Social gaming is the newest form of gaming in the industry, and it has many critics and skeptics. Right now, the preponderance of game design copying has led social game designer and Bossa co-founder Henrique Olifiers to conclude that bad things are on the horizon.
“Social games for me were always on the cutting-edge until they became copycat, and after they became copycat I said, ‘Well, this is not going anywhere,'” said Olifiers. “This will be like the Atari ’80s crash. Everybody and their grandmother had a version of Space Invaders, and these guys are going to do the same thing.”
“What I used to do at both Jagex and Playfish, they both felt like they were doing something different,” he continued. “Jagex was one of the first companies in browser MMOs. Playfish was one of the first companies to go into social games. They were leading the charge. What got me so disenchanted over time was that they stopped doing that. That’s when I said, ‘This is not what I’m about’.”
Source: GamesIndustry.biz
