Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack: Facebok gaming will 'crash very hard'

For a guy who's nearly 11-year-old crown jewel in the making was a commercial and critical flop, Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack has made a pretty bold prediction. According to the legendary game designer, Facebook games like Zynga's empire are doomed to fail, Industry Gamers found out during an interview. According to the creator, investing huge amounts of money in social games is foolish and that the genre will bubble up and burst.

"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." Simply put, the developer just doesn't see FarmVille and its cronies lasting very long in the industry.

Facebook Games better with friends
However, much of Dyack's argument seems to stem from a personal distaste for digital farming. "I tried playing FarmVille, I really did, but it's not my cup of tea," he said. "And I'm not saying that FarmVille's a bad game but as a gamer who's played games all my life, I know what kinds of games I want to play. I play games every day and I'm always trying new stuff. Our golden rule is we make games that we want to play ourselves and I just look at those [social] games and those are just games I don't want to play for whatever reason. I just think that they're not a good use of my time versus quality."

Of course, this prediction is the odd one out when it comes to what the industry generally expects of social games. Now, to me a $10 billion company created in under half a decade thanks to social gaming says a lot for the future of the industry. However, I'll play devil's advocate: Suppose social games do die on Facebook. Our games have already been affected by their unique connection to social channels. Look at games like Uncharted 3. If anything, social games will not die, their influence will become inherent in game design.

[Via Cnet]

[Image Credits: Inside Facebook and Our Social Times]

Do you think social games are bound to crash and burn? If anything, how will the genre change over the next few years? Will social features just become inherent in game design?