

Zynga and the End of the Beginning - rampr
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TadhgKelly/20091218/3665/Zynga_and_the_End_of_the_Beginning.php

======
waterlesscloud
Excellent article. The current Zynga model is certainly unsustainable. They've
hired Brian Reynolds, which hints at deeper games to come, but what they're
doing right now will be ineffective in 6 months.

One thing I've been coming to terms with- just because something makes no
sense long term doesn't mean that it's not a valuable course to pursue short
term.

If, and it's a big if, Zynga can reinvent itself in the next 6-9 months, then
this initial phase was brilliant in that it gave them the resources they
needed to move on to real domination. If they don't reinvent themselves, a few
people will have made a lot of money, but nothing permanent will have been
built. A real opportunity will have been missed.

But they can't keep on the same path, it just won't work a lot longer.

~~~
bd
Simplicity is strength, not weakness.

There are already more complex, deeper games on Facebook, but they are orders
of magnitude less popular than these simple Zynga games.

If you go deeper, you go niche.

BTW it's similar for game themes (independently of game mechanics) - more
mainstream you go, more potential players you can get.

Just check Facebook games charts. They are dominated by down-to-earth topics -
farms, restaurants, aquariums, pets, etc.

~~~
pchristensen
The whole point of the article is that they can get away with simple games and
common themes because of Facebook's insane growth. Facebook games are the
first games a lot of people have ever played on the web. Once this first wave
of new players is on, they will become more demanding and savvy about what
games they play, and these "veteran" game players are more choosy in playing
and recommending games.

~~~
bd
Yeah, but that's wrong assumption. This is no one-way street.

I'm counter-example myself. I actually reverted from being hardcore game
player to playing mostly simple web games.

And I sure know others which went this way - from AAA titles to Zynga.

Here I said it. Most "real" gamers would be probably too ashamed to admit it
:).

And about growth - I'm not sure what is the cause and what is the effect. In
non US regions games themselves could actually be the driving mechanism for
Facebook growth:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=989607>

------
richardburton
I had a conversation with my 6-year-old cousin where she talked passionately
about how much she loved club-penguin. She spoke in detail about all the fun
times she'd had, that bits of the santa-costume she'd been trying to find &
how all her friends were in one igloo together at one point. She even told me
about how she had to go on regularly to keep her pets alive (a very clever
trick built-in by the game-designers no-doubt).

Listening to her rant on about it made me realise just how engaging these
social games are for younger players. It made me see Disney's acquisition of
Club Penguin ([http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/01/disney-acquires-club-
pe...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/01/disney-acquires-club-penguin/)) in
an entirely new light.

------
pchristensen
This article is excellent - anyone interested in social gaming should take 20
minutes to read it. It'll get you totally up to speed on where the industry
stands on the eve of 2010.

However, anyone who thinks that Zynga doesn't know all of this is kidding
themselves. They saw a temporary situation (novelty of gaming on a hugely
growing platform) and attacked it with everything they had. The road will be a
lot harder for them in the future, but because of what they did in 2009, they
go in with hundreds of millions of users, a strong brand, cheap cost of
capital (because they're hot), a ton of cash, and they're probably the only
Facebook developer with anything close to leverage on Facebook. They're one of
the most aggressive companies out there and they have given no reason to
underestimate them.

------
philk
Having played a few web based games in the past (although thankfully nothing
from Zynga) I can attest that the analysis is spot on; for the first few weeks
the novelty keeps you there, but after that it becomes dull and you go back to
real games.

Also after you've gone through a few of them you seem to get inoculated to the
genre.

------
dasil003
This article probably takes too many words to make its point, but the analysis
is spot-on. Of course that may just be wishful thinking on my part. If Zynga
games are anything more than an unsustainable fad then I fear for humanity's
future.

