

The Zynga Abyss - Splines
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2012/01/the-zynga-abyss/251920/

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Splines
An interesting snippet from the article:

 _At IndieCade in October 2011, Adam Saltsman, Canabalt's creator, discussed
the notion of "time until death." All of us have a finite amount of time on
earth, and any time we spend on a particular activity is time that we can't
spend doing something else. This means that the time we spend gaming
represents most of a game's cost of ownership, far more than any money that we
spend. If that time is enjoyable (or rather, if its benefits outweigh its
costs), then the game was worth our time._

I think this is an interesting perspective. Personally, I don't calculate
opportunity costs except at an intuitive level, and as a result I'm probably
getting it wrong.

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Splines
Another interesting quote:

 _The games themselves aren't where the action happens; the strategy component
is: when do you reach out into your social graph? When are you going to spam
that list? How frequently are you gonna do that?_

I'm thinking that these game mechanics can be very powerful - I'd love to see
them employed in a non-farmville situation. I'm not a MMORPG gamer, but I'm
guessing some of the social elements of MMORPG play are along these lines?

