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Opinion: Why doesn't ngmoco want me to have a life?

They tried to make me go to We Rule, I said no no ngmoco

Opinion: Why doesn't ngmoco want me to have a life?
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iOS

For a publisher which specialises in online social games, I think ngmoco might want to rethink its approach.

Neither We Rule or Godfinger, its two recent games, manage to balance game interaction and timing well enough. At least, not well enough for me to have much of a life outside playing those games.

Working the fields

We Rule makes the mistake of dictating when I play it. Whenever you plant crops in your virtual kingdom, careful planning is needed.

Each crop has a set amount of time after which it will be ready for harvesting. If you leave it too long after this set period, the crops will go bad and you'll have wasted your time.

Hence, before planting anything, you have to consider when you'll next be available to boot the game up. Then at that specific time, you'll have to remember to do so. You do get the option of push notifications but it all feels a bit like booking a doctor's appointment. Up to six times every day.

In my opinion, this set-up just isn't right.

There are dozens of browser-based management games, and the majority of them work in the same way as We Rule - except that they don't have set periods in which you need to grab your handiwork before it 'goes bad'.

The whole point of these games is I can dip in and out when I want to. They're more of an experience to play alongside other games. When a game tells me I have to play it in a specific time frame, this defeats the purpose of playing - fun - making it more like a job.

Point the finger of blame

Godfinger, in comparison, is quite a different monster.

Given a planet and a few minions, your task is to build farms, barns and the like, then set your followers to work making money and mana for you. Every few minutes their labours will produce precious gold which you can tap to add to your holdings.

The problem is there's a limit on how much gold they can muster without your collection.

After producing four piles of gold, your minions will then sit back and wait for you to grab it before continuing work. This means that to maximise profits, you'll need to check back with the game roughly every 20 minutes.

In other words, if you leave the game for two hours, your guys have been stood around doing nothing for 100 minutes. There's no way to better utilise their time either.

If I want to get the most out of Godfinger, I constantly need to stop what I'm doing and fire it up.

Even worse, your minions will get tired every hour or so, and need to be dropped next to a recreation facility. These facilities also need to be constantly maintained, be it adding water to the fountain or replacing the wood on the campfire.

To give you an idea of how needy Godfinger is, in the short time I've been writing this opinion piece, I've had three push notifications to let me know that things require my attention.

Me, me, me

Again, ngmoco seems to have missed the point of the real-time management sim - I should be able to play it at my own pace and not have to work my life around it.

If I'm coming back after a couple of hours to a world full of tired workers or spoiled crops, that's not my idea of fun.

Of course, the converse view is that because the games are free-to-play, they're exactly designed to be this needy to encourage me to spend money on the in-app items, which get around this constant craving.

In both titles, there are items - awe in Godfinger and mojo in We Rule - that work as speed ups, to immediately complete tasks such as growing crops and resting workers.

You get a small amount of each by playing, but the focus of the games is to get you to buy more.

Which is fair enough, but unlike a small child constantly demanding attention, I can choose to abandon We Rule and Godfinger.

And go back to living my life again.

Mike Rose
Mike Rose
An expert in the indie games scene, Mike comes to Pocket Gamer as our handheld gaming correspondent. He is the author of 250 Indie Games You Must Play.