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Zynga CEO Mark Pincus says 'no thanks' to console gaming, isn't worried about a life detached from Facebook
Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus just took the stage here at D10, and in a wide-ranging interview with Kara Swisher, he sidestepped conversation about Words With Friends and Farmville long enough to touch on the murky world of console gaming. In a bid to quell any potential surprises at E3 next month, Mark said outrightly that his company is not interested in getting into the console world. "We're aiming for you," he said while pointing at Swisher. "We're going after the mainstream market. There's too much friction [in the console world]." He also made clear that he tries to not look too far ahead of where the world really is. When talking about the undeniable shift to mobile, he made clear that there's still a huge amount of desktop traffic on Zynga's games -- "lots of people play while bored on conference calls at work," he quipped. It's an interesting viewpoint in a world where PSN and Xbox Live Arcade has given independent developers all new distribution platforms to reach users, but it also highlights the outfit's intrinsic attachment to Facebook in particular.
AMEX and Zynga team up for themed card, replace cash back with FarmVille rewards
Have you ever judged a friend's financial savvy based on the rewards yield of the cards in their wallet? Now you won't have a choice. For those of you that abhor free flights, detest comped hotel rooms and net severe displeasure from earning cash back, AMEX may finally have your plastic match. It's called the Zynga Serve Rewards card -- yes, the same Zynga that's behind time-sink cash cows like FarmVille, CityVille and CastleVille (?!) -- and it enables you to accrue "Zynga Farm Cash," which as you might imagine provides no financial gratification in the physical world. "FarmVille players now have the ability to plant an interactive Serve Money Tree in their Farms which will give them the ability to level up in game and earn Zynga Farm Cash for virtual awards redemption." We can't make this stuff up. The co-branded prepaid card is tied to a US currency-filled bank account, debit or credit card, and rewards will be assigned for your first five purchases of $25 -- at launch, with further incentives to come later this year. On top of that limitation, there's also a fairly outrageous fee structure (which effectively translates to 2.9 percent of each transaction when the account is funded with another credit card), detailed in full at the source link. Well, at least the card is colorful. Go tell that "Serve Money Tree" that water's on the way!
Free for All: Why social gaming could destroy MMOs and how we can fight it
I am a huge fan of social media. Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus -- it all makes sense to me and has shown to be a very useful tool in not only communicating with friends but finding new games, developers, and websites. My Twitter feed provides enough news and information that I can skip any standard media. I haven't watched a local newscast for a long, long time. On top of that, I can communicate with readers in real time, sharing photos and tidbits of cool. Has social media affected MMO gaming? It definitely has. Watch any smart developer's Twitter feed and you will see the community team interacting directly with players, answering questions, hosting contests, and helping players feel as though the developers are actual people. Social media has also changed how we connect to our games, MMO or not. All of this means that everything is social now. Going to the dentist? Share it with your friends. Defeated a boss monster on your Xbox? Tweet it. Just picked up that epic sword in Dark Age of Camelot? Post it to your Facebook. Heck, many MMOs now have a Twitter or Facebook option built right into the client. All of this instant connectivity is nice, but it's possible that the "massively" part of MMO will soon apply to any game. What will this do to the genre?
Zynga CEO: company building cross-platform cloud compatibility
We've already heard from Zynga how the company plans expand its scope a little bit from its very popular Facebook-only titles. Zynga founder Mark Pincus says in an interview with Om Malik that its policy extends to current tech being built to share saves across the cloud. "In other words, you can play a game on a computer and call it up on Xbox," Pincus says as an example, "and you resume from the point you left off, except the game play will now be customized for the Xbox controller." Game information will be shared, but the experience will be different.That's already the case for Zynga's games on iOS -- they have a very different feel when played on mobile devices, and have even found different audiences. "Words for Friends doesn't do as well on Facebook as it does on the iPhone," for instance, "because they are a mobile first experience. Our poker game does well on the mobile as well."This doesn't mean that Pincus is saying Zynga's working on Xbox ports of its titles. Instead, the company is building out the tech right now to extend these games out in various forms to even more platforms in the future.
Shadow Government tries to combine real-world policy with casual gameplay
Shadow Government was probably the most fascinating game I saw at GDC. I should probably clarify that: I didn't see much of the game in action, but what I did see showed off an excellently designed UI and some good looking (if a little complicated) Farmville-style game mechanics. The most fascinating thing about Shadow Government isn't what it does, but what its developers hope to do. Nicholas Fortugno is the game's main designer, and though he's still fairly young, he has a number of solid iOS and award-winning game credits to his name. He's also a teacher of game design, and with Shadow Government, he says he's aiming to not only bring up the level of these Farmville-like social freemium games, but also help players to take a long, hard look at the effects of real-life issues. That may sound a little nuts -- it certainly does to me. But Shadow Government isn't just driven by Fortugno's freemium engine. It's also driven by a number of simulations from a real-life group called The Millennium Institute, a think tank that does hardcore policy analysis for a number of corporations and countries around the world, setting up models as accurately as possible that will predict the given effects for any number of real life decisions. What if the price of oil goes up, or agriculture is de-funded, or minimum wages in a certain company go down? The Millennium Institute models situations exactly like that, and Fortugno has been given access to all of those simulations in order to model this game. On the surface of Shadow Government, you're placed in control of the future of the real-life United States and given a set of freemium tools to make decisions for the country. Do you build up industry by building a factory, or grow education by building a school? Underneath that relatively simple interface, the Millennium Institute's simulations are running. If you want to, you'll be able to dive into the background of the app and really see the effects all of your decisions have. Fortugno hopes that the game will actually teach people how certain policies work by dealing with real-world issues in this very social, casual way. The policies and analyses that Fortugno talks about and that the Millennium Institute researches are extremely complicated affairs, some that I'm sure would require multiple degrees of study to really research and understand fully. But Fortugno is convinced that even given the relatively simple interface of a freemium game, he can at least get people interested in making these decisions. Seeing the effects of those decisions might push people to educate themselves further. Shadow Government's not necessarily an educational game. As Fortugno told me, it wouldn't help to market the game that way, and it's not necessarily meant to be an experience built around numbers and simulations. But Fortugno says it is meant to be a title "for people who don't play games in contexts that they don't play games about." In other words, Fortugno's trying to take Farmville and actually use it to make people think about and even understand the real world around them a little further. Shadow Government is currently being worked out in a closed beta, and it's set to come out later this year. Fortugno certainly has the chops for a project like this, and as I watched him animatedly talk at GDC, it became apparent very quickly that he wants to make it work. The game's idea and ideals are both quite fascinating, so I hope Shadow Government pulls it off.
Does WoW need more minigames?
When I started playing WoW in 2006, I knew next to nothing about it. I had bought a copy to play with my boyfriend but did so while he was out of the country; it was my intent to surprise him with it when he got back. The unfortunate result of this was that I didn't really know what to do on my own and spent most of the time being eaten by murlocs. Back then, the multiplayer aspect of WoW wasn't apparent to me. I had only ever joined groups to complete a few quests and didn't know what dungeons, raids, or Battlegrounds were. Because of this, I often remember thinking WoW wasn't a very good game because it was missing all sorts of basic elements that other games had. For example, I remember jumping in a river and thinking "Awesome, this will be a quick way to get to the southern side of the zone," only to realize a moment later there was no water current in WoW like there is in Legend of Zelda. "This is so lame," I thought.
If WoW is social media, what function do guilds serve?
In my time playing WoW, I've been in a lot of guilds. I've played in guilds that were fighting for the realm-first heroic progression spot and others that were content at realm 15th. I've been a part of the Reddit guild families, which are so large that they need a chat mod to link the multiple guilds for all their members. I've also been in guilds like my current one that have a grand total of 15 people as members. The World of Warcraft guild experience is as wide and varied as the players who play this game. I'm an unabashed guild-hopper who wants very specific things from a guild and is willing to leave if they don't happen. Other players are loyalists, who find one guild and form lasting bonds that keep them playing with the same group of friends for their entire WoW experience. Is WoW social media? Cynwise at Cynwise's Battlefield Manual wrote a post last month about the fact that World of Warcraft is a form of social media. There's no denying that fact: The entire MMORPG genre is based on the idea that you are playing a game with other human beings, not just facing off against the computer as in the genre's predecessors. In fact, I'd go even further and suggest that in many ways, WoW has potential to be an ideal form of social media.
Hasbro and Zynga make a deal, toys and games incoming
Hasbro has struck a deal with Zynga to produce toys and games based on the social developer's catalogue of rich, nuanced IPs, which is great news if you've ever found yourself wishing you could somehow continue to give Zynga all of your money, even when you're away from your computer and smartphone.Now, Hasbro's definition of "games" is more board-oriented than Zynga's, and while the licensing arrangement allows for "co-branded merchandise," it doesn't allow Zynga to make games based on Hasbro brands. The first products will hit store shelves sometime this fall, and while no specifics toys or board games have been announced we've got a feeling that My Little Ponyville and Ouija With Friends aren't that unlikely.
Facebook seeking $5 billion in IPO fundraising
Whoever said money can't buy friends? It certainly wasn't Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose company today filed for its initial public offering with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. According to the filing, Facebook seeks to raise $5 billion if and when the company goes public -- the filing is still pending approval from the SEC.Also revealed in the filing was news that the social platform's biggest game developer, Zynga, accounts for "approximately 12 percent" of Facebook's revenue. Zynga had its own IPO late last year, which sought to raise $1 billion in going public.That 12 percent is enough to have Zuckerberg and co. worried about going public, as the filing notes, "If the use of Zynga games on our Platform declines, if Zynga launches games on or migrates games to competing platforms, or if we fail to maintain good relations with Zynga, we may lose Zynga as a significant Platform developer and our financial results may be adversely affected." So, uh, here's hoping Google+ doesn't get into games, eh?... oh, right.
Zynga's paid $300 per new user in the past nine months, says analyst
Zynga has been struggling with its stock price since the IPO late last year, and Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia says there are more dark days ahead. When you compare Zynga's $120 million marketing budget to its recent rise in only 400,000 new players (about $300 a person), the numbers don't look good: "We know that, on average, these people are spending about $150 or so," says Bhatia, which suggests that Zynga is spending about $300 for every $150 in profit. "That math won't work for very long," obviously.Zynga's spending is indicative of a few trends in social gaming. First, the company has discovered it's very hard to earn new players. Many of Zynga's games are similar, and without really experimenting, it's going to be hard to generate uniques. Second, Zynga's earnings are based on "whales": A small percentage of players who spend big. You need to find a lot of unique free-to-play players to land a few whales, and Bhatia doesn't see Zynga doing that lately.So what's the solution? "Zynga will have to find their next FarmVille," says Bhatia. Until the company finds another phenomenally popular hit and the surge in new players that comes along with it (which is incredibly tough to do), Bhatia expects to see even more problems with Zynga and its stock.
The MMO Report: Shut up, that's why edition
Why does The MMO Report cover Minecraft? "Shut up, that's why," says Casey with a smile. In addition to chronicling Minecraft's newest FarmVille-esque update, the Beard meanders through the Dark Millennium Online cancellation rumors, The Secret World's Illuminati trailer, and TERA's upcoming May release date ("your cue to start claiming it's better than WoW, internet"). Finally, Casey touches on the patch delays suffered by Star Wars: The Old Republic, excusing the tardiness by suggesting the promised dates are more like guidelines, and besides, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes." All this and a quick dip into Uncle Casey's Mailbag can be found in the full HD video behind the cut.
Zynga CEO defends stock price, says culture 'not ultra competitive'
Zynga's initial public offering (IPO) didn't exactly go swimmingly. It required assistance on its first day, and the stock currently sits below the initial $10 price. Speaking with the Wall Street Journal, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus tried to smooth over feelings about the overhyped and underperforming stock. "Our goals were we want to raise a billion dollars. Through going public, we wanted to add some more great long-term investors to the company. All of that was successful," Pincus said, as the WSJ pointed out that the stock dipped on its first day of trading. "I don't blame anybody because from our standpoint, we think it was successful. It was many times larger than the other tech IPOs that had just happened recently. We think we're now well positioned to move forward in the future." In discussing Zynga's allegedly harsh corporate culture, Pincus says the attrition rate for the company is a little over 3 percent, which he claims is lower than Silicon Valley's 14 percent average. One thing that hasn't slowed is Zynga's company and executive acquisition train, which recently picked up EA Interactive's former head, Barry Cottle, who joins Zynga as executive VP of business and corporate development.
Zynga stock falters, holds on first day of trading
Zynga stock finally roared out of the gate and on to the trading floor yesterday at $10 a share, but investors weren't hugely impressed with the social gaming company. The stock started up a dollar at $11, and then dropped back down two, and then thirty, and then fifty cents during the day, leveling off at $9.50, which Forbes says was thanks mostly to "a stabilizing bid by Zynga's underwriters," which means Zynga's investors stepped in and bought up enough stock to keep the price up. So what happened? Shortly put, Zynga's stock wasn't really worth what it was priced out at. An initial public offering is designed to be priced a little low, in order to drum up demand for a company's stock from the public (not to mention raise some money). But Zynga went high and, as a result, didn't quite get the graph it wanted today. They didn't sell the FarmVille, so to speak -- ZNGA will likely be trading fine on Monday (and $9.50 is fine for the highly competitive gaming industry; THQ is sitting down at 75 cents right now). But Zynga's hype phase appears to be over. Now the company needs to prove it can sell more than just cow clickers.
Zynga prices IPO at $10, begins trading today
Step right up, step right up! Waiting for that next patch of corn to grow in Farmville? Just hanging around for your friend to make his next move in Mafia Wars? Then you need to make the most of your time, my friend, with the most splendiferous stock offering this year: ZYNGA! Or, "ZNGA," as it will be known today on the Nasdaq Stock Market, trading for the low-low (but on the higher end of expected) price of $10. Yes, $10! And because Zynga is feeling so generous about its stock price, you won't even have to wait 10 minutes or pay any extra credits to purchasing more than one at a time. Forget all those negative feelings you may have heard about the company. Ignore the claims of a "sketchy" business model. Today's the day to get in on the ground floor and ride that bubble into the sun!
Zynga's IPO road show begins, expects to raise $1 billion
Zynga is doing extremely well, especially for a company that started by piggybacking on a social-networking site, Facebook, and making games about farming. Zynga is in the process of launching its IPO, and while it won't be worth as much as initially expected this summer -- dropping from an expected high of $20 billion to a current possible low of about $10 billion -- Zynga is positioned to be worth more than EA, currently valued at $7.7 billion, and to compete with Activision Blizzard, which is valued at $14 billion. Zynga plans to raise roughly $1 billion for its IPO and has begun a nine-day pitch process to convince investors that the company is truly worth it, with plans to sell shares for $8.50 to $10 each under the Nasdaq label, "ZNGA." Zynga's offerings would mark the largest for a U.S. Internet company since Google in 2004, but with Facebook expected to eclipse it in 2012. If you're an interested investor, surveyor or slideshow-lover, you can view Zynga's complete IPO presentation right here.
Zynga registers domains for 'Forestville'
Printing money is a lot easier than you might think. The conventional method of using a giant steampunk-tentacle robot to steal printing plates from a maximum-security bank vault is no longer necessary; these days all you need is access to Facebook APIs and the suffix "ville." Zynga, having no reason to halt their eternally forward march into a dollar-filled future, may be looking to add another printing press to its already well-stocked stable of money making franchises. The domain detectives at Fusible have unearthed several recently registered URLs, all related to the presently unannounced IP Forestville. Registered through MarkMonitor, an intermediary used by A-list companies to register and hold domain names, the addresses run the gamut from forestvillegame.com to forestvillewithfriends.com and forestvillezynga.com. Forestville.com is not among the registered domains, however, as it already belongs to the Forestville Central School District. Nothing else is known about the project as of yet, but we'd put good money on this being a micro-social Forest Whitaker simulator.
Take-Two's Zelnick thinks Zynga metrics are 'sketchy'
Wednesday 30 November 185 lbs of Ba-Zynga bashing awesomeness. Food consumed today: Nothing. I'm being fueled by music. Specifically, one song: "Eye of the Tiger." It's on repeat and nothing is gonna get in my way. Afternoon. It's brisk in NYC and I'm bringing the heat to Zynga. If that bubble won't pop on its own, I might as well start passing around a bottle of wake-up juice!
NYT: Rovio shot down $2.25 billion Zynga acquisition
Angry Birds developer Rovio allegedly rejected a $2.25 billion acquisition offer by Zynga over the summer. The report comes from a New York Times piece about how Zynga's tough corporate culture may gush talent as soon as unhappy employees with stock make bank on the IPO. The piece also mentions how Zynga lost out on acquiring PopCap earlier this year for nearly a billion in cash to Electronic Arts, which offered a mere $750 million with performance bonuses. Clearly, if Zynga offered more cash and lost to a company like EA (which had its own share of image issues in the past), it's not hard to contextualize that the Farmville publisher has a slight employee perception problem. At least Zynga execs can dry their tears with thousand dollar bills.
Daily iPhone App: Battle Nations
You may have played Z2Live's first big freemium iOS game, Trade Nations, and the recently released Battle Nations is a sort of spiritual sequel to that one. It features the same kind of Farmville-style gameplay, so if that turns you off, you should probably just go ahead and move on (Happy Thanksgiving!). But I do have a place in my life for about one of these games at a time, and Battle Nations is a really well-done version of this kind of game, complete with a pretty interesting turn-based combat twist. The idea is that you're running a growing encampment of soldiers in an empire, so you need to first lay out housing and workplaces for the soldiers, and then work to make your technology better and your army bigger. The core loop of the game is earning gold and XP with farms and businesses, and then you use those resources to make your troops, which can then carry out missions and win fights for you. There's a single-player "storyline" to play through (though you can't really "lose" fights -- you just try again until you win), and then the game is also very social, so you can start fights with friends, or give them some counterattack help if they're getting attacked by someone else. Battle Nations has pretty much everything you want in a casual game like this -- solid graphics and sound, and a pretty strong backbone (though loading up the game when it starts can be slow, and unfortunately Z2Live uses their own sign in service rather than Game Center, which doesn't help). My one problem with the game is that it's a little slow: There's a long tutorial sequence in which you're taught how everything works, and your various tools and mechanics unlock as you level up. I also hope that there's a market system like the one in Trade Nations that allows for trading and selling resources between friends, but if there is a market to unlock, I haven't gotten there yet. Still, for the low, low price of free, Battle Nations is a solid freemium empire building game that will keep you coming back at least as long as it takes to build up your camp to where you want it. It's free on the App Store, in a universal version, right now.
Daily iPhone App: My Town 2
You probably remember Booyah's MyTown, which eventually claimed more users than even Foursquare for a time. Booyah's management has switched up a bit since then, but the company is still plugging away at the iOS market, most recently releasing a sequel to MyTown called (not surprisingly) My Town 2. This version runs is more of a traditional social game, similar to Farmville, Cityville or any number of time-based management titles. Much like the original, the draw of My Town 2 is that you build cities with real places from your own neighborhood. Checking in to those places helps you break open rewards and items that you can't get anywhere else. Unfortunately, this means My Town 2 is sticky with the marketing. There's a whole lot of brand placement and not a lot of game play. I'd prefer more action and less marketing of the in-app purchases. But Booyah has been at this a while and they've reached an acceptable balance, especially considering that this is a freemium game and service. If you enjoyed the first MyTown, or if you just want to see what Booyah is all about, My Town 2 is well worth the download. It's free on the App Store in a universal version right now.