Among Time magazine’s 50 Worst Inventions there are many that probably deserve to be there: Hair in a can, the parachute jacket, and popup advertising among them. But two that stuck out to me as being misplaced on the list though were Foursquare and Farmville.
Both are regular targets of ridicule as time-sinks, examples of wide spread vanity, and general creepiness; and while they may be all those things – worst inventions they are not. In fact, I think there is a lot we can learn from the popularity of each. In either case, rather than mocking these games and their fans we might be better served instead by looking at what they’re telling us about societies own short comings and how we as designers, developers and strategists can not only respond to them, but try to alleviate them.
Think about this from Jane McGonigal’s recent TED presentation
“We know that we are optimized, as human beings, to do hard meaningful work. And gamers are willing to work hard all the time, if they’re given the right work.”
Then consider Time’s take on Farmville – “more a series of mindless chores” than a game. To me, the real criticism lays at a society and industrial system so devoid of meaning or fulfillment that people get more out of tending a make believe farm.
Similarly, in describing Foursquare as “Just another tool tapping into a generation of narcissism” and creating “another layer onto a generation living virtually” I have to wonder if the author has ever actually played the game. In fact, Foursquare is an outstanding example of how a game can actually move people out into the physical world. After all, you can’t really play the game without going out into the world, and the more places you visit, the higher your score. If anything, it’s the pressure coming from brands and agencies trying to find an angle and those who ask “but how does it make money?” that have pushed Foursquare away from the core that made it popular in the first place. Instead of focusing on how to make the game play better, the Foursquare team has ended up focusing on how further enable coupons and business oriented reporting tools.
While it’s easy to poke fun at either of these or write them off as nothing more than mindless wastes of time, doing so misses the message in each. While businesses decry the loss of passion and dedication of their workforce, and brands fret about a lack of relevance, the solutions are staring us in the face.
What if though, instead of that next micro-site; you, your agency, and you client actually tapped into this need for meaningful work and provided the structure and toolset for people to do it? What if a brand project was able to motivate people in the way Farmville or Foursquare does, but for something more than digital farms?
Here is a small example of how Fight is trying this:
A while ago, one of Fight’s clients, Portland General Electric came to us with a challenge – how could they use the web to get people more information about energy efficiency? While we could have set them up with a Twitter account to send out efficiency tips, or a micro-site about wind farms we decided to go a different direction. We instead started a project called Operation Switch. The purpose of Switch is to give people simple missions – installing CFL light bulbs, or washing your laundry in cold water – that while individually small, have a huge benefit when done collectively. After the first mission, Switch participants managed to make changes that will result in 14,445 fewer pounds of CO2 in the atmosphere.
We’re still in the early stages of the game, and it’s likely that we’ll continue to tune things along the way, so far peoples response to being given work that means something and then shown the results of their work, is proving that the desire to act is there it’s just up to us to help make it happen.
I dunno, I’ll buy the foursquare argument but i can’t give a pass to farmville. (Full disclosure, I’m a typical console gamer and fit into the ‘key demographic’ of said games) There’s absolutely nothing new that the game contributed to GAMING (it is after all a game). The same game has been recreated by devs since the Sim and Civilization series took off. I remember when I played farmville back when it was called SimFarm. The ONLY thing that differentiates Farmville from the huge number of similar games is that its on Facebook. No FB, no Farmville.
I can draw pretty similar conclusions about ad banners that want you to pop all the balloons or punch brittany spears in the face. Just because they’re there and people click on them doesn’t mean they are adding anything to society. I can put huge quantities of mercury in the city water supply and make some interesting observations, but it by no means makes it a good idea.
Farmville is also largely responsible for doing something that ‘real’ or ‘stereotypical’ gamers absolutely loathe: making marketing be the focus of why the game exists in the first place. Why is Zynga worth so much money? It’s not because of their games (which each one is less original than the next) but the fact that each player is instantly put deeper into the FB marketing machine (I won’t bother going into why I also detest this). I like console games because they are there to do one thing: make money. They make no secret of this. This is what I call transparency. Playing console games is like going to a strip club; I know what I’m paying for and I know the girl only wants my money. I get what I want, she gets what she wants, no one has a hidden agenda. With Zynga, it’s like some horrible con artist got me to fall in love with and marry her and then records and distributes my actions and info to people I don’t know.
I know what you were trying to say when you tied it into creating interesting branding (it was a good point), I just don’t agree with the analogy. Although I suppose any list that puts Agent Orange and Farmville on the same level should be taken at face value.
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So – I think this is more about me being a not great writer than us disagreeing on anything.
My point here isn’t that I think Farmville itself has advanced gaming, but rather that it’s showed us a couple things about society, things console gaming also show us, that are worth noting. I mention Jane McGonigal in the article and she has some really fascinating ideas about what gaming and gamers tell us about our society. You should check out her site http://www.avantgame.com/.
At any rate, I agree with a lot of what you’re saying about Farmville and the relationship between marketing, brands, and games. My point is that looking at the devotion people pour into Farmville or Foursquare, I think it’s easy to see that people are yearning for meaningful work, some excitement, a sense of teamwork, and the ability to accomplish something. This is what gaming does for people, it provides the things that society should, and can, but often doesn’t. What I would like to see is brands and agencies take these insights and do something good with them.
This doesn’t have to mean branded games, or in game advertising. The later doesn’t really address the core problem, and I think game design is too complex for most agencies to do the former. But what they can do is provide systems and tools for responding to these needs.
Indeed, sounds like we’re on the same page. I just get fired up when I see people trying to pass off FB games (like so many other little flash games) as something new or innovative when they get people playing them that haven’t been exposed to games before. I think it’s probably a topic that’s not directly in line with what you were talking about.
But I see what you’re saying about how it can translate into interesting projects. Keep up the interesting posts!