Clash of the Titans

Disclaimer: this is not about the upcoming movie related to Greek mythology and whatnot. If you wanted that, go play God of War and watch Kratos climb his way the fuck out of Hades or something.

Disclaimer Addendum: This was written by a very un-biased person whose opinions should not be taken with a pinch of salt and have not been exaggerated for entertainment purposes.

Disclaimer Addendum Addendum: The above was not sarcasm. At all.

They say that competition is good. If two sandwich shops are constantly competing to be the better shop, you'll get a bunch of fucking delicious sandwiches no matter where you eat. The same can be said of videogames: if companies are constantly competing to deliver quality games at (debatably) reasonable prices, the end result is that the consumer (i.e. me, and possibly you) get to "consume*" increasingly awesome video games.

*I am not responsible if you take the word "consume" literally and decide that eating a disc as though it's some kind of fucking new-age bagel is a good idea.

Well, every March, an online video game magazine known as The Escapist holds a popularity contest competition called "March Mayhem" in which, quite simply, you can vote for your favourite developer over several rounds and hope they win an imaginary trophy or something. This year, one newcomer company known as Zynga has been bending everyone over, winning every matchup it's been in so far. On the surface, it sounds like a great underdog story. "Zynga - the little dev that could." They could make a disney movie out of it and it would sell millions.

They are soon to face the behemoth of a company known as VALVe, the people that brought you Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, as well as the digital product-delivery, communication, and overall ass-kicking program known as Steam.

Here's what Zynga contributed:



That's right, these are the masterminds that brought you "Fucking annoying Facebook notification generator with a farm skin," "Fucking annoying Facebook notification generator with an aquarium skin," and "Fucking annoying Facebook notification generator with a mafia skin." Oh, and since that's not quite enough to generate the kind of raging face-melting energy people normally use to weld steel doors to the back of a shark's ass, they've also admitted to being fucking scammers and sold "digital items" for their shiny decorated progress bars games, which are valued at up to $42.00 Seriously. That's 42$ so that you don't have to worry about your fucking virtual plants so you can spend more time pissing me off on facebook at how fucking great you are for owning a virtual fucking farm. The only positive thing I can say about this is that you're paying $42 to never have to touch that piece of shit again and know that your "plants" are still safe.

If you haven't experienced a Zynga game before, here's what you do: Find a calculator. Then punch the buttons, in this order: "1" "+" "+" "=" "=". Then hit the "=" button over and over again and watch the number go up. Put a sticker of a chicken or a dead cow or something on it. Every time you see a number divisible by 20, please yell loudly about your accomplishment. That's Farmville.
If your calculator is too cool for that, just click this. Having fun yet? Me neither.

I understand you're probably not looking for a "hardcore" gaming experience, but for fuck's sake, you can spend $42 on games made by PopCap, and you get the added benefit of playing something that took effort and talent by a company that doesn't scam the shit out of you. Oh, and imagine that, you might actually have fun. It's not "oh I have to water my fish and feed my mafia and put a hit on my plants and piss off my Facebook friends", it's "Holy shit this is like pinball on crack why has nobody thought of this before" Peggle.

But anyway, back to March Mayhem. On one hand, you have Zynga, and on the other, you have VALVe. VALVe gives you free DLC packs and sales on its games regularly, uncompromising in its efforts taking all the time and money it takes to deliver a quality product. Zynga is a company that scams you, makes shitty games, and pisses off your online friends.

My vote goes to VALVe because I think that making a quality product with an honest approach and your costumer's best intentions in mind is important. If you think your fucking virtual plants are worth more than that, go ahead and vote Zynga. And then maybe sand down your fingers until you can't touch a keyboard anymore, because you are not a fucking gamer.