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#fable3 kingmaker – More like KingBreaker

Between FourSquare, Gowalla, N4G, Epic Win and a buttload of other apps, you can earn points for pretty much everything these days. “Gamification” is a popular topic this year – UX researchers are writing 97-slide presentations on how games elements make things more fun. Yet the worst implementation I have ever seen comes straight out of a leading games development studio with one of the oldest pedigrees in the country.

Landscape? That thing out my castle window?

Lionhead make PC games for fuck’s sake. Was too much to ask for them to spend 5 minutes on mobile device research? Kingmaker wouldn’t so annoying if I didn’t have to enter my password every single time. Except the once that I referred to in the photo, for some reason. And if it didn’t call me a “baffoon” at least once a day. And if the gameplay was something more than mashing the “QUICK PLANT FLAG” button 10 times a day. I say mashing, but it’s more like Press, Count to 5, Press Okay, repeat * 9. Can someone please explain how this is supposed to enhance my Fable 3 experience?

Don’t even get me started on the economy – apparently I can buy a terrace house for 3000 gold, but a female skirt will cost 3500. What? That had better be a +3 Female Skirt of Ass-Kicking that shits money when you walk.

But the most frustrating is probably the 50m restriction to pick up treasure. Having used FourSquare and/or Gowalla on a daily basis for the past 6 months, I think I’ve seen the GPS place me within 200m of my actual location twice. Look at this:

Try 300 metres to the right?

*sigh*

What’s been your experience with the Kingmaker app? Let me know, especially if you’ve enjoyed it. Right now even just seeing the #fable3kingmaker hashtag in my Twitter stream is enough to make the red mists descend.