14 DAY TRIAL // The gaming space on Facebook has just received a new inhabitant, CivWorld, the strategy game from Firaxis that was handled directly by legendary developer Sid Meier, and unlike other competing titles, the game is initially concerned with being fun and not with monetizing player time.
Sid Meier spoke to Gamasutra when CivWorld was launched and talked about how social games can be successful, stating, “If we can make a fun game, there will probably be some way for us to monetize that. Some people will find that experience hopefully compelling enough, fun enough to want to invest in it.”
It's hard to define what makes a game experience fun and the feeling is one of the most subjective around, which means that the team around Meier has relied on his experience in the strategy space, feedback from early testers and instinct when developing the game.
He added, “Really thinking about how monetization can be done without destroying the experience for other players is really important. It was a new thing for us, and we wanted to be really careful about how it was done. So, a fair amount of thought did go into that.”
In the new CivWorld, those playing with real-world money can get some in game advantages, but they are limited to how often they use their bought advantages, in an effort to make sure that the game remains as balanced as possible.
Meier admits that CivWorld is in many ways an experiment and that the way it works will be tweaked during the open beta to make it both a better gaming experience and better suited to the Facebook medium.
The social gaming space is one of the fastest growing in the industry and at least one of the companies involved in it, Zynga, is getting ready to launch an IPO that might raise more than 20 billion dollars during the fall.