Zynga profits drop like a rock.

Well, there's a few downsides to trying to produce one service continually instead of new types of services every once in a while.

I feel bad that I'm happy about this.

But I'm happy, so I guess that makes up for it.

edited 7th Nov '11 3:56:23 PM by VutherA

... It probably shouldn't, but this makes me happy.

For the record, Zynga's player base isn't just leveling off, it's declining, meaning that despite a major surge of casual players, they aren't bringing in people who want to pay for more stuff... meaning that yes, hardcore gamers may in fact be necessary for certain business models like this.

Yes, guilty happiness does seem to be the emotion of the day for this article. I'll get the champagne and slight guilt.

In utterly non-shockinhg news, Casual gamers arent as profitable as hardcores for buying what essentially amounts to DLC

finally, just hope this happens to rovio too. (seriously screw angry birds)

Hey! At least people pay for angry birds! (in theory)

Remember when the casual revolution was going to take over the gaming world?

Actually, Rovio isn't likely to die, they've released Angry Birds for free in several places and are putting out newer products that people keep buying. In short, they aren't making the same mistake as Zynga, putting all of your eggs in the same basket and using the "Make popular game free to get free advertising" Valve strategy to great effect.

edited 7th Nov '11 5:18:05 PM by Ramus

The lesson here is also "Don't make the same game over and over again." There are a number of quite successful casual companies, like Popcap and Big Fish Games, but they actually have some product variety.

Empires and Allies was a nice change. Everything else was turnin ginto either Ville-clones or mafia-clones.

Excellent. Now we've just gotta wait for Farmville: Extreme Edition, with all the blood and guts and swearing that'd draw in the hardcore crowd.

Your fucking cows are mature, asshole! Bust out that chainsaw and get ready to farm some goddamn beef!

edited 7th Nov '11 7:38:29 PM by MrDolomite

I've read a bunch of articles, but i can't seem to exactly pinpoint what exactly is going on. They're making more money, but losing it faster? Is that the gist? But i don't know Zynga's business model! Do they primarily get money from advertisers or microtransactions? I don't know! I am ignorant! Agh!

Can't be anyworse then the ever-so creative Mafia game sequal, Mafi2.

Maybe not as many people are buying into the microtransactions, or at least not enough to keep server maintenance from eating it all?

Or maybe their art department siphons a lot of money to go about painting over their old games with new themes.

This gives me a happy. No guilt whatsoever.

I remember the last time I was happy other people lost their jobs.

Dosn't make me happy at all. Not exactly sad though, there games didn't entertain me much. feel bad for the programers though.

Well, as for my reaction... Seeing Dark Souls sell really well and Zynga's profits drop makes me happy in a "SUCK IT CASUAL CATERERS" kind of way. But on the other hand, the only people that will get screwed in the end are the wage-slaves.

Oh well. It's All About Me. And I miss the days every game ever released was targeted directly to my demographic. I'll whine and bitch at any deviation whatsoever!

edited 7th Nov '11 8:21:33 PM by ShirowShirow

Apparently their revenue is going up, but profits are going down. So most likely they're going to cut costs by firing a bunch of people. And then make a profit again. Except less people will have jobs. Woot!

Okay, that I'm not happy about.

I went to a Zynga party recently. So much money spent on booze. So much. It was great.

Regarding the innovation thing, though, has anyone played Mafia Wars 2? I haven't yet, but I almost kind of want to. One of my really good buddies is on that team, and he's probably the most brilliant game designers I've met, and despite working at Zynga, he actually gets excited about that game. I'm currently looking at a review, too, and it looks like there is actual real time interaction, a drive to screw other players over instead of just helping them, and some kind of simplistic character driven mission system.

The point is, while Farmville and Cityville are most definitely their cashcows (lolpun) and thus will never change (just like the main titles of all the other big studios), it looks like they actually are doing more stuff with the other products (ie. spending a shit ton of money on them which may or may not lead to lower profits), and it's kind of unfair to go "LOL THEY SELL THE SAME PRODUCT NO WONDER THEY SUCK I WILL LOL AT THEM FOREVER" without actually looking at their stuff due to moral obligation or elitist pride or whatever.

That said, I still haven't acutally tried out MW 2 because I don't want my facebook friends to know.

PS. regarding the "lol casuals thought they would be taking over the world", quickly looking around google and not checking my sources, it looks like casual and social games take up about 25-30% of the market in terms of revenue. While that's not a majority, that's still a significant number and ignoring it is about as good as putting your fingers in your ears and holding your breath and stomping really hard until you get your way.

edited 7th Nov '11 9:25:45 PM by ch00beh

I enjoy their games and am not bitter to their simplicity. They do not threaten the way that I play games in any way, so I do feel a bit bad that their profits are going down.

I guess there is no need for me to be bitter towards them, but as a casual gamer I don't like that stuff being marketed at me :P

My view of Zynga pretty much amounts to apathy. That, and the games just all look the same to me. I mean, I don't care about genres and I genuinely do enjoy casual titles, but I can probably count the number of games Zynga made with one hand, not including what amounts to duplicates. That and these kinds of "games" hardly thrill me (as if Facebook games are really games). I used to play Mafia Wars often in '09, but then I grew bored of it and I just don't see the point of friending people I don't even know just to get a higher perk.

edited 8th Nov '11 12:53:16 AM by EarlOfSandvich