In other words, the game keeps you peeping over the neighbors’ fences to see what they’ve got. And it encourages such a mentality through some rather overt ways of provoking players to encounter their fellow players’ play areas. In this sense, Cityville plays into a “keeping up with the Jonses mentality”. However, given the time necessary to invest in completing community buildings with only the aid of friends (who can send you one required item at a time that are necessary to “complete a build”) and that there are also loads of items that can only be purchased via City Bucks, if you really want a unique city that is the envy of all of your friends, you are going to have to spend a bit of real money. Cityville can be (and, of course, is) played entirely for free, and there are loads of options of things to buy that won’t cost City Bucks. Real money largely only enters the picture if I want to purchase unique (or “rarer”, since City Bucks are most easily acquired by purchasing them with actual money) buildings. Since the game is played by purchasing residences, businesses, and agricultural products with the game’s own virtual money in order to build an economy, much of the focus for the player is in buying useful and productive materials and organizing them within a limited space. What these “freemium” games boil down to is a chance to play a game for brief snatches of time throughout my day, while offering the option of making purchases to “enhance” my “gaming” experience.Ĭityville‘s enhancement rests nearly exclusively on customization. That peacocking and its seeming permanence makes all the difference in terms of the game making a lot of money. Cityville allows me to develop a city of my own that I can develop, organize, and arrange in order to peacock for my fellow players. CivWorld allows me to both compete and co-operate with other players in order to win a game of Civ that might take a week or so to complete. ![]() The distinct difference between each of the games’ more competitive aspects is their reward for the player. And frankly that aspect of competition is why Cityville‘s monetization will probably remain more financially lucrative for Zynga than CivWorld ever will be for 2K Games. Not so fast, though, while CivWorld might be more of a traditional “game” in that it has an end goal, a way to win, along with clear rules about how to achieve that win, really there is a potentially more subtle competitive aspect that underlies Cityville as well. There’s no competition in Cityville, right? ![]() ![]() Okay, so maybe on the face of it, a game like Zynga’s Cityville (one of many spin offs of the wildly popular Farmville) and Sid Meier’s Civilization World (a transformation of the classic video game into a social game format) only vaguely have some things in common.īoth games focus on the development of cities, creating buildings and growing populations, in order to show your opponents that your civilization is superior to theirs.īut wait a sec, CivWorld is obviously a game about showing off your prowess in evolving a superior civilization, while Cityville is a co-operative playground in which I own my own city, build it, and help others in building their own cities.
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