Saturday 19 September 2009

Dictator Wars by Gamelayers: Impressions

As mentioned earlier, I've tried out Dictator Wars by Gamelayers (former creators of Nethernet). So far, I've been somewhat underwhelmed. It's a clone of any other Facebook "Wars" game, a light strategy game with an emphasis on doing missions to improve your country. I don't really play those sorts of games but I do feel that it isn't as innovative as Nethernet was.

In a previous post I mentioned that Gamelayers teamed up with rather spammey advertisers in an attempt to monetise Nethernet. I'm sad to say that this sort of advertising is also incorporated into Dictator Wars and I believe it hurts Gamelayers' credibility.

If you're into light social strategy games than try it out but don't expect too much.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you kindly for checking out Dictator Wars! If you're familiar with The Nethernet, it may not seem as innovative. Hopefully Dictator Wars is easy to play and good fun.

    Dictator Wars shares a number of similarities with other Facebook *.Wars games as you noticed. We added a few key differences tho! Social missions, chains of friends in asynchronous gameplay called Foreign Affairs. If you finish a Foreign Affair, they tend to pay out 2x as much as regular Missions.

    And, we added stakes to fighting in the game - you can only win as much money from fights as you have in your inventory. Gotta ante up in battles between great leaders!

    We hope you will find Dictator Wars both fun and amusing if you continue to play.

    In terms of our offers, the "rather spammy advertisers" you suggest, we want to figure out how to monetize our game. Players with more money than time can buy in-game money directly. Players with more time than money can work through offers. We chose an offer partner who is transparent. They're called Get Gambit, and they wrote this pretty honest blog post about the way their industry works:

    "F-ck Your Offers"
    http://blog.getgambit.com/f-ck-your-offers-game-ending-user-complaints-3-developer-solutions/

    We are a five person company, we aim to figure out how to make and monetize the best games online. We choose partners we respect, and partners who respect the intelligence of our players. Our games are free to play, and we ask people to support the development of more fun by investing in their virtual characters!

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