Loot Drop's Brenda Brathwaite

No, I don't think that's it. My guess is that there's just a cursory look. People need a particular skill and are not necessarily looking as deeply as they should. Over the last couple of months I've seen more games industry coders come into the social space so perhaps that's changing.

I think the mentality is passing. We're not too far past the peak of that mentality. I hear from a lot of people who say things like "I told people I went to work in social games and they seem disgusted, go work at a real game company." I feel like we're past the peak of that sentiment, for a couple of reasons. People understand that these type of games are here to stay. It's not a bubble, it's not a fad. The 100 million gamers that have been woken up that like a more casual style of play are not going anywhere. That audience is growing, it's becoming more sophisticated, it's wanting to move into more deeper game experiences. I can see a player who starts in Ravenwood Fair go through a series of games and think it might be interesting to try a game like Civilisation Revolution - a turn-based strategy game. I can see that for some players, not all, and it would be a minority, but nonetheless.

With the traditional games industry it can be hard to see and appreciate games that we ourselves would not play. There's this whole range of very light-touch games that are played for 10-20 minutes at a time, and because that's not the type of gaming experience you're used to - you're used to destination games where you literally sit in a chair for three or four hours - so a Reader's Digest version of a game may seem trivial to you, or silly to you and not enjoyable in the way that knitting feels trivial or annoying to some people.

But it's a completely valid market. People in the industry are seeing Facebook as a platform like we see the PlayStation 3 or the PC as a platform. They all have a particular audience and the demographic tends to like a specific type of game more predominantly than others. By looking at it as a platform and not judging the whole thing just based on a few games or a subset of mechanics that you deem unacceptable for whatever reason, I think traditional developers are coming around to the opportunities of Facebook.

No. I don't. In fact I think it's an odd thing to say. When I heard that comment it made me think of two things. There's so much stuff that I can read for free right now. The internet is awash with free stuff. But that doesn't mean that on my bedside table I don't have five books that I can't wait to take a look at. I'm still willing to pay for quality. Likewise, I could spend the rest of my life watching YouTube and still never even come close to scraping the bottom. But none the less I'm willing to pay for great theatre experiences. I have a Netflix subscription, I'm willing to pay for quality.

This isn't a new challenge, there have been free games available on the internet and with broadband now so easily available... I don't really perceive this as new problem, it's about how do you rise above that? Doom was available for free, but if the gameplay experience is good people will pay for more.

I think there are people who do not care about the players. And I think there are people who do not care about fun. And I think there are people who do not care about the gameplay experience first and foremost. And that results in gutted games and bad decisions, when fun is not at the forefront of your mind - delivering players something that enriches - if your first thought is "what can we get from them" instead of "what can we give them".

This is for all games, not just social games. We are the games industry, and as an industry it means we're for profit. So we all need to make money. One of the things I thought about doing prior to my rant was showing the back of several video game boxes and seeing that each one of these signature features is a lie. We've all played this game, how can you say "it's the greatest, blah, blah, blah". That's just garbage. As a developer I personally feel responsibility to try to deliver a compelling gameplay experience to my players, because I am one of my players.

I think that in some areas there's still a feeling that... it's a challenging question. What are you going in with? Are you going in fun first or are you going in with "let's take this for as much money as possible" first? We are our players. I've never really been capable of developing a game with anything other than fun first because that's what I've always driven towards - I want the game to be fun and compelling. But there are certainly others who the fun factor is not the first consideration. I find that sad. And I think with the ever-growing ranks of game industry people coming into this space that's changing.

Well a couple of years is 10 years in Facebook time. I feel it's safe to say that Facebook is going to continue to fill in. So, we have some light offerings on Facebook for the casual space, and we have some hardcore-ish games on Facebook for the more hardcore market. I think we're going to see a filling in of the space in between. More varied gameplay experiences will be available on Facebook like there's a variety of experiences I can have on the PC - from PopCap to Ghost Recon to Warcraft. There's a whole range of experiences available and I think we're going to start to see that on Facebook as well. I'm not suggesting you'll see a Ghost Recon alternative or Warcraft on Facebook but we will see a broader range of games just over the next year. I bet that starts to fill in pretty heavily within the next six months.