

Zynga might file for IPO as early as Wednesday - hydrazine
http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/28/zynga-ipo-wall-street-journal/

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suking
At a proposed valuation of $15+bn I really really hope they are doing
something like $1bn in revenue or this is just not going to end well.

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nothis
This just seems surreal to me. It's nothing more but a gut feeling, but isn't
it likely there will come a time when the novelty of playing "social games"
wears off and people just leave them en masse? I've gone through this years
ago, before there even was Facebook. But literally hundreds of millions of
casual gamers still have to learn this lesson. And they just might.

~~~
derefr
I'm guessing you're a neophile (as most people on HN are): you tried casual
games _because_ there was some sort of novelty to them, then quit. Most people
don't share this motivation; they find it hard to understand why, say, you
would sell your perfectly-fine year-old phone to buy the newer one. This isn't
how social games have managed to attract the userbase they currently hold.

Instead, people play casual games for the same reason they, e.g., smoke
cigarettes: because their friends are doing it—so there's social proof that
it's something interesting to try—but once you as an individual try it, you're
hooked into a "fun loop" [[http://www.eldergame.com/2011/06/world-vs-game-
emergent-game...](http://www.eldergame.com/2011/06/world-vs-game-emergent-
gameplay-and-the-fun-loop/)] of instant, small rewards, that invokes peer-
pressure to rejoin whenever you try to leave (taking a smoke break at work
with friends :: being sent an double-incentivized bale of hay.) This isn't
really something that can "wear off" over time; rather, it becomes an
increasingly _strong_ bond as you begin to base parts of your life around it
(smoking when you go out for a walk after dinner :: checking on your virtual
pets on your break between classes.)

