Zynga only wants money. But so does Nintendo. And Blizzard. And Valve.

Photo by aresauburn

“Blizzard and Nintendo don’t care about money; they only care about making fun games.  Zynga just wants to turn a profit by making terrible games.”

Not exactly.

Video games, like painting, music, film, and theater, are a form of art.  At the very least, they are a creative media that can be used to express any number of themes, ideas, fictional stories or worlds and convey experiences.  For this reason, many players and developers have deep emotional attachments to the games that they play, games that touched their hearts and took them places they had never been before.

Companies that make these kinds of games are held in the highest esteem by players and fans.  Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda games have always been known for their charm, easy-to-understand controls and challenges, and their flair for presentation and playability.  Valve’s Half-Life and Portal games have many die hard fans who greatly respect the artistic integrity of the plot, storyline, and characters surrounding Gordon Freeman’s adventures.  And Blizzard’s Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo franchises have given the company a seemingly unshakable reputation for high quality, polished experiences that are near-perfect.  Each of these companies make the highest quality games in their own way, and saying that a game is “A Blizzard Game”, “A Valve Game”, or “A Nintendo Game” carries with it a mark of passion and dedication associated with those development teams.

However, other companies make games that are not as popular with the traditional gaming crowd.  Currently the popular scapegoat is social networking companies, such as Zynga or Playdom.  Games like Farmville or Sorority Life are wildly profitable, but they are often criticized for sacrificing fun and player entertainment in exchange for turning a buck.  Clicking on crops day in and day out just doesn’t seem to have the same “labor of love” feel that went into a Zelda game.  Rather, these games appear to some to be evil slot machines designed to maximize monetization.

This complaint is a serious misconception of the intentions of game companies.  Those who voice this complaint believe that commercial games must be fun, that they must be of the highest quality, and that their number one, ultimate goal is to make a critically acclaimed product.

This is false.

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Polish: Turning Onetime Players Into Diehard Fans

How can a game feel like it was made by the developers “out of love”?  How can a game seem like the developers implemented everything that they thought would be fun and interesting, lacking nothing?  How can a game feel like it went 110% to provide a top-notch experience?

There are many components to making a game.  There are the Base Mechanics, the rules of how the game works.  There are the Punishment and Reward Systems and Long Term Incentive, which fuel why the player plays and for how long.  And there is the Aesthetic Layout, the artwork, sounds, and polish layered on top of the rest of the game that help to fill out its Core Experience.

We’ve discussed before how the gameplay, what they player is actually doing, is more often than not the most important aspect of a game’s design.  But left alone, the Base Mechanics of a game are just mathematical constructs.  Without aesthetics, the game feels stale to most non-engineers.  These rules and gameplay blocks must be built.  However, once that has been taken care of, how can a developer get their game to be perceived as the highest quality?  What are the indicators of a good versus a great game?

This final, key 10% of the game is what is referred to in the industry as “polish”.  It is the time in development when the game could in fact be considered “done”, but just a few more features, tweaks, and sparkles will help it to shine through to players and stand out from the crowd and breathe life into it.  Well polished games are described with words such as “charming”, “engrossing”, “fascinating”.  Well polished games are loved by their players. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »