Last night, social game maker Zynga officially unleashed its latest creation, CityVille, upon the world.
CityVille, which is a variation of Zynga’s other successful Ville franchises (see FarmVille and FrontierVille), is the first global launch for a Zynga title, and is available in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish.
The game itself is basically SimCity meets FarmVille. The goal is to build up your own aspiring metropolis where you rule as mayor. You do this by building houses and businesses, expanding and maintaining roads and trading goods with your Facebook friends in neighboring cities.
CityVille is supposedly more social than any of Zynga’s other offerings — which probably means you’re called upon to harass your non-playing friends all the more to join the party.
Rather than the more open-ended nature of something like FarmVille, CityVille uses a series of guided tasks. That can mean building city hall and hiring staffers (either by paying in CityVille Cash or inviting friends) or planting and harvesting crops, FarmVille-style, at the local farm.
The game also lets friends open up business franchises in one another’s cities.
The obvious goal with CityVille is to recreate the success of FarmVille. We’re sure CityVille will do well, but I’m not convinced that the game necessarily has the addictive pull of harvesting crops.
The problem, as I see it, is that this is the type of game that requires both a lot of attention and a lot of forced interaction. Forced interaction doesn’t equate to social, at least not to me.
Still, who is to say what will and won’t be a hit. I fully expect that CityVille will rack up millions of players in no time. Let us know what you think of Zynga’s latest addiction, er, Facebook game, in the comments.
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