How A Facebook Game Makes Zynga Millions

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-completely-addicted-to-a-stupid-facebook-game-2009-12

by Hunchr • 17 years ago

31 53 17 years ago

bumblebird11• 17 years ago

This sort of thing is worse than gambling. I'd say there's a strong case for regulating things like this. It's just preying on the addicted/weak/stupid surely.

It's almost a bait and switch:

1. Get user addicted to game 2. After some time, tell user they can progress quicker through the game if they pay money (Blackmail).

Hunchr• 17 years ago

How is that any different than how I used to pump quarters into Street Fighter II arcade games back in the day?

bumblebird11• 17 years ago

Because that's an upfront honest price to pay the game.

This is blackmail later on. (You want to do better at this game? Sure, we can fix that for you, just pay us some money).

dolinsky• 17 years ago

The difference is the barrier to entry / improvement. In the case of a quarter machine slot game it's pay to play, while it's a bait and switch for a game which only allows you to continue by paying more money regardless of how well you are doing in the game. It's not necessarily illegal, but it surely is deceptive and won't win the game any fans.

gojomo• 17 years ago

My upvotes will probably be swamped by the disagree-downvotes, so I'll explicitly thank you for taking this controversial position.

I don't fully agree with you, but there is something very similar to online gambling in these games. (Wasn't Texas Hold 'Em one of Zynga's first games?) Casual games with virtual goods are an expertly engineered environment that is evolved through constant refinement to maximize money extraction -- like slot machines or indeed entire casino buildings. As with casinos, it may turn out they make a significant portion of their revenue from people prone to addiction or suffering from other mood problems, soothed temporarily (but perhaps made more dependent/despondent) by the games' synthetic reward system.

And while I don't support government regulation (of either games or gambling), cultural norms will need to evolve, for individuals and peer groups, that moderate participation. Otherwise, profit-maximizing addiction-engineering will do real damage.

The checkout form for virtual good purchases may someday include a tiny link to "Gamers Anonymous" just like the tiny print and brochures about "Gambler's Anonymous" near casino ATMs and cashier cages.

Tichy• 17 years ago

Is that article just a couple of screenshots of them playing a game??? That is even cheaper than a virtual machine gun in Mafia...

sanj• 17 years ago

I believe that giving coins for inviting friends is explicitly disallowed in Facebook's TOS.

mattmaroon8• 17 years ago

The minute you refer to the game as "stupid" you lose the ability to understand why it works.

bumblebird11• 17 years ago

I don't really see why. We can pretty much all agree that the lottery is also 'stupid', but it works, and it's quite clearly understood why it works.

These sort of games work because they get people addicted, and then blackmail them into paying money to make the games easier for them.

qeorge• 17 years ago

I think "blackmail" is too much. The offer is not misleading, even if it seems like a waste of money to us.

teamonkey2• 17 years ago

The other way of looking at it is that people are paying to be entertained by an entertainment product.

heyitsnick• 17 years ago

The only way they could be blackmailing you is if they said something like, "if you don't spend money, we will tell everyone on facebook how much you suck at maintaining virtual fish!"

I don't think this is exactly the case. They sell a service. Whether you deem it a service of value or not is irrelevant.

allenbrunson3• 17 years ago

i'm actually going to agree with matt's original point. if you call an app 'stupid', then you are preventing yourself from being able to empathize with its users. if it's successful, then it is fulfilling some sort of need. by putting yourself in opposition to the people whose needs are being met, you are making it impossible to see what they get from it.

of course, the fact that matt refers to users of products he doesn't like with terms far, FAR worse than 'stupid' kind of negates his point.

mattmaroon8• 17 years ago

That's ludicrous. Selling someone something in game is no different than selling them something in real life. Do makers of razor blades blackmail users? What about Apple with iTunes DRM?

And if you think the lottery is stupid, you should not ever work in the game design industry.

jagjit• 17 years ago

There is nothing to be lost in calling something stupid if you believe something to be stupid. The article gives a good illustration of why the author believes it is stupid.

Calling something stupid does not mean the author is saying there is no money to be made in such things.

bumblebird11• 17 years ago

In fact stupid things are often the most lucrative.

mattmaroon8• 17 years ago

There is a lot to be lost. It means you cannot emphasize with the people who enjoy it. It means you cannot replicate or iterate upon it, or apply those concepts to other things in the future.

It's dismissive, and you should never be dismissive of something that makes $250m per year. It clearly has a lot of value that the author doesn't understand, and since he has dismissed it he will never tap into that. That hurts him.

I don't like Twitter (which makes $0m per year) very much, but I try to understand it, play with it, and find out what people do like about it because it will inform product design decisions that I make in the future. I know that a LOT of people do like Twitter and therefore it cannot be stupid. In fact in some ways it must even be brilliant.

allenbrunson3• 17 years ago

how about when prognosticators refer to iPhone users as "people who have wet dreams about Steve Jobs?" by your logic, that could have contributed to why certain predictions about said users were so disastrously wrong, yes?

http://mattmaroon.com/2007/05/03/why-the-iphone-will-be-a-fl...

mattmaroon8• 17 years ago

The iPhone model I referred to was a flop. It was on track to underperform Apple's predictions. It sold very few units. And it even only got as far as it did when they cut the price so soon after launch that the people who did buy it right away were pissed off. Price was a large part of my argument, and I'd argue still that I was not incorrect. The original iPhone was clearly a disappointment to Apple.

The 3G unit was not a flop.

biznerd• 17 years ago

Could this facebook game thing be a fad?

I remember back in high school when web games like Earth 2025 (games.swirve.com/earth/) were quite the rage and everybody was playing them. This lasted for a year or so until the novelty wore off. Some still play but the casual players are gone and the audience is a tiny fraction of what it once was.

I've noticed that my FB friends that play FB games tend to stop playing after a couple months. The games are mindless, cookie-cutter and repetitive for the most part.

<EDIT>I don't think WoW is a good comparison as there is clearly a huge depth between it and Zynga games. The experience is entirely different.

"Easy come, easy go" could apply to this market. I mean these games come out of no where to millions of players. These are not hardcore gamers that develop strong loyalty and build communities, but "casual" players that probably started playing because their friends are.

"Casual" gamers are notoriously fickle. Look at the Nintendo Wii, which is the most popular console but has the least average amount of titles bought per owner (which is where the real money is.)

In 2-3 years I would not be surprised that after all this over-exposure these x-ville games will be significantly less popular. These "games" have more in common with Tamagotchi and Beanie Babies than Wow or Call of Duty... </edit>

petercooper• 17 years ago

Hasn't stopped World of Warcraft players..

igorgue• 17 years ago

No way, my younger brother has been playing an MMORPG for like 3 years and he's not bored at all, he spends like 30USD a month on that game.

Games entertain a long time (years) that's a fact.

ibsulon• 17 years ago

Some of us played for years, long after the fad wore off. The difference between the swirve games and facebook is that a community grew up around the game. From what I've seen of the facebook games, it's mostly your existing friends. I haven't heard of Mafia Wars meetups like E2025 or Utopia had, for example. (And yes, there were ways to get extra turns via various offers. I remember having to research something on goto.com every day, as one.)

What swirve did well is create a community. That's what an online game should aspire to, and I have only seem glimpses of that with the facebook games, even with the obnoxious updates.

teej• 17 years ago

There were Facebook clones of Swirve games that had similarly rich communities around them, but those games don't make as much money as the X Wars or the X Ville games.

mattmcknight2• 17 years ago

Maybe they are faddish, but it doesn't matter, as long as your payback period is short. No one is putting millions into developing rendered polygon worlds for these games. The challenge is to keep it fresh and come up with new ones that will get people on board.

sili• 17 years ago

They have a great idea on making money of users. Instead of charging a larger amount to let them play the game, they charge a numerous smaller amounts for different objects in the game. First, people are more willing to part with, let's say, 25 cents for that one cool fish than with 25 dollars for a game. Second, once you get them pulled into the experience, they will be even more willing to spend money. Surprisingly, I don't see that kind of pricing used much in other areas.

mattmcknight2• 17 years ago

It seems like it worked well in the arcades. Back when I couldn't afford a Playstation or a TV, I could rent some time on Tekken, and even got to play it with my girlfriend and meet other people at the arcade.

I haven't ever bought anything on Facebook, but it would really improve the profitability of these games if there was a super easy payments system there to avoid the huge hurdle of the first time someone has to get the credit card out of their wallet. Once they have the numbered stored, incremental purchases are lubricated, as in the case of iTunes, where it is very easy to make a casual $0.99 purchase.

DanielBMarkham2• 17 years ago

Ironic.

While a lot of us are thinking about cool new tech, lisp, twitter, and all the other kinds of stuff we love talking about on HN, these guys are writing simple flash aquarium apps and raking in millions.

Perhaps running your own startup about a lot more than simple monetary success. I know I want to make people's lives better in addition to controlling my own destiny.

But still, sure looks like a sweet spot to be in. I bet the field is probably way overcrowded by now, though.

yumraj• 17 years ago

Field is "never" overcrowded.

Before Google beat the crap out of everyone there was Yahoo, Altavista, Excite etc. Before iPod came there were numerous mp3 players. Before Zynga, there were numerous Facebook apps and countless Flash games.

So, if you want to do it and have a good idea, I'll say do it, give it a shot. Whats the worst that can happen, some time wasted. Lather, rinse, repeat...

DanielBMarkham2• 17 years ago

That's an excellent point. I stand corrected.

It's not that it's necessarily any worse or better, it's just that competing in a crowded field is necessarily different than only having a dozen or two competitors. It's just different skillsets and tactics.

I'm much more comfortable with offering something fairly unique in a smaller market with fewer competitors, but there are those businesses that do very well in huge markets with hundreds of competitors.

Either way, the odds are against you. So you pays your money and takes your chances.

robfitz• 17 years ago

Search doesn't benefit from a network effect, whereas social games do. It's the same defense that Ebay/Craigslist enjoy (though admittedly less ironclad).

Someone like Zynga has brutally low customer acquisition costs compared to a new social game developer (because they can cross promote to existing players for only the opportunity cost of showing other low-CPM banners).

mrbgty• 17 years ago

Good at least to see someone making games for people other than the hardcore crowd.

IMO, this shows that in gaming there isn't a straight line of worst-to-best but instead there's lots of different types of games that appeal not only to different types of people but different moods a person is currently in.

zandorg• 17 years ago

I had an email saying a Zynga user with my email address had withdrawn money from a Mastercard (which wasn't mine - nor do I own a Mastercard). Emailed Zynga to tell them about this odd semi-fraudulent activity, and they couldn't give a toss. Total idiots.

I didn't lose any money, but it was unnerving.

How A Facebook Game Makes Zynga Millions

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