War Commander Shows Just How Quickly Facebook Games Are Evolving to be More Immersive and Wordly

War Commander is a new Facebook-based real time strategy game from Kixeye, the guys who made Backyard Monsters (still my favorite Facebook game), and if you like the Command & Conquer RTS series, you'll probably like this game about as much. Even if that's not your thing, it's worth looking at, to see the state of the art in Facebook-based games. Here's why:

• War Commander is an immersive "gamer's game": With rich 2.5D graphics, sound effects, and real time action, this RTS is built for deep, involving gameplay. It's also aimed squarely at the male-dominated gamer. (I never thought I'd hear "Lock and load, mother-fu****! as dialog in a Facebook game, but here is is.)
• War Commander is a dyanamic, "worldly" game: You can chat in real time with other players of War Commander, a feature I'm starting to see more often in Facebook-based games. This gives a dynamic, "worldly" feel to the gameplay, and the sense that you're inhabiting the same virtual game area, even when you're not playing together directly. (Though War Commander includes player versus player combat, so you can do that too.)

All in all, this shows quite a leap from, say, FarmVille, which came out only 2 years ago. But somehow, many core gamers still have the mistaken impression that FarmVille is the typical Facebook game today. (It's not: Sims Social, a much more "gamey game", is also much more popular than FarmVille.) This prejudice extends to game industry journalists: When I recently mentioned Backyard Monsters to a Gamasutra editor, he had not even heard of it. However, many gamers are playing these titles: War Commander already has 250K players after just a week, and Kixeye's CEO, Will Harbin, just told me that it's growing faster than even Backyard Monsters, which was much more mainstream, casual gamer friendly.

For New World Notes readers, games like War Commanders are a good way of thinking about the future of virtual worlds: While this particular game's chat displays your Facebook name, other Facebook games only display your pseudonymously chosen game name. Backyard Monsters includes a strong dynamic content creation element. So it's easy to imagine a Second Life-like world emerging from the same technology. (Maybe something like what Linden Lab's working on now?)

Comments

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I hate RTS.

That said... I keep trying to tell designers that making their games more like Facebook games (ie, simple, dull and dumb) is chasing shadows, because as Facebook gaming grows in its technical capabilities, it's going to try to be more like MMOs.

People like a world to be accessible, yes, but once they access it, there has GOT to be enough depth there to keep them engaged, or they'll graduate to a deeper and better game.

DC Universe Online is an example of an MMO that tried to not be an MMO, and it failed so utterly and miserably that the company has been forced to transition it to the Island of Misfit Losers (aka, free-to-play).

[Jo yardley]

Sorry about destroying your base.