lists so I don't have to type out so much, like starting them with z, y, x or something.

Of course, don't forget you and I were talking about how much of a pain it is to add random people as neighbors for the game (especially when you don't have a huge amount of folks on FB) yet still keep your information private.  It would be nice if you could just have games friends who can do the social thing with you but they have no access to your full profile unless you want them to. 

Oh well, friends list filters it is.

[Xanthippe]

Re: game status updates - you know you can set filters to allow people to only see certain status updates, right?  I finally went in and created friends lists for each of my games after the MIL made a crack to the husband wondering if the employers I'm applying to can see how much Farmville I'm playing.  Which compared to some of my other friends, isn't that much, tbh.  So I set up the friends list filters and cut her out of any updates because I was feeling snarky.  Anyways, I think it does help, unless you're one of my friends who plays multiple games as I do.

And I could use more FrontierVille and Farmville neighbors as well.  I promise to toss out an occasional status update as a teaser once in a while. ;)

Oh, the whole friends lists thing makes me wonder why FB doesn't allow you to set up these custom lists and have them be available on the first level when you're posting an update.  Instead, you have to choose customize, then specific people, then type the name of the list you want.  Would it really be that hard to just let you create a list and then have it be available when you choose your privacy options?

Also, one can hide status updates from any game they want.  I've got a bunch of them hidden.

[Xanthippe]

With some difficulty.   

I think you can only do it from the spot where you see the hole for the thing you want.  So you can wishlist collection items from your collection screen, or construction items when you're staring at a construction screen with holes in it.  But as far as I can tell you can't, for example, add a hammer to your wishlist if you don't have an incomplete building sitting around.

Also, I need more Frontierville friends.

All I get for the construction thing is to pester my friends by publishing it on my facebook page.  To finish my cabin, I need one of everything: hammer, drill, paint, etc. but I cannot seem to add it to my wishlist.  I see it on other people's wishlists.

[Xanthippe]

Odd - I can add it only if I already have one. 

An awful lot of clicking in this - those dealies disappear too fast when a popup to publish comes up.

[Grimwell]

Xan - add me on FB. /grimwell or "Craig Dalrymple"

Rhyssa - Do you have your friends in a bunch of groups? I'm running four now - Family, Friends, FarmVille, and FrontierVille

Everyone else sees almost nothing :D

[caladein]

An awful lot of clicking in this - those dealies disappear too fast when a popup to publish comes up.

Same here.

Also, is there any way to save what custom group you send out posts to?  FrontierVille (and The Agency) both seem to default to "Everyone" any time it pops up a post to share.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Grim - well, duh!  Yeah, I have several groups - Farmville, Treasure Isle, CafeWorld, and now FrontierVille.  Everything else is family and friends, so I can get social game friends and not have to worry about them seeing my other status updates.  It still kind of feels like whoring for neighbors though. :(

Caladein - I don't think there is.  That's what I was talking about in my last post - the default publish setting is always Friends and then you have to jump through (minor) hoops to get to a customized list to share with.  If nothing else, let us set the publish level at the game options maybe.  That would make things a bit easier perhaps.

[LK]

You can game the bonus timer by keeping the market window up while waiting for another thing to click.

[schild]

Frontierville is getting its own thread, not breaking off this one.

[Rendakor]

You guys who recommended Desktop Defender just killed my day off.

[Musashi]

:P