MiniGames: A Review of Sina Weibo’s Little Amusement Park
In a bid to monetize its user-friendly but financially dragging giant, Sina recently imbued its Weibo microblogging platform with its own currency — the weibi — and games. But are these games actually any good? I dove into a few of them to find out. This is the fifth in a series of reviews of Sina Weibo games.
amusementLittle Amusement Park is the worst amusement park simulator ever.
Perhaps I should explain. Basically, this game follows the same basic path of games like WeiCity and Ha Ha Market, where you create a small community and then try to make money off it while insufferably upbeat music loops in the background.
ユーザーにとって使いやすいが財務面において無理のある大手のSinaは、課金制度を開始するべく、先頃、当企業のWeiboマイクロブログプラットフォーム上でweibiと呼ばれる独自の通貨とゲームを導入した。しかしこれらのゲームは本当に楽しめるものなのだろうか？私はそれを探るべく、これらゲームのいくつかに飛び込んでみた。これはSina Weiboゲームのレビューシリーズ第5弾となる。
Little Amusement Parkは、史上最低の遊園地シミュレーターである
まずは説明した方がいいだろう。基本的に、このゲームはWeiCityやHa Ha Marketと同様、小さなコミュニティを作り上げ稼いでいくものだが、耐え切れないほどアップビートな音楽がBGMとして繰り返し再生される中でそれらを行っていく。
ユーザーフレンドリーであり大きな収益源であるSina Weiboの収益性をさらに高める試みとして、Sinaは最近Weiboのマイクロブロギングプラットフォームに独自の通貨、Weibiと独自のゲームを組み入れた。しかしこれらのゲームは本当におもしろいのだろうか？私は確かめるため、いくつかを使ってみた。これはSina Weiboゲームのレビューシリーズの第５回目だ。
アミューズメントリトルパークはアミューズメントパークのシミュレーションゲームとしては最悪だ。
説明が必要だろう。基本的に、このゲームはWeiCityとHa Ha Marketと同じ基本路線をとっており、BGM小さなコミュニティを作ってお金をもうけていくというものだが、その時のアップビートなBGMが耐えがたい。
Little Amusement Park wants to be the Roller Coaster Tycoon to WeiCity‘s SimCity, and it fails just as badly as WeiCity does, but in a different way. Where WeiCity just begs you for money like a spoiled child or a gambling addict who is in debt to the mob, Little Amusement Park opts to waste your time in an even less productive way: by freezing.
I’d like to describe how the game works, but I literally couldn’t even get through the tutorial. A significant percentage of my play time was spent staring at the screen above while the idiotic background music mocked me with its cutesy toots and bells. When that happened, I’d reload the game, getting a little further through the tutorial each time before accepting a “mission” gave me that screen, or some similar freeze, and I had to reload the page. Again.
Now, to be fair to the folks who made this game, sort of, I am using Google Chrome on a Mac to play. The game probably works OK if you’re using IE6 in Windows XP (a pretty popular combination in China). That said, every other game I’ve tested has worked fine on this exact same hardware and software. If they didn’t bother to test for it — or if I’m wrong and the game is buggy regardless of what browser you’re on — there’s really no excuse for that.
Having now looked at a bunch of these games, I also can’t help but think many of these developers have missed out on something very important for any successful new game: the hook.
これらいくつかのゲームを見てみたが、私はこれらのゲームの開発者が成功するゲームにおける非常に重要なポイントを忘れていることを感じずにはいられない。引き付けるものがないのだ。
これらのゲームをいくつか見てきて、私は中国の開発者の多くは新しいゲームで成功する為の重要な何か、つまり人を引き止める要素を見落としていると思わずにはいられない。
You’ve got to have something that gets the player’s attention when they first start and makes them want to keep playing. Bigger games (like console and PC games) often do this through introducing the story, smaller games (like browser and mobile games) often do this by introducing a simple core gameplay element. The absolute best games do both at once. What good games almost never do — and this is something that nearly all of these Weibo games do — is immediately dump you into the middle of a dry tutorial. Some games need a tutorial, sure, but give first-time players a taste of what they’re working towards first, or there’s no reason for them to bother with it.
In the case of Little Amusement Park, it was moderately fun to play during the moments when it wasn’t frozen. It felt an awful lot like WeiCity, but it didn’t beg me for money, so it might have been kind of fun once I escaped the tutorial. But of course, I never did.
Mostly though, it made me want to play Roller Coaster Tycoon again. I’m guessing that’s not what the devs were going for when the first set out to make this thing.
しかし一番言いたい事と言えば、このゲームをプレイしたことで、もう一度Roller Coaster Tycoonをプレイしたい気分にさせられた。開発者たちは、このゲームを作り出した当初、このようなゲームを作り上げるつもりはなかったに違いないと、私はそう推測する。
