Good. The biggest problem with most Facebook games is that there is little to no actual gameplay. Has anyone here actually played Mafia Wars? It's not a game.
Finally someone who agrees with me. I forced myself to play mafia wars for about an entire month, simply to find out what was there in the darned game and still I couldn't get myself to think of it as a game.
However, I don't think Civ would be a major success on Facebook. Most people on facebook like playing games that are simple and do not require you to think too much (ex: farmville). However, I'm still rooting for civ, simply because I'm also developng a turn based strategy game for facebook and it would be nice to see this category of games become popular on facebook.
I've been considering applying for a job at Zynga so I've also been playing Mafia Wars and Farmville. The latter is a little better. Both epitomize the idea of click/reward perfected by the Diablo series, but the end game of Mafia Wars is laughably boring, it's no different than the early and mid game. Actual PVP for domination of control points seems like a straightforward addition but I guess they don't need to mess with something so popular right now.
I believe Zynga has publicly acknowledged that in the long run their games will need to have more actual game play.
Country Story is more like Farmville would be if it had actual depth... but then it becomes blatently obvious that the idea is simply a rip-off of "Harvest Moon".
That's not to say Farmville isn't fun, it is, but I find Country Story a little deeper.
Most Zynga games appear to be rip-offs. Farmville was ripped from Farm Town, and he recent Cafe world is almost a frame by frame copy of Playfish's Restaurant City (in terms of general gameplay and graphics). Mafia Wars came from SGN and Pirates and the Space Genre games both share the same backend as Mafia Wars.
