FarmVille Now Worth More Than EA 344
tekgoblin writes "Zynga, the creators of the popular hit Facebook game FarmVille, should be happy today as the company's worth has passed that of EA (Electronic Arts)."
Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.
And not a single fuck was given that day. (Score:1, Interesting)
Because while the business of games might be big money, the business of making good games seems to just trundle along beneath the radar.
Bethesda, Valve, the indie shops and the other mouselike critters just keep cranking out the fun in the underbrush while the tyrannosaurs battle it out. Nobody notices that faint dot in the sky that gets a little bit brighter every night.
Re:Well duh? (Score:5, Interesting)
As opposed to who, Zynga?
"I don't fucking want innovation," the ex-employee recalls Pincus [Zynga's CEO] saying. "You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers."
http://www.bnet.com/blog/high-tech/zynga-8217s-winning-strategy-don-8217t-innovate-copy-execute-and-scale/1157
Re:Social games (Score:1, Interesting)
it actually is a product for dumb people, with lot of time to waste and no sense of worth.
coincidentally, the target democratic is extremely profitable.
Re:Hardcore Gaming is dying (Score:2, Interesting)
Counter Strike: Farmville.
Now you get to blow up chickens, goats, pigs, cows, and farmers!
Sounds boring as a game. You can shoot a real cow with a bazooka for $50 in Cambodia :P
More likely about the stock market (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, it probably just says more about the stock market than anything else.
It's not that hard to find (usually temporary) situations where it acts... strangely. E.g., back when it was a subsidiary of 3Com, at one point Palm was valued so high that the shares 3Com owned in it were worth more than the total worth of 3Com. With the obvious paradox that then the rest of 3Com was essentially worth a negative number, although they were turning up a tidy profit and all. With the also (not so) paradoxical situation that a bunch of "pundits" and shareholders were actually wanting 3Com to get rid of those other divisions, although, again, they were actually turning a tidy profit.
Re:Social games (Score:4, Interesting)
Casual gamers have increased the total number of people who play games. I don't think it has decreased the number of hard core gamers that are looking for something deep. If anything, the potential audience for a big, deep game is now larger.
The only problem that I see is that is getting more and more difficult for game companies to justify charging $50 or more for a game. Only one of the games I have bought in the past year was more than $10 and I was really disappointed in that game (ModNation Racers). Cheap, but awesome (IMO) games on Apple devices and Steam sales have really lowered what I'm willing to pay for a game. $10 or under and it's a no-brainer. If the game sucks, I don't care as I'm only out a few dollars.
Re:Wait, I'm confused (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, but getting into something you know is a bubble is like getting in on a pyramid scheme and hoping you get out before it collapses.
I've seen this numerous times over the years. Anybody who actually believes there is value there is either going to get burned, or is basically trying to scoop out the fictional money before everyone realizes that it doesn't really have any value. (Or, in exceedingly rare cases, a somewhat viable entity might emerge, but I'm doubtful of that.)
The problem is, as the big stock meltdown of the last couple of years shows ... when the funny money gets mingled in with the real money, everyone else gets burned. I wouldn't want the people managing my investment portfolio to be stupid enough to treat Zynga like an actual thing which should be considered real and of value.
I always cringe when people who are supposed to understand the fundamentals of valuation go zany and buy into utter hype. IMO, that's all Zynga is. If in a month everyone gets bored of Facebook, their market collapses.
Re:Estimated Worth and the 7 Eleven Stratagem (Score:3, Interesting)
Three points:
- There is more to the world than the US. Partnering with 7-Eleven does nothing to sell their stuff outside North America. The US is only 24% of the world economy and EA sells their games everywhere.
- 7-Eleven will give loads of space to anything if their comissions are big enough. If for example they got a 50% cut on the action from Zynga while Blizzard would only give them 5% on WoW top-up cards, guess who they would give more space to? All things considered, if their profit is 10x as much per-sale, even if they only sell 1/4 as much, they're still coming out ahead.
- Web 2.0 might very well, like Web 1.0, be all about selling stocks to the suckers of companies with valuations way beyond anything that can be justified by their cashflows, now or ever. Ten years have past since the pinacle of the Internet bubble, but some of us have a long enough memory to still remember how back then lots of worthless "Internet" companies were worth more than "Bricks & Mortar" ones just because they were doing business "on the Internet". Many of the same brokers that made millions back selling all kinds of shit in IPOs to ignorant fund managers are still around yearning for the old days.
I really hate EA with a vengance and would loved to see them crash and burn so that more space opens up for indie companies, but I seriously doubt that a "social gaming" company with 3 successfull games in a market space limited to 150 million users is worth more than a traditional game publisher with multiple successful games in a market space with more than 1.9 billion people (the number of people connected to the Internet, the real number is probably bigger)
Re:Estimated Worth and the 7 Eleven Stratagem (Score:4, Interesting)
I ultimately wonder what that means for Facebook's privacy issues - knowing that essentially the developer gets a lot of un-needed info, Zynga essentially has as much power to abuse Facebook's privacy policy as Mark Zuckerberg but everyone just likes to hate on Z since he's the one who started it all.
I remember there was a big issue a while back when EA wanted to put adverts into its games (I believe Battlefield 2142 was their prime pilot candidate) - and everyone made a big deal because it was like they were able to target you better because they knew what kind of games you played and it would be another venue for kids to get bombarded. There was a supposed rumour that the game was going to go through your browsing cookies looking for info but ultimately that wasn't the case (I don't think EA was stupid enough to try pulling that off without some backlash).
But here you've got what essentially amounts to an even bigger invasion of privacy - and people don't even notice because the blame game currently points at someone else. Many sources have supposedly caught Pincus (CEO of Zynga) saying that scamming users was part of their business model, though its usually small articles on places like techcrunch, so I take it with a bit of salt. Anyways, the point is that everyone seems to be mad at Zuckerberg for creating this monstrosity designed to pluck your personal info - meanwhile someone else who is probably worse in moral integrity also has access to it.
See this is where people say Facebook is the next Myspace. I don't think they've realized that Facebook elevated the game entirely, it's not just 12-30 year olds using it now - it's not just a fad social network for teenagers - its everybody, in almost every age group, and simple applications built into the platform have made their way into 711. So Facebook Apps are too addictive for most people to drop, so they don't want Facebook to go down. If Facebook isn't in threat of going down, Zuckerberg doesn't have to worry much. If Zuckerberg doesn't have to worry, then Pincus doesn't have to worry. Its a vicious circle where they both support each other and no one can stop them.
Re:Social games (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably not as profitable, but profitable all the same.
It was almost 10 years ago now that Popcap figured out that casual gamers are one hell of a money spinner so it's certainly not a new realisation. Facebook just helped change the degree to which they could make money- Popcap now (or a year or two ago at Facebook's game spam peak) would also probably have achieved the level of income Zynga has.
So I think Zynga would've still been succesful without Facebook, but I agree not to the extent they have been with Facebook.
oblig (Score:4, Interesting)
http://xkcd.com/802/ [xkcd.com]
"Best trivia I learned while working on this: Man, Farmville is so huge! Do you realize its the second-biggest browser-based social-networking-centered farming game in the WORLD? Then you wait for the listener to do a double-take."
Re:Social games (Score:1, Interesting)
You're all kidding yourselves. Zynga stole farmville directly from another flash game. The entire concept, art-style and implementation from top to bottom was lifted off another game.
They don't employ psychologists. Are you kidding me? Read their leaked office memo. Basically they are interested in only one thing. Stealing content, redistributing it under a different name and pushing it until they have the market share.
Re:Social games (Score:3, Interesting)
The difference is that Civ III is a game. Farmville is a drug.
All good games are drugs, and Civ ranks pretty damn high on that list. I mean, have you never experienced (or at least heard of) the dreaded "one more turn" syndrome?