I’m not always the first person to catch on to things. So when my friend said I should be on the social-gaming bandwagon I rolled my eyes. He said “it’s all the rage right now”. Yeah, I’ve seen those annoying status doo-hickey’s pop up on Facebook. Heck, I am still not even sure what to do with that beast except for share my photos and document odd things my four year old says.

When I got news he was going to work at Playdom I decided to give social-gaming a try. According to an ad on Facebook Zynga’s “Farmville” is the most popular game out right now. That would be perfect, let’s start there! Now that I’m 4 weeks, 24 levels and more than 17 thousand “experience points” into it I think a summary should is ready.

I’m all for games and I think this is a pretty cool concept. Not only do I get to grow plants, trees and raise animals but I get to buy tractors and buildings. Oh, oh… and I get to help out my “neighbors” who are my Facebook friends that are also playing the same game. Totally get the “social-gaming” now. Just plant your seeds and come back in a few hours to harvest the crops. Great fun!

I’ve grown pumpkins, grapes and Aloe Vera plants and even created a nerd spreadsheet to help determine the best value for the amount of time I was prepared to plant things for. Seriously, check it out:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tIZRzmUGnTyMQQ4SYosTRuQ&output=html

As my farm grew and my wallet got fatter I began to gain a sense of accomplishment. I was quickly rising up the ladder of farmers with a respectable level. There were a few things that stood out to me that ultimately led to me “cropping” the word “DONE” in my plots of land:

1. I was clicking an awful lot. Seriously, my plots were 18×14, which equals a lot of clicks to harvest, plot and then seed each time.
2. I wasn’t going to spend money on the tools that would make it easier. Zynga does a great job of making this tempting but I just wasn’t invested into the game enough to fall prey.
3. Some of my “neighbors” had levels so far ahead of me that I had no patience in trying to catch up. I ended up getting within 5 of my sister but that leads me to my final and most important point,
4. The rush for playing this game was clearly over. I still had 30 or so pending requests from people that had tried it and let it go. Even the people that finally added me to their “neighbor” list had given up on the game for the most part. A social game has to to have people to work. While I puttered along with a few interactions it wasn’t enough to keep me coming back for more.

My first taste of social-gaming was interesting but not enough to make me go crazy. I’ll try another Zynga game “Cafe World” and actually try a game from my friends company, Playdom, that he said is the most popular, “Social City”.

Farmville was a fun idea but ultimately lacked the staying power to keep me around.

cheat · farmville · game · playdom · review · social game · social gaming · zynga

I certainly did NOT click on the Evony banner with a darn-near-naked woman next to the button that simply says “Play Now”. I certainly did not notice the placement of the button was conveniently located near her woman lumps. If I had tried to “Play Now” I absolutely did not fill out the form hovering above a seductive woman, whose photo scrolled in the background allowing me to see a lot more of her body than I expected. And you can bet that I did not have any pre-conceived thoughts about what this might be. Nope, not me.

Evony is blatantly selling sex to gain more male customers to their online game

OK, so there’s only a little truth in that. Very little. In fact, I did not sign up. Since I had no idea what this company was or the kind of game I was going to play (only reason I knew it was a game was from their “11 Million Players” notification at the top of the landing page the banner sent me to). Instead, I typed Evony into my Google search box and decided to check out the Wikipedia information to get the scoop.

Evony's banner simply states "Play Now" over the half-naked woman

What a shock! Turns out that the game is a MMORTS (Massively Multiplayer online real-time strategy for you non-geeks) for building cities. Say whu? What do the advertisements with half-naked women have to do with building cities? Nothing, I found out. I guess I’ve been hiding under a rock and missed the hoopla about Evony’s advertising strategy. It worked on me… I mean, for all readers labeled my ‘wife’, it caught my eye.

There has long been the question in marketing about when a company has hit rock bottom. I’ve humorously stated many times that if we just put pictures of half-naked blondes that we’d grab the attention about at least 150 million Americans. The reason that’s always been a joke is because most companies attempt to build a brand. Good or bad, that’s the intention. Unless your brand has a bunny as an icon you might walk the tightrope of displaying fleshy curves pretty tight. Of course it will grab attention but you have to understand what kind of attention it will bring in. Customers with a false notion of your product are less likely to stay around and more likely to get upset about deceptive practices.

Evony uses a different landing page for their default website.

I did not, and will not, sign up for the Evony game for these reasons. Rather, I would be much more likely to sign up when the game is portrayed clearly and a friend recommended it to me. That’s the kind of customer that becomes loyal and helps lead to a profitable business that will be around for a while. Excuse me while I go get some coffee from a local drive-thru called “Body Shots”…

advertising · banner · evony · game · gaming · marketing · mmorts · review · sex sells · social