Kuunari

I have my facebook account and my iPhone, and it’s hard to ignore zynga-type games.  In fact, I have two such games on my phone, Words with Friends and Chess with Friends and for a while I was playing Heroes of Neverwinter.  Still, I haven’t played the -ville games from Zynga, but I have been reading a number of interesting articles about these type of games, the effects of them, and the actions of the major companies towards smaller game developers.

The first is about the game Cowclicker, from December, but I just had a chance to read it.  Cowclicker was/is a facebook game that involves exactly what the name implies it would: you click on cows.  That’s it.  Oh, and you try to get your friends to click on them as well.  One quote described the game as a very obvious “skinner box“. After reading the article, it made me wish I had gotten in on the game before all the cows went away.  And then that thought made me sad.

The second set of articles is about how Zynga and others appear to have stolen a game design from another company while making a bingo game.  And before that, Zynga ripped off Tiny Tower.  Oh, and Spry Fox is suing 6waves, a company it had been in negotiations with, over 6waves blatantly copying their game.

Is there any other non-zynga games out there to play scrabble like games and chess with friends?  And anyone want to try and convince the 50 friends I have on words with friends to switch?