Example: Battle Pirates

Battle Pirates is a multiplayer Facebook game created by Kixeye that involves real-time strategy, resource gathering, and base building in order to become the strongest pirate on the high seas.  

What it solves:

Battle pirate’s is designed to keep people entertained.  This solves the problem of pure boredom.  If you have time on your hands then you should definitely give it a try.

Scenario:

Battle pirate’s takes place in the future after all the icecaps have melted.  The old world is totally underwater and each player is given an island fortress to start with.  bwatson@ncsu.eduOne must design their island to minimize their vulnerability to enemy attacks.  When an enemy does attack, they have the capability of taking up to 500% of what their ships cargos can hold in resources, depending on how much you have.  You can never lose all your resources just a percentage.  Should your island get destroyed, you are provided a 2 day bubble in which no one can attack you.  This allows the player to repair their buildings and get back the resources they lost.  However, you can lose this bubble if you attack someone else’s base. 

Players also have several different buildings they can build on their island.  Some of these can be upgraded and do research.  For each upgrade, the building provides new research capabilities.  Each research gives the player different bonuses such as stronger weapons, bigger cargos on their ships, and more land for your base.  The time for research and upgrades increases as you level up.  So higher players have longer research and upgrade times.

Why I like this app:

I enjoy this application because it is challenging and you get to play against other people in a social environment.  I enjoy competition and being able to play against people provides this without limit.  Playing games against a computer, one can usually figure out the pattern that the computer uses to play and exploit it.  People on the other hand are adaptive and provide alterations to their strategies when needed.  This keeps the game interesting.  Also, it’s a good way to meet people who enjoy the same type of games you do.  This application has a chat box where everyone in a localized area can chat and share strategies.

Why it is better:

I find Battle Pirates to be one of the better games on Facebook because of its graphics and constant upgrades.  Similar games usually have really cheap looking graphics.  You can tell that they do not put as much time into their application, Kixeye is constantly adding functionality and new features to keep the game interesting.  They also have a monthly event where you can win prizes such as specialty ships or weapons that can’t be researched.