[Lewisham]

They're "bad games" by any usual metric bar with which games are critiqued, unless your metrics are "money made" and "addiction." But they're businessmen metrics, not the ones a game designer would use.

PopCap are definitely the company to look at here. They spent a decent number of years cloning smaller games, which was not to their credit. In the last 4 years or so, they've been creating amazing original IP. And those games are doing gangbusters with all sorts of audiences. You don't have to create bad games in order to engage new audiences, you just have to tap into what they are interested in.

[sjsivak]

What is the "usual metric bar with which games are critiqued"? I am pretty sure that is your opinion because there is no metric bar that all games are measured against.

Game reviews do not use a good game checklist to explain why a game is good or bad, they give their opinion. You can say Zynga games are bad, but supposing that your opinion should apply to everyone is arrogant.

[Lewisham]

There are plenty of metrics, like engagement, enjoyment etc. etc., but there is some very tangible metric bar by which games are measured, it's called peer approval.

By what metric are other art forms judged? How are the Oscars awarded to movies? Who chooses the winner of the Booker prize? Or the VMAs? Peer approval.

Zynga doesn't have peer approval from many game designers. This article highlights some dissenting opinion, but there's plenty more out there. Just Google it. Their infamous speech speech at GDC Awards show doesn't help their cause either. [1]

Note I am careful not to say "games reviewers" because reviewers are writing for their audience, and that core game audience usually does not intersect with Zynga.

[1]: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20002221-52.html

[hugh3]

What other metrics do we have? Social approval among people who fancy themselves game critics?

[_delirium]

One possibility (not sure if it's been done) is to try to understand what the players themselves think of the game. Some WoW players love it, some kind of hate it but continue to play it anyway for various reasons, ranging from addiction to sunk cost to social pressure, others vaccilate or are somewhere in between. How does that compare to FarmVille players or to Starcraft 2 players or to slot-machine players?

Self-assessment isn't a perfect metric either, but differences in self-assessment between players of different kinds of games might give something interesting. I mean, if you go only by money made, the slot machine is still the best game of all time. Which maybe is true on one axis of "best", but it seems weird to argue that it's the only possible way to discuss games. Is looking at the top-grossing films list the only possible way to discuss films?

[hugh3]

My point is that if you want to evaluate quality you have to leave metrics behind and start looking at opinions. And opinions are like assholes in that they're ubiquitous throughout the population.

Of course you can make up metrics based on averages of everyone's opinions, or weighted averages where you weight by the "sophistication" (in some sense) of the person's opinion. But nobody will believe such metrics anyway, in that you'll never catch anybody saying "I hate this game/book/album, but this reliable metric says it's good, so I guess it must actually be good!"

If Farmville is bad, it falls into the "fascinatingly bad" category of things that are derided by professional opinion-makers but still vastly popular. Genuinely bad games, books and bands are a dime a dozen -- check out a publisher's reject pile, an open mike night or a twelve year old programmer's hard disk for examples -- but fascinatingly bad things like The Da Vinci Code or Nickelback or Farmville deserve a lot more analysis.