Nonetheless, just as McDonald's has thrived by churning out tasty burgers and fries for decades, Zynga is quickly building a lucrative franchise with a menu of frivolous distractions. Facebook last year changed the way it notifies users about games so that people who don't play a particular game won't continually get updates when friends send gifts of pigs or plum trees. It turns your relationships into these resources that form the backbone of their business."Īnd Facebook users have often complained that Zynga's games are unimaginative and unwelcome intrusions into online banter and content sharing. ![]() He added that the company has been "very, very brazen about their business process. "I don't want to celebrate them just because they have a lot of users and make a lot of money," Bogost said. Zynga's games, he said, are not as much about how well you can play or how much fun you have, but about how much effort or money you put in it. He even created a parody, "Cow Clicker," where the sole object is to click on virtual cows. Ian Bogost, a game designer and Georgia Tech professor who studies video games, likened its games to fast food - mass-produced fare with little nutritional value. Zynga recently closed on $500 million of financing on that valuation. As for recent investments that have valued the company as high as $10 billion, Kerner believes Zynga will be worth a lot more than that if it maintains its torrid growth pace. Kerner estimates Zynga's revenue will approach $850 million this year, up from $529 million last year. That number has since grown to $1.5 million. The donations for earthquake victims came through special virtual items that Zynga created for the cause. In an example of how quickly the company can drum up money, Zynga recently raised $1 million in 36 hours for Save The Children's Japan charity. Zynga makes most of its money through the sale of virtual items in its games, with the rest from advertising and partnerships with companies such as Netflix or Vistaprint on special offers. He said he foresees Zynga becoming "one of the primary Internet franchises of the next 10, 20, 30 years." Marc Andreessen, who helped trigger an Internet boom in the mid-1990s after co-founding Web browser pioneer Netscape Communications, already bought a stake for his venture capital firm. Prospective investors are clamoring for a piece of Zynga in an initial public offering of stock that could come within the next year. "That's the fastest-growing media property in the history of the planet," said social media analyst Lou Kerner of Wedbush Morgan. More recently, "CityVille" demonstrated Zynga's drawing power by attracting 100 million players in the first seven weeks after its December introduction. There were some weeks where people would run out of red shirts, said Cadir Lee, Zynga's chief technology officer. Zynga started a tradition in 2009 - ages ago in Internet time - where employees would wear red shirts for every day that "FarmVille" added another million users. Zynga has grown so fast that it already has 1,500 employees and is moving into larger headquarters, which can accommodate several hundred more workers. and Indonesia, the world's third and fourth most populous countries. Zynga's audience is somewhere between the population of the U.S. Since CEO Mark Pincus launched the San Francisco startup in 2007, Zynga has attracted about 250 million game players - most of whom connect on Facebook's even larger Web hangout. 16 percent of StarCraft 2 players have tried CityVille, and 12 percent of CoD players have done likewise.All games are free to play, but players can pay real money - a few coins or dollars at a time - to buy special items or reach a higher level of play more quickly. Even so, a significant proportion of hardcore players also play Facebook games. And while hardcore games cost $60 at launch, Zynga's games are free. ![]() ![]() Core games market the old-fashioned, expensive way, through advertising and mass media promotion. Marketing comes through social channels persuading friends to play is built into the game mechanic. The model for free Facebook games is vastly different to hardcore games. Almost 80 percent of Ville players try a new game in the free franchise, comparable to stats for Call of Duty and Halo. It's a lot easier to play Cityville for a few moments at your desk, than it is to break out Gears of War 3." Zynga's games also have an enviable record of converting players from one iteration to another. He told IGN, "A lot of time is being spent at work playing these games. But Raptr boss Dennis Fong says core games have little to fear from Facebook. Facebook gamers only spend a few moments at a time playing their games, but play four times more sessions per day than hardcore players on average eight times a day.
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