I’d like to see game designers learning from these en masse games, and then seeing what they can bring to the table from all their experience with other games – both to bring to the en masse table, and what new things they learn they can bring to their games.

I find it odd that he says the makers of these games are not game designers. Perhaps traditionally they are not, but they are designing games. They are a new breed of designers. Game designers have always come from a variety of backgrounds: Writing for those who make story games, sociology, economics and/or psychology for those who make online games. Now we have game designers who come from backgrounds in web metrics, marketing, and a/b testing. These are skills that all game designers should now take note of and try to absorb under the game design umbrella – not forget everything they know and go make farming sims.

When people argue about the game industry they seem to want to argue outside of the video games that common folk play (Wii, facebook, Sports games on consoles). Or, they discount it as a fad (while we all forget that American consumers labeled video games as a fad, the central issue with reference to the legitimacy of games even today). They also seem to want to eschew the so-called AAA titles. In the long run, video games have to make AAA titles. They have to make money and in making money they inevitably alienate their audiences by making more of the same thing that made money last time.

On the other side of this, game studies. While I love every second of games studies, it seems more focused on things like what Jason Roher or whichever indie developer has a new title out. This could just be my own selection of game studies texts. In this way, the stuff from game studies, the ideas from game studies, have yet to really make an impact on games everyone plays.

This is where i’m coming from. I hear Schell speak about these things and while I think he is a ways off base, he is picking up on the fact that games are being created en masse, by people who are not game designers. In a sense, society may be brushing off video games as they are now for some sort of ARG-like series of blips and bleeps that mean nothing more than a momentary distraction at work or on the way to work.

That consumers aren’t buying video games as game designers make them but are playing and paying for them in a way that is a slap in the face to game makers is something I wish people would take away from this speech.

All the things that we enjoy about more complicated games are enjoyable to people who only play mafia wars, but we just haven’t figured out to communicate with them / compel them in a way they’re interested in. I can’t believe that the ‘facebook masses’ do not get the same pleasure from learning and mastery as more dedicated gamers – we just haven’t figured out how to trigger it as well as we have with hardcore gamers.

The more me-too-ism we apply to on this particular set of point based mechanics, the more watered down the experience becomes. I think more people may begin to ask:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/are_modern_web_apps_killjoys.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29
as these mechanics begin to surround them.

Basically I’m arguing that the pool of things ‘game designers couldn’t care less about’ is things we should be learning and finding ways of improving – bringing along our unique experiences, not simply integrating / slapping them on to our existing mindsets and/or jumping ship to more profitable shores. Gaming as a medium and as a study is still relatively new and is catching on still at measurable rates. Achievement mechanics caught on faster even though they were pushed later because they’re more bite size and more congruent with the social tide at the moment but that doesn’t yet indicate that society is moving AWAY from games towards microgaming.

I can’t stand advertisements on TV. They don’t work for me. But they must work for millions of others, otherwise they’re wouldn’t be advertisements.

You seem to be making an anecdotal argument on facebook games. Personal relativism when projected to the entire population of people who A). aren’t like you and B). Don’t know how to use a computer, let alone make a game, don’t know this and C). are enthralled by a game, should be of huge interest to game designers.

Schell’s big unsaid point remains to really be said, people who aren’t gamers are buying retarded things from games that game designers could care less about. And they’re doing it in droves. Like most new markets, it will over-saturate, crash, and even out. Where it ends up will be worth noting even if game makers refuse to learn anything from it. Right now game makers as a whole seem to be arguing some sort of illegitimate legitimacy vs remaining on the periphery of societal consciousness as they are right now. Schell is one side, the side that acknowledges the facebook dilemma, who will offer a well thought out counterpoint?

That too, will be fun to watch.