On ngmoco's We Rule

We Rule is a pretty boring FarmVille knock-off for iPhone and iPad. Actually, it’s really well made for what it is: nice graphics, music and atmosphere. But all you do is plant, harvest, order and deliver. I figured, maybe I can enjoy it anyway? One of the results from that is the image below.

It’s obvious ngmoco are rewarding people who spend as much time as possible in the game. The fastest way to get money is to plant the fastest crop, so that you’ll have to constantly stay in the game — 6 coins per minute. The casual gamer might plant beans and return once a day, but only get 0.3 coins per minute.

Seeing someone with a nice kingdom doesn’t mean that they are dedicated, however. If you give ngmoco real, actual money and buy ‘mojo’, they’ll shorten any waiting time to mere seconds. I understand that this is their entire business model, but I feel it takes away from any sense of accomplishment of doing things the non-paying way.

What really annoys me is what this game could have been. The makers of the game, Newtoy, helped make Age of Empires 2, so obviously they know how to make non-casual games too. I tcpdumped the server traffic and got a json description of my kingdom, which was highly interesting. They planned for several kinds of resources: stone, food and wood, which would have made for a much more complex and interesting gameplay. The best part, however, is how the json hints at armies; infantry, archers, cavalry. This game would have been absolutely *kickass* if you could attack other players! Or attack anything at all, for that matter. There is also hints of trading, another absent feature.

Perhaps these features are scheduled for a future release? I dearly hope so, but I really doubt it. I imagine Newtoy had great plans for a social medieval strategy and city-building game, and came to Ngmoco for financing. However, Ngmoco must have found the game much too inaccessible to all the casual FarmVille gamers out there; what’s the fun in building if it can be torn down? And however do you get ROI on a freemium game without heaps and bounds of casual gamers? And thus did Kingdoms (production name) become We Rule.

(I’m nevyn on Plus₊ btw, if you want to add me)