Brave Arms: The New Facebook FPS
I wouldn’t really associate ‘Facebook’ with ‘games’ and I particularly disregard the existence of Farmville and Mafia Wars. I don’t think social networking and video gaming should go together really because they are two very different markets that seem to be combined purely for monetary reasons. That being said if social networking was implemented in the right way with video gaming (I’m fine with Twitter on an Xbox 360) then I’ll accept the two things being put together. It does feel a little unnatural though.
Brave Arms, the new FPS from 3G Studios is going to be a fully-fledged Facebook game. It sounds silly but there is more than meets the eye. CEO James Kosta says that Brave Arms will bring “first-person shooters to the masses”. There-in lies my first issue: the gaming community isn’t particularly an entirely different market from the social networking one. When you start to segregate the gaming community whilst you are trying to publicise a game that would only really appeal to said community? Logic takes a hit there.
My next issue is that much like other Facebook applications and ‘games’ will Brave Arms feature advertisements? I don’t know much about how Facebook is run but there are adverts splashed across Facebook as well as in the applications. Is Brave Arms going to be an integrated game that is a more in-depth gaming experience but still has the things that make me hate the games on Facebook?
Also because Brave Arms will be a free game my previous point will probably come to fruition along with having in game money transactions. If the game is going to profit from anything it is going to be from ads and microtransactions. I’d rather have my games without in-game advertisements (yes, I’m looking at you Wipeout HD).
However despite the issues I have Brave Arms does actually look alright. If it plays well too I may be tempted to have a go. That being said can the game really be good enough to drag people away from the whole host of FPS games already out? Perhaps the bigger question is will Brave Arms create more gamers? I think the fact that it is on Facebook may be the selling point more than the game itself. For some people this is a step in the right direction for making as much money on Facebook as possible.
Source: Joystiq
