When I brought up the term ‘funware’ yesterday, a coworker said something about it not being ‘fun’ and that instead of ‘funware’ maybe it should be called ‘obsessionware’.
It has occurred to me that maybe the funware or social gaming phenomenon has more in common with gaming than games.
When a gaming company is developing a new product, how much do they care if it’s viewed as “fun” by the users of the product? I doubt they care much. Gaming industry product development doesn’t actually care about fun. They care only about engagement. When developing a new slot machine or a new feature of slot machines like progressive jackpots, did they ask users if they were having fun or did they measure the casinos’ potential revenue per hour and optimize that?
They might say that they care about how long a user plays with a new gaming product then say that if a user is playing a game more then they must be having more fun than with a game they play less. That logic is flawed. We all spend many hours of our lives eating, cleaning, and sleeping. If you sleep more than eat, does that mean that you have more fun sleeping? No. The simple fact that someone does something a lot does not in any way mean that they enjoy it.
When a game company is developing a new product, how much do they care if it’s viewed as “fun” by the users of the product? I think they care quite a bit. When a game studio is making a game, they often have a recent stable build of the new game out for anyone to play. They want feedback, but the way that they gather this feedback is fundamentally different than how most funware companies get their feedback. Game studios will actually ask people if they had fun, what they liked, and what they disliked. They do not stand by the game player with a stopwatch and change features to maximize how long people play.
Funware might have more in common with the gambling industry than with the games industry.
[I’ve got a whole separate post in me about the fact that the customers of games are game players and somewhat game publishers and retailers, whereas the customers of gaming is casinos and funware is marketing agencies.]
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