I've talked about powerful players before, and about status (or score) as a game mechanic. Playing multiplayer browser-games recently got me thinking about the mechanic from a different light.
The Facebook games I played are built around having a persistent play-space (diorama) that you can customize, and then asking other players to stop by your space to do a little something that gives you (and them) some in-game benefit. This mechanic gives you an opportunity to see what other players have done with their space, and gives you a chance to show off what you've accomplished.
A Note on Dioramas
By 'diorama' I mean your farm in FarmVille, home island in TreasureIsle or Island Life, personal kingdom in Fantasy Kingdoms, and the like. Treasure Isle is probably the best example, because there is no gameplay there, whereas in most of the other games you need to build not just for aesthetics but game mechanics, too.
Artistic Ability
Building a nice-looking space is difficult. It requires some artistic talent, plus persistence to acquire the in-game tokens to build it the way you'd like. But the better and more complex the art assets, the easier it is to build a themed level. I remember some of the amazing hotels that people built with Roller Coaster Tycoon - which seems weird, but that game had very small elements; little boards of various colors. They were extremely flexible, which meant people could express a lot of creativity in building complex and interesting structures. Facebook games, on the other hand, deal with very large art assets with little flexibility. Your choice is basically what to put in each tile - which is a small bit of real estate. In RCT, one could stack tile on top of tile, creating layers and multi-storied buildings. Facebook games lack that.
Which means, actually, that it's easy to make a good-looking diorama in a facebook game - assuming you have access to the parts you want. Say, within a given game, there are several art themes, like architectural styles for buildings. Art deco, modern, classic, brownstone, castle, wooden - whatever. Building a themed level just means buying a bunch of items in the same style and then arranging them. This is a much lower artistic threshold than RCT; something almost everyone could do. Throw in a little bit of extra flexibility, and even average joe has a chance to build a cool-looking diorama.
But... that doesn't happen. The parts are grossly expensive. The only way to build a nice themed diorama is to play for a year, or drop $100 or more. Bleh?
Lego vs Duplo
One way to resolve this is to reserve the small, creative pieces for paying customers, and give the big, bulky, pretty-art but low-personal-creativity elements away for free. Give everyone Duplo blocks, and make them pay for the Lego. If they want to get fancy, they can pay for it. This can work because:
Inspiration
Others players are inspiration. When you go visit their play-space, if they've done something cool, you want to do it yourself. Some people thrive on an empty canvas, but I've found more people are inspired by seeing something cool and wanting to make something like it. It's the rare individual that wants to be given not just a blank canvas but a huge sack of tools to decide which tools to use. Give them acrylics and a bunch of landscape scenes and they might be inspired; charcoal and portraits, and they'll run off looking for a model. Show them a cool crafted item in Warcraft, and they'll want to be a crafter. Show them Ulduar loot and they'll want to go raiding. Show them a bunch of Lego spaceships, and they'll want to buy some pieces and build their own.
It's also motivation for them to work on their own dioramas / loot / whatever. Not only is it inspiring to see something awesome created by a friend (or even a stranger), but it can be motivation for them to put pen to paper themselves - or to play the game more.
Profit
And that's where we come in. We game developers give them the tools.
The model I've seen so far in Facebook games is to charge for the "cool" Duplo blocks, but to only provide (say) red and blue blocks, and only in a few weird sizes. I don't have the flexibility to be really expressive, but I also don't have access to enough blocks to build a single theme. If I could put together a skeleton of a cool diorama, I might be tempted to pay for the really cool bits that will make it distinctive. If the option is "pay or don't be cool," then ... well, do I even want to keep playing this game? What's the point of playing a slot machine if it doesn't give any prizes?
Fancy ads can draw players into your game, but so can user-created content. If your game already has some amount of user-created content, providing the tools to make it easier for that content to be inspirational improves user fun and thereby developer profit.
Ranting Conclusion
I wish I could play with my diorama. I want to build a piratey hideout in Treasure Isle, but (1) I've got to play for another six months maybe, (2) spend $100 buying the parts, and (3) I don't really have access to the parts I want anyway. Fuck that. Plus the game is a slot machine.
I really want that game to (A) have some measure of strategy to the play so that playing it isn't a grind, (B) give me the option of pursuing the parts I want, eg digging in Pirate islands for Pirate goods, (C) and gave me basic stuff for free, so that I'm not stuck with an empty island for months.
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