FaceReviews: Facebook News, Application Reviews and Social Networks

The Facebook Food Fight Application is Just For Fun

Published by Ilana Gurman June 25th, 2007 in Facebook Applications, facebook widgets.

Rating:
My mother always told me not to play with my food, so when I saw the facebook ‘food fight’ application about a week ago, I immediately added it.

This application, developed by David Gentzel and Disco Ball Studios, is exactly what it sounds like- a virtual food fight between you and your facebook friends. You’d think that an application with more than a million active users would have a point, right? Wrong. It’s purely for fun. What can be more entertaining than reliving those cafeteria days where you tingled with excitement at the thought of jumping on your chair and declaring ‘food fight!’ only to begin throwing your gloppy grub at anyone who crossed your path at that fateful moment?

We’re talking cyber food fight here so clearly it can’t be as delightful as the real thing, but still, the application developers tried to mimic the good old days: You get $2.50 a day to use as lunch money. You then choose what you’d like to throw at your friends from a broad menu of appetizing dishes, such as tater tots, milk and sushi. The items are quite reasonable with prices ranging from $0.25 to $1.75 but that doesn’t really matter since whatever change you have left over by the end of the day just goes away so there’s no point in trying to save money.

When you add the application you can go into your food fight page which keeps track of your lunch money, outgoing throws and incoming blows that are shown on the top of your the page as well as listed specifically on the bottom. So just in case I really care, I can always go back and look at my food fight history; who hit me with a shrimp cocktail and whom I threw ice cream at. Another funky thing is that I can go in to a friend’s profile and see their food fight history as well (‘See how messy your friends are’).

What’s cute about this application is the integration of the youthful expressions of affection-nothing says ‘I love you’ more than a big slice of Pizza smeared in your face. Even cuter is the fact that the developer has put together a menu fit for a real ‘bangarang!’ food fight and has been asking facebook users to give even more food suggestion and icons. Props.

Alas, with all due respect to having a good time, I admit that after a week I was super bored with this application. I should’ve known, since I like to be challenged. But even evaluating it from a ‘just for fun’ point of view, there are still a few things that bother me:

Firstly, There’s no ranking, rating or points system. Wouldn’t it be cooler if there was a points system that rewarded points to the users who were the first to hit another user or the contrary-the more a user gets food thrown at him, the higher his ranking is? Throwing nachos at people gets pretty boring after a while if there’s no intensity of competition or evaluation.

The second thing is the visibility of the food that gets thrown at me. Wouldn’t it be way groovier if the food actually got thrown on to your profile picture and stayed there until you cleaned it up? Thirdly, the developer promotes his additional applications on your foodfight page in between your throws/blows listing and the daily menu. Bad form. Lastly, there seems to be a glitch. It says you get only $2.50 lunch money a day, but I got five bucks. Am I a preferred customer?

Even with all the disadvantages in mind, there are lots of great comments and suggestions from the million+ food fight users on facebook-seems they care a great deal about improving this new method of fun. As for me, I prefer an application that stimulates my synapses and not my appetite.

You can get the food fight application here.

Food Fight Profile Page