Zynga makes most of its revenue from a small number of players who spend heavily on virtual goods. After a low-key offering in December, Zynga shares have recently risen more than 40 percent.Įven company officials say they do not know exactly how the platform will work. Morningstar concluded this week that the company’s competitive advantages were not sustainable and that the stock should have a valuation of about 75 percent of its recent price.īut investors cheered the platform announcement, sending the stock price up almost 10 percent on Thursday, to $14.48. Some analysts have been skeptical of Zynga’s prospects. “There is this feeling when you hit a profile of someone who plays every day: ‘He’s helped his friends 21 times this week, and I’ve only helped 12.’ Players will say: ‘Am I as helpful to my friends, or should I help them more? Do I need to interact with them more?’ ” “It’s the concept of balance of trade,” Reed Shaffner, lead product manager of, said. That is because players on the platform will be publicly ranked on their willingness to assist what Zynga is calling their “zFriends.” A profile page on the site will display players’ favorite games, their skill level at each game and a helpfulness index. But on the platform, you’ll immediately get more cargo planes than you’ll know what to do with.” “You’ll be in a holding pattern to get that airport built. “If you’re playing CityVille right now, and you send out a request, ‘Please send me a cargo plane,’ it might take a couple of days for your friends to respond,” John Schappert, Zynga’s chief operating officer, said. That is not always possible while playing on Facebook, where your friends might have other things to do besides instantly shipping virtual goods to you. Zynga says its players have been complaining that they want more instant gratification: if they have only five or 10 minutes to play - standing at the bus stop or taking a coffee break - they want to accomplish something. Its chief selling point is that, unlike on Facebook, everyone is there for the same thing.
To get anywhere near that number, the platform will have to be a huge success. Now, executives talk casually of reaching a billion. Zynga games have about 240 million monthly users. Most of all, the platform is a critical effort by Zynga to extend the torrid growth since its founding in 2007. While Facebook has been experimenting with letting other Web sites use its currency, the Zynga platform is a big move forward in this regard. When players want to buy something on the Zynga site, they will use Facebook credits. The platform could even be seen as extending Facebook’s dominance. In the short term, however, the interdependence will only increase. In the future, hard-core players will most likely go to Zynga’s own site, finding not only Zynga games but also offerings from independent developers. Most Zynga games are played on that social network, which derives 12 percent of its revenue from Zynga. The move is likely to reduce Zynga’s reliance on Facebook, something analysts have said the company needs to do.
#CITYVILLE GAME ONLINE PLAY FREE TRIAL#
The platform will be introduced in a trial version on later this month. The goal is to make social gaming, which was pretty easy to begin with, even easier for everyone. The company announced a new gaming platform on Thursday that will match up players who do not know one another but who have a mutual interest in getting the crops in and spelling words with J, Q and X. Zynga, the creator of FarmVille, Words With Friends, Mafia Wars and other popular social games, is going to start supplying friends for those who are lacking.
But you are going to have a hard time playing FarmVille.
SAN FRANCISCO - There is an old saying that if you have two real friends, you should count yourself lucky.
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