Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
by Zynga in
Frontierville
is more prominent, as players are encouraged to
play other Zynga games to gain an advantage in
Frontierville
. Zynga's wide
variety of games and large Facebook player base allow them to leverage
each existing game to try and gain players for their latest of ering or tempt
players into trying an older game.
The primary dif erence in the early part of the two games is the number
of missions or objectives available to players.
City of Wonder
of ers sev-
eral missions early in the game to drive player choice, encouraging them to
do certain things in the game and teaching them how to play beyond the
introductory tutorials. However, after the fi rst day or two of play, players
will have completed all the missions available in
City of Wonder
and are
left on their own to employ the lessons learned to advance their soon to be
wondrous city.
Frontierville
, on the other hand, uses a substantial number
of objectives to guide play throughout the game. In addition to teaching
players the rules of the game and how to play, players are paced by the
new missions that give them a focus and encourage them to keep playing
the game. New objectives are added as previous ones are completed, with
many requiring multiple steps to complete. Certain holiday and timed mis-
sions are introduced to keep pace with the various seasons, much like those
found in large, massively multiplayer online games. Given a basic overview
of the games, it is appropriate to turn attention to how words and design
socialize gamers into particular forms of play.
There are two keys to both of these games and how they operate. The
fi rst fundamental concept is socializing players into a compulsive need to
check into the games and keep checking into the games. As time passes in
both games, any advantage the player gained can quickly be lost as their
city falls into disrepair or when the debris they cleared comes back to clut-
ter their frontier.
City of Wonder
's reward scheme is particularly slanted
to compulsion, as the maximum return on investment for goods in the
game requires checking in every fi ve minutes. Players can choose to use
goods that only require checking in every two days, but the net rewards
of that choice pale in comparison to checking in more regularly. Although
the rewards for crops are distributed dif erently in
Frontierville
, the game
features chickens that can be fed every thirty minutes, building materials
that can be requested every few hours, and, should one leave their frontier
untended for too long, much of their work at clearing their homestead can
be lost, which is a scary proposition for anyone playing the game. Compul-
sion is made even more complex as individual play sessions in the game
are limited to a relatively short period of time. In
Frontierville
, players
are explicitly limited by their amount of energy, which regenerates over
time, but limits any individual play session to a few minutes. Food can be
purchased to obtain additional energy and there are other means by which
to play for longer, but
Frontierville
is designed to have players play for
frequent short chunks of time. This is in stark contrast to the occasional
long session of play that can typify other forms of gaming. Both games are
