Zynga (farmville) worth more then EA

[kazgar]

And you were worried about the popamole coming from EA

http://www.1up.com/news/report-zynga-surpasses-electronic-arts

Electronic Arts recently splurged on social gaming developer Playfish; but they themselves have now reportedly been eclipsed by the biggest player in the emerging industry -- Zynga.

Bloomberg is reporting that the FarmVille and FrontierVille developer has surpassed EA with a value of $5.51 billion according to SharesPost. EA is worth roughly $5.22 billion on the Nasdaq.

EA continues to be hit hard by the slumping economy, with shares dropping some 6.3 percent. Zynga's value has more than doubled in the same period.

The estimation is by no means definitive. Zynga remains a privately held company, making SharesPost one of the only ways to get a read on the company's value. Both Zynga and EA remain well behind Activision Blizzard though, which is worth more than 13 billion.

 

[zeitgeist]

Explains why pretty much all developers from the "golden age" are working on some sort of a Farmville clone I guess.

 

[Destroid]

How does farmville even make money?

 

[Chef_Hathaway]

How does farmville even make money?

Facebook, it lures millions upon millions of tards to facebook.

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

They make it with a item shop that gets ravaged every day by people who 'just want a bit more of an edge' over someone else. Or they justify that since they were away from the game working, it's okay to spend a bit of that day's pay on a few extra sacks of seed.


The sparkly flying horse mount that WoW released? A drop in the bucket compared to this stuff.

 

[DalekFlay]

I don't mind people leeching money from idiots, I just hate that "normal" game companies react with the following: "HOLY SHIT PUT FARMVILLE IN MY RPG/FPS/RTS/MMO/TBD!"

 

[J1M]

They make it with a item shop that gets ravaged every day by people who 'just want a bit more of an edge' over someone else. Or they justify that since they were away from the game working, it's okay to spend a bit of that day's pay on a few extra sacks of seed.


The sparkly flying horse mount that WoW released? A drop in the bucket compared to this stuff.

I don't have facebook. Please explain how or why someone would need an edge over someone else in a game that appears to be about planting things.

 

[Destroid]

Isn't it non-competitive? Isn't the core gameplay something along the lines of - check back at regular intervals so you can click on all your shit which gives you resources so you can plant more shits to click on?

 

[desocupado]

Isn't it non-competitive? Isn't the core gameplay something along the lines of - check back at regular intervals so you can click on all your shit which gives you resources so you can plant more shits to click on?

There's always some asshole that has to have a better car or lawn than his neighbor.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

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.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Fucking subhuman scum. Nuke them from orbit.

 

[Micmu]

I don't know and care who the hell these farmers are, but anyone who pisses off EA is my friend.

Hope EA dies soon

 

[DwarvenFood]

They make it with a item shop that gets ravaged every day by people who 'just want a bit more of an edge' over someone else. Or they justify that since they were away from the game working, it's okay to spend a bit of that day's pay on a few extra sacks of seed.


The sparkly flying horse mount that WoW released? A drop in the bucket compared to this stuff.

I don't have facebook. Please explain how or why someone would need an edge over someone else in a game that appears to be about planting things.

Well, you can indeed plant stuff and harvest it etc., but you buy "upgrades" like a tractor or different kinds of crops and certain crops require you to level up aka to grind, but other things, like expanding your land or getting a farm house or whetever they invent, requires you to have a certain number of "neighbours" = facebook friends that also play farmville.

Now this can prove to be a problem because you can not have unlimited neighbours so you can spend some real world currency instead of meeting the neighbours requirement. In this way you can still have your nice land expansion. It is a shame that they make money like this on unsuspecting players that cannot possibly continue in other ways because thay do not know any other people playing the game in question.

Huh what, why I know all this ? ... :violin:

 

[Aikanaro]

Zynga are worse than EA.
http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-09-08/news/farmvillains/

At least EA have some vested interest in the health of the games industry and work towards supporting it (grants, supporting indie games, suing the shit out of Tim Langdell). Zynga seem to just want to rape it as much as possible and it seems like everyone else is eager to dive down to their level.

 

[Malakal]

Stupid people dont deserve our attention. They have too much money? Let them spend it as they wish.

But its a serious of the gaming industry when this shit becomes so big.

 

[Micmu]

Agreed, Assbook idiots deserve to be exploited to the max! Go Zigga!

But its a serious of the gaming industry when this shit becomes so big.

The AAA gaming industry already is completely dead.

So, they'll just start making these "social" crap games instead of DRM-infested, dumbed down fat client/service based pieces of shit and generic popamoles on the other hand.

Indies are still gonna indie, and small non-american developers will still try to make proper games.

 

[madbringer]

i will rage about farmville for a while to satiate the devouring hunger for hate of the hivemind, and then check back to see if my potato is ready for harvest and see if someone left a comment under my new fb photo

 

[Destroid]

Look upon the face of the decline.

EDIT: The company apparently had $600 million in venture capital to get rolling, wtf did they spend all of that on, certainly not making their shit games. It's enough for a regular studio to produce 12 AAA titles including marketing campaigns O_O

 

[Malakal]

I am seriosuly SHOCKED by how big budgets for some games really are. This shit costs 600M? They either pay themselves millions or are the least efficient coders ever.

Just think how many KoTC with good graphics we could ahve for this price. Madness.

 

[DraQ]

Good. The less overlap between actual games and casual games, the better. Drawing greedy lowest common denominator panderers away from proper gaming just makes more breathing room for the indies and small companies that aren't so encased in their own lard to prevent the from trying anything remotely risky. It's not that smart people wanting smart games will suddenly disappear just because retards fap their lives away on fakebook.

The only bad thing is that this may delay the moment when the giants splatter all over the photorealism barrier, which would bring much more effective and thorough cleansing of the industry.

 

[Excommunicator]

Good Point DraQ. I have always maintained that that will be the moment (graphical plateau) when the industry does some serious introspection (in a purely selfish, money oriented way of course) and begin to reevaluate their competitive advantages away from graphics. Although I think, unfortunately, there is less driving power held by the game industry individually and more by the interactive entertainment "super organism" of the game developers, console developers, hardware manufacturers and now the social networking element as well.

I would like to have seen a "splattered giant" but you are right, that impact will be cushioned massively by the size of the bag of gold hanging over said giant's shoulder, which seems to be getting bigger and bigger. In the meantime perhaps it will allow some of our budding sleeper powers to get a step up in genuine innovation/creativity while the moron giant's attention is on the glittery stuff. At least with it that way there's no real competition

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I don't think we really need innovation. Innovative games tend to be shit, like spore or the sims.

 

[DraQ]

I don't think we really need innovation. Innovative games tend to be shit, like spore or the sims.

You're confusing innovation with innovashun. I am disappoint.

 

[Excommunicator]

Honestly Awor. If you want to fill the world with fallout or arcanum clones forever (or whatever it is you want) - simply remaking games based upon an exact formula you enjoy - then that's about as bad as farmville is now.

Actually it is kinda sickening hearing that. We have a Codexer of all people absorbing the marketed examples of "innovation", and then the response back is that innovation = bad? That either is a symptom of severe jadedness or a visible example of how the industry is actually destroying the the minds of their audience by instilling a belief that innovation is inherently bad. Why would you even think that?

Fucking hell. Is this that thing that guy was talking about

 

[FeelTheRads]

If you want to fill the world with fallout or arcanum clones forever

Yes, because it would be totally bad. There were hundreds of them already and they improved on the formula until there was nothing else to do.

Why the hell would I want "innovation" when there's barely anything done in the genre I like? It's exactly "innovashun" that you're talking about: innovation for the sake of innovation.