Last month Zynga released Empires & Allies, a social game about warfare and militarism. I started playing on release day and it’s surprisingly complex and entertaining – so far I’m really impressed. The game has strategic elements that haven’t been present in any other game on Facebook, and it facilitates interaction between players that has a real, lasting impact. It also explores much darker subject matter than Zynga generally goes for. Because of this, they’ve had to tread carefully, with some mixed results. There’s a lot to talk about, so my discussion of the game will be spread over a couple posts. This post will cover what I like about it.
The Metanarrative
The game is framed in an overarching narrative that gives everyone a sense of purpose – a story about military defence against an overwhelmingly powerful enemy. You’re put in charge of a small, sparsely populated island that has just been bombed by a group called ”The Dark Alliance.” You’re led carefully through the initial part of the game by tutorials framed in this narrative. Even after learning the ropes, the story still guides you, with three or four missions related to an aspect of your island’s development. Having a broad and inclusive enough plot to frame the activity is important, because players need to feel like they’re bringing something of their own to the world. However, if the plot is too vague, the player’s actions become meaningless. It’s a difficult balance to strike and Empires & Allies has done it well.
Managing the resources takes strategy and skill
Empires & Allies has in-game currency, two primary resources, and four metals. Money comes from farms and houses, oil and lumber come from wells and mills, and metal comes from mines. The player selects a ‘production contract’ with a cost in time and money for a specified amount of a resource, e.g. you might pay $200 to get 10 oil in 5 minutes. Shorter contracts have greater payoff, but are more demanding on the player’s energy. In addition, a player has access to only one kind of metal on their island, e.g. you might have iron and your friend may have copper. It’s possible to purchase metals for in-game money, but it’s vastly cheaper to make more of your own metal and trade your excess with friends for their surplus. This trade system is a great reason for interacting with other players, and is a welcome departure from the social incentives offered in previous games. In earlier Facebook games, many items necessary for progress could only be obtained by receiving them as ‘gifts’, but those gifts were completely free to send, undermining any notion of scarcity and the strategy that comes with it.
The wither mechanic is (nearly) gone
Zynga caught a lot of flak for this one since they introduced it in Farmville. If you planted a crop that took 6 hours to harvest, and didn’t return within 12 hours, the crop would “wither” and the ruined crop would remain as a blight on your farm. Not only was your money wasted, others would be able to see that you were a neglectful virtual farmer. The response was polarizing – many people accepted it as reasonable, and arranged their lives around making sure they could make it home in time to tend their crops. Others called the mechanism manipulative (or were embarrassed by their ruined raspberries) and refused to play along. However, with each game released since, Zynga have introduced more forgiving measures. They’ve increased the time that the player has to collect resources after maturation, and allowed your friends to intervene and ‘un-wither’ crops – an excellent social feature, even if a little unrealistic. For the first few weeks I had actually thought that the wither mechanism was entirely gone. It turned out that the time-scales have shifted so that it appears less as a punitive measure than a natural outcome of leaving one’s crops for too long, which is less offensively intrusive.
Combat is more than just clicking a button
In most social games, the outcome of the player’s actions have about as much strategy as a coin toss, but Empires & Allies is a little more complicated than that. There are land, sea, and air units, and three classes of unit per terrain type. These units follow a paper-scissors-rock pattern for dominance. In preparation for a battle, you first choose the terrain type and then the specific units for that terrain, e.g. if you choose air then you might select a bomber, some fighter jets, and a helicopter. For story missions it is necessary to enlist friends as ‘allies’ who can be called on in battle. Doing so will give you a randomly-selected powerup, such as field repairs on your vehicles or an air strike against the enemy’s forces. What is available through your allies is determined by their level of experience, and the balance of their “infamy” and “honour” ratings. This results in your play style having an impact on how others benefit from you, even without your explicit involvement in the battle.
Infamy and Honour
Your levels of infamy and honour are determined by the kind of involvement you have with your friends in the game. If you visit their islands and assist their efforts, you’re rewarded with ‘honour’, which gives you experience and means that when called upon as an ally, your bonuses are biased toward constructive, defensive powerups. If you invade and plunder their lands, though, your ‘infamy’ level rises – which also gives you experience, but means that your powerups are biased toward attacking, destructive ones. Infamy probably results in a greater XP payoff, but comes at a material cost through the risk of losing your military forces in the invasion, as well the fact that your friends will be less likely to cooperate in future. The sting of being invaded isn’t quite sharp as it could be, though – it’s still possible to go about your business; it just takes more energy to do so.
Collections are a thing of the past
Collecting sets is one of the central features of Mafia Wars and many other games on Facebook. While I don’t mind it as a mechanic, it is often used to gloss over an inherent shallowness in the game – objects are desirable simply for the sake of possessing them, there are no costs to possessing more, and the only difference between one item and the next is its name perhaps a small icon. This feature is entirely gone in Empires & Allies. A player could collect all of the kinds of tanks, or plant all of the different crops to make a picture with the harvest – but the items have an intrinsic utility in the game, and goals like this are imposed solely by the player for the sake of self-expression. When Zynga makes a game complex enough that there is a genuine reason to obtain a full complement of Civil War moustaches, I’ll welcome the collection system back with open arms, but in the meantime I am happy to see it go.
So far, so good!
Between these features, there’s a lot that is new and interesting. Many of the shallow and manipulative features are totally gone, and others are toned down significantly. It’s not perfect, though, and while some of the problems simply come about because of the game’s target market and the Facebook platform, it’s worth examining them to see if anything can be done to improve the game. I’ll go through those problematic features – and some proposed solutions – in an upcoming post.