
Facebook vs. Zynga  - mattmaroon
http://blog.bluefrogsrv.com/?p=27
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Locke
The liquidity of Facebook Credits is a major problem. They are asking game
developers to give up control of their virtual currencies. When you control
your virtual currency you can use it in so many ways to influence user
behavior.

You can give away your own currency to lure back wayward players. You can use
your currency to smooth over customer support problems (lost some of your
inventory due to a bug? Sorry, have 1000 gold). You can run contests where the
grand prize is $100 of virtual currency. And, so on.

You won't be able to give away or otherwise manipulate Facebook Credits in the
same way you can your own currency.

Of course, you keep your own virtual currency and accept Facebook Credits. You
just need to ask your players to exchange real money for Facebook Credits, and
then exchange Facebook Credits for your currency, and finally exchange your
currency for that neat power-up they wanted. That won't confuse anyone.

~~~
fierarul
I think you kinda explained the problem Greece is having because there are in
the Euro zone as well as the hint towards the possibility of an exchange rate
between virtual currencies. This should make forex much more interesting...

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jasonlbaptiste
The killer point:

 _So my guess it that what we’re hearing is the end result of Zynga’s a/b
testing which has shown that the payments platform is cannibalizing
significantly more than it’s adding._

If this is true, I'd be curious to see if Zynga releases the numbers. If they
do, then things might be on like donkey kong.

~~~
mattmaroon
I'm also certain they can't release them legally.

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jashmenn
Let's play this out.

Say Zynga actually has the cajones to leave Facebook and run their game from
farmville.com

As soon as Zynga leaves, this creates a huge void that hundreds of other game
developers will rush to fill. These smaller developers will probably have
smaller payrolls and be fine with the 30% cut Facebook is taking.

~~~
tokenadult
If Zynga has the cojones to leave Facebook, it must believe that its games
will draw users away from Facebook, compared to other games people are
accustomed to playing online. I don't play games online, so I don't know how
warranted that assumption is.

~~~
mattmaroon
I don't think anyone will know until it's been tried. The thing is though,
there's no reason why people cannot have accounts at 2 social networks. If
they can convince 50 million people to use their network, and they perhaps can
(more than that log into Farmville every 2 weeks) they might have something of
extreme value.

