CastleVille Zynga Game Gets Medieval on Your Ass
;)
;)
After letting players fun their dream farm, city or frontiersmen convoy, Zynga will be transporting its casual gaming audience further back in time to construct their perfect medieval mini-kingdom.
Zynga Dallas head honcho Bill Jackson has described CastleVille as having the best parts of all the previous Ville games as well as its own unique flavor. Take the self expression from FarmVille, the scale of city building from CityVille and the “rich narrative” from FrontierVille and you get the CastleVille experience.
That’s the pitch, at least. This means that CastleVille will see you create an avatar (which is a more sophisticated and detailed process than before, apparently) and then divide your time between building your castle and going out to explore, complete quests and meet NPCs.
Zynga’s packed out this cast list of NPCs, as they rattled off the names of village Vikings, sexy pirates, dragon slayers and songstresses that you can meet and then presumably run an ass-ton of errands for.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Zynga game if it wasn’t desperately trying to get you to ram your current gaming obsession so far down the throats of your Facebook friends that they felt compelled to either delete their account or log in and help you out with free friend rewards. (That’s how they get you!)
In all fairness to Zynga, they have toned down the aggressiveness of their games’ social element considerably. Back when FarmVille frenzy was at its height, you couldn’t browse Facebook for more than 30 seconds without being bombarded with wall notifications that your friends had run out of fertilizer and were facing apocalyptic agricultural meltdown if you didn’t get in and help them – like right now!
These days, Ville players have much more control over how social they want their gaming to be. They can keep their progress as discreet as they like, find friends playing the same games or petition others to join.
CastleVille is no exception as it supposedly refines the social experience, making it “easier and more streamlined” to play with friends. There is still the incentive to recruit more real-life friends to play, of course. In CastleVille, you gain reputation points depending on how much you interact with other players, points leading you to faster progress through the game.
Though hailed by many gamers as the scourge of modern gaming and the death of innovation, there’s no denying that the Zynga model is both popular and lucrative. With its $14 billion company valuation and approximately 232 million monthly users, Zynga is the most successful player in the casual, social gamer market.
With four different Ville games (not including that bizarre PrivacyVille stunt) it’s clear that Zynga’s premier gaming franchise isn’t going anywhere soon. However, how many more iterations on a theme are they likely to make?
Are we going to see PharoahVille, RomanVille, VikingVille, OuterSpaceVille and so on before the formula turns stale? Have your say, readers.
