If you've ever used Facebook, I'm sure that you're familiar with the casual gaming company, Zynga. After all, who hasn't tried their hand at Farmville, Mafia Wars or even used Draw Something on their smartphone? In the beginning, Mark Pincus built his gaming company on Facebook. He started with just a simple virtual farming game and as Facebook grew, he was able to create a gaming market out of people who never really played games before. The simple fun of games like Farmville was that they were social, they didn't require any real gaming skills and they didn't take up a lot of time. As more and more people joined Facebook, the popularity of the games grew.
From the humble beginnings of Farmville, Zynga's empire grew and, eventually, Pincus took his company public. Although Zynga's IPO looked promising, it hasn't been the fast growth that both the company and investors expected. Whether it was a series of unfortunate events or an unsustainable business model, Zynga's popularity started to crumble right about the time that the company went public.
From that moment, Zynga developed a single-minded determination to increase the number of users who play their games. Their dedication to their goal only served to alienate the more casual gamer and before long, games that used to be simple became too complicated. In Farmville, users who were accustomed to being able to play as much or as little as they wanted suddenly were faced with challenges to keep building and collecting things. If you didn't have a lot of friends who played or you weren't willing to pay for in-game currency, you were left behind. It seemed as though the company made a decision to turn their backs on the very things that had made them great in the first place.
Since they went public, their stock prices have been in decline. The company recently spent $180 million on the purchase of a small gaming company called OMGPop - the creators of the very popular "Draw Something." Draw Something was a hot smartphone app that allowed users to play a game similar to Pictionary with their friends. It was a huge hit, but the moment that Zynga invested in it, the game began to lose players. Personally, I don't think that Zynga had anything to do with it, it was just a fad that was over. Still, it left the company struggling to overcome their losses.
This week, during the Apple iPad mini launch, there were tweets from Zynga employees saying that things weren't good at the office. It isn't clear if the announcement was purposely planned during a time when the tech world was focused elsewhere or if it just happened to be the day before the company was scheduled to release their third-quarter earnings. Either way, the company announced that they were shutting down work on their new game, "The Ville" and closing their game studio in Boston. Then, they laid off 100 employees from their Austin office and announced plans to retire 13 of their games.
Although there hasn't been an announcement yet as to which games will be retired, there will be a staff meeting early next week to discuss the changes and a public announcement should come shortly thereafter.
Have you ever played a Zynga game? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Additional Sources: SFGate, Forbes, The Verge
Image source: Zynga.com
Become a member to take advantage of more features, like commenting and voting.
Register or sign in today!