Zynga (farmville) worth more then EA

[Jaime Lannister]

EA just had a -$348 million dollar cash flow for 09-10 and had negative net income for the third straight year in a row. Would you really want to invest in EA over a developer in a hip, growing market? (i can't find zynga's financials on marketwatch, but i'm sure they're better than ea's)

 

[ChristofferC]

It's a bubble.

 

[kris]

What confuses me about farmville is that the only people who play it are the exclusively, passionately anti-game people. You know, the ones who, if you asked them if they liked video games, would go NO NO THOSE ARE FOR GEEKS I AM A COOL TEEN GIRL/CONTENT MIDDLE-AGED HOUSEWIFE WHO ONLY WATCHES COOKERY PROGRAMS FICTION IS FOR KIDS (EXCEPT TWILIGHT). Even after sinking hundreds of hours into farmville, they would probably still say this. I don't get it. I hate people.

Its true, apart from the part were they think they are cool. Most don't, well at least not here. Talked with this girl acquitance on MSN and was shcoked to hear that she a played a game. Well my shock vanished when I heard it was this. I told her it is not a game.

 

[MetalCraze]

What confuses me about farmville is that the only people who play it are the exclusively, passionately anti-game people.

So is EA target audience

 

[AzraelCC]

I think you're equating Zynga with just Farmville. The real moneymaker for Zynga is their Facebook version of online poker. And of course, as was mentioned in the article, Zynga uses addiction-building "gameplay" to hook in players.

That's the reason why they're financially successful.

 

[MetalCraze]

Brian Reynolds works for Zynga btw

Asshole

 

[Alex]

God damn it, I fucking hate this industry.

 

[Tycn]

Zynga. It even sounds like some sort of fucking malware.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Games need innovation to grow. You can't just, "clone" Arcanum, just changing the setting and a few rules. For the game to be any good, you would have to tie the elements of the new story and setting to the rules. This would need you to understand this new setting and rules enough to come up with good ways to link these elements together. And this is innovation.
.

Good games > innovation.

They made 14 games with the Gold Box engine and 12/14 of those games ranged from solid and worth playing to downright good.

(While NWN was super fun, the pricing model was not good, and I can't comment on the Spelljammer game, so if that was good it could be 13/14)

Innovation isn't really necessary to make good games, we mostly already know what is needed to make good games, we just need to make sure the elements of a good game are present in the right amounts and properly polished.

Once we regain the ability to make good games and are plagued with too many good but unoriginal games, then it would be a time to demand innovation.

I long for that day.

 

[Jaesun]

What are the subscription numbers of Farmville vs WOW?

 

[Excommunicator]

Games need innovation to grow. You can't just, "clone" Arcanum, just changing the setting and a few rules. For the game to be any good, you would have to tie the elements of the new story and setting to the rules. This would need you to understand this new setting and rules enough to come up with good ways to link these elements together. And this is innovation.
.

Good games > innovation.

They made 14 games with the Gold Box engine and 12/14 of those games ranged from solid and worth playing to downright good.

(While NWN was super fun, the pricing model was not good, and I can't comment on the Spelljammer game, so if that was good it could be 13/14)

Innovation isn't really necessary to make good games, we mostly already know what is needed to make good games, we just need to make sure the elements of a good game are present in the right amounts and properly polished.

Once we regain the ability to make good games and are plagued with too many good but unoriginal games, then it would be a time to demand innovation.

I long for that day.

I would say that is true only for the short term. Yeah it is a fantastic thing to be delivered a game that is fun and works and does what you want it to, even if it might only reuse stuff done before. That almost never happens, but yeah it is great to have that craving fulfilled

However you will be depriving yourself of improvements that once you have experienced, you would be hard pressed to go back before they were around, which explains a lot of the inaccessibility of older games.

I think the problem really in question here is why the industry must have only one gear: lowest common denominator. The real answer IMO is encouraging people to do what they want to do because they like the end product rather than because of how they will be rewarded for producing that product. It is all theoretical and idealistic but the movie and book industries both do it (to varying degrees), with lots of simultaneous markets, lots of different economic strategies and people with vision beyond money. Innovation should be taking place at all times, but so should satisfying all markets. The ideal industry needs to appreciate and understand the achievements of past games and use them where ever advantageous but one which does not compromise by saying things cannot ever be improved.


Humans will always struggle to envision things that do not yet exist.
That's basically where bigotry comes from

 

[Destroid]

What are the subscription numbers of Farmville vs WOW?

12 million subscribers for WoW.

68 million monthy users for farmville, whatever that means. But numbers for games like farmville are much more volatile.

 

[Excommunicator]

Most of whom play for free. You cannot get meaningful comparisons between subscription and non-subscription

 

[zeitgeist]

However you will be depriving yourself of improvements that once you have experienced, you would be hard pressed to go back before they were around, which explains a lot of the inaccessibility of older games.

What improvements, though? Apart from UI polishing and other cosmetics, the entire RPG industry still hasn't surpassed the games most Codexians think of as classics in any meaningful way. And many, many years have passed since they've been released.

It is all theoretical and idealistic but the movie and book industries both do it (to varying degrees), with lots of simultaneous markets, lots of different economic strategies and people with vision beyond money. Innovation should be taking place at all times, but so should satisfying all markets. The ideal industry needs to appreciate and understand the achievements of past games and use them where ever advantageous but one which does not compromise by saying things cannot ever be improved.

Absolutely, if things worked according to this model, there would be much less complaining about the general state of things from all sides.

But... I think I've touched on this in a recent post but I can't quite remember, so I'll expand on it a bit here: what if the state of the game industry is just an indicator of how every other entertainment industry (though I'm not sure literature counts as such) will end up soon enough? It's already apparent that the serialized TV shows for example, which largely depend on ratings, are pretty much in the same state as the game industry. Sure, there are still some decent movies and books, but they're also becoming harder to find (and decent books are getting increasingly harder to publish!). The American comic book industry parallels the video game industry almost completely.

The game industry has evolved rapidly due to many factors, mostly technological advancement. It already had this "golden age" where things worked as you described. And it went past it to what we have now. So what if that was really it, and all the other industries will follow?

 

[Excommunicator]

Yeah well I don't think it is even fair to use the argument that innovation cannot happen just because the past decade or so has had little to show for itself. We all know what an atrocious state the RPG industry is in, and how it is moving in the opposite direction to what most of us want. Every step in the direction that it is heading simply takes away any opportunity for innovation because it is taking out the very core mechanics we want, so what is left to improve on?

Call me overly optimistic but I actually think what is coming is an "Age of Indies", especially in the RPG arena. With the growing resentment of the so-called "AAA" industry and a lack of certain gamers being heard I think will give way to a number of people who are going to stand up and try to fill that void way as best they can via indie development. With the recent success of certain indie games including Minecraft (even if it isn't an RPG, although I have barely played), and eventual release of games like AoD and possibly SoW, I think people will begin to see more and more how much of a market is really there, and I think this will perpetuate the number of indie devs in this area, which I think will eventually lead to an eventual (although not complete) shift in the RPG industry to more appreciate the "niche" markets. I think this will lead to a return of a certain kind to more traditional ideals and we will eventually see the RPG world heading uphill again.

A long and probably painful process it will be, but the games will come and they will help bring broader change IMO. I definitely do not believe the RPG market is doomed at all, and the current RPG recession will ease and level out, although never quite enough to put the RPG Codex out of business

If people don't agree and they care enough then they need to go out and start working on their own projects to incline the RPG world

 

[Rogue]

People who waste time on FartVille and similar creations deserve to die a horrible death and then endure a million years of searing pain in hell.

 

[Rogue]

And someone please contribute to some incline and fix the title.