Facebook games are ‘damaging traditional gaming’

Facebook games are damaging traditional gaming, according to Silicon Knights boss Dennis Dyack. He also believes that the entire industry built around Facebook gaming is going to crash hard.

“It is damaging traditional gaming for sure but… how it’s going to work out is anyone’s guess,” Dyack told Industry Gamers. “The trend that I see is it’s probably going to be one of the biggest bubbles and explosions that our industry’s seen in a long time and I think when it crashes it’s going to crash very hard. I don’t think there’s an economy there.”

Dyack, whose previous game was the critically mauled and commercial flop Too Human, can’t understand how a company like Zynga can be valued higher than a traditional publisher who has been around for decades.

“I think Zynga’s valuated more than some traditional publishers right now that have been in the industry for decades. I’m sorry, but I just don’t see it. It seems imaginary to me… it doesn’t look long term healthy to me,” he continued.

Dyack pointed to Nintendo as an example of a publisher not interested in social gaming built around Facebook.

“I think there are a lot of publishers out there that don’t agree with it and they just haven’t spoken about it,” he said. “I don’t see Nintendo going into that space, as an example.”

Having said all that, Dyack hasn’t ruled out Silicon Knights experimenting in the social media space in the future, but it would be “an experiment” rather than the studio’s business model.

Dyack might not have had great success with Too Human, but he’s certainly not shy on holding back his opinion.

Facebook gaming looks set to continue for as long as Facebook is still one of the main reasons people use the internet. Streaming technologies such as Gaikai might provide Facebook dwellers with games with higher production values than Farmville.