Editor Chris "Pwyff" Tom checked out the game developers conference taking place just a few days ago in Vancouver, BC

Just last week, the Game Developers Conference came rumbling through my beautiful hometown of Vancouver, BC, and I decided to go check it out, even if it had to do more with games development than the MMORPG industry. You see, while MMORPGs do fall under the umbrella category of being a "video game," the MMO industry itself is rather complicated in comparison to regular video games. GDC even has a separate event, solely dedicated to MMORPGs and online play! GDC Canada, on the other hand, was oriented toward the social and console game development industry, with seminars focused on developing console games, social games and even applications for the Apple iPhone / iPad.

You would think that, since ZAM only covers MMORPG news, we wouldn't really have anything to say about GDC Canada and, normally, I would have agreed with you, but imagine my surprise when, upon attending this two-day event, I began to see just how related it all is to our world of MMORPGs. Even Fony has checked out that dreaded Facebook Game, Farmville, and the keynote speaker for GDC Canada was Bill Mooney, Vice President of Zynga Games. One could even assert that Social Games like Farmville are really just super low-tech MMORPGs, cleverly wrapped up in Facebook's all powerful shroud.

These days, the big thing on everyone's mind at GDC Canada was the issue of social games like Farmville, and what these really mean to the video game industry. More specifically, triple-A console games have become more and more like MMORPGs in the sense that the development cost can hit incredibly high levels, and most companies need significant success in order to make back even their committed resources. Howard Donaldson of Disney Interactive noted that an incredibly small number of console games end up making their development costs. back (think of it as being restricted to only "top 20" titles), and if we think of this in relation to MMORPGs, this is probably even truer, especially considering that MMORPGs have a significant upkeep cost, in addition to a very high development cost.

In fact, this is where social games have really managed to capture the industry's attention. Games like Farmville and Mafia Wars have very few barriers to market, and their potential profit can be somewhat staggering in comparison as well. Dan Winters of Activision / Blizzard also had one very good point about social viral gaming; that these games must take advantage of a pre-existing structure in order to succeed. That is, Facebook ultimately dictates the potential popularity of games like Farmville, and should Facebook decide that it wants a larger cut of the pie, there is very little that Zynga Games can do.