Excuse me a minute;
muahaha -hahaha -Hahahaha! -MUHAHAHAHAA!
-MUHAHAHAHAHARR!!
Well folks. I guess i fucking called it. Latest news says; "Zynga be trippin yo!" or more precisely; Zyngas newsest games are getting fewer and fewer users and the amount of traffic coming to their existing titles has seen a steep, excelerating drop-off. Overall their games have less users at launch and a much shoter overall lifespan. Whilst existing games hemmorage users. Oh and on top of that their billon dollar valuation has sunk by over 15% in less then 2 weeks. All of this adds up to one fact; the shit-brick of gaming has a very real chance of falling into a death spiral. And i couldn't be happier.
All of this of course has been obvious for months (look at my archives) but its part of a wider picture;
"This is what an oversaturated market looks like. Smaller companies are doing what Zynga does but better, faster, and cheaper. Far more are doing it shittier and more expensive - leading both to consumer fatigue and creating a greater sense of 'consumer judgement' - ie, the consumer becomes smarter about determining quality." ~ A forum poster that knows more than paid professionals.
Indeed it is. Infact this is a very concise explination of any market bubble. This story has played its self out over and over again in different sectors of the games industry in one form or another since its inception; I've been screaming this from the rooftops for months. Shame it took paid 'analyists' so long to catch on. Remember in the 1st half of 2011 when they were lining up to give the big publishers a spanking over not investing heavily in the market? "You will be out of touch" they said "Social gaming is the future, just look at the numbers!". Then EA dropped a massive money-bollock on playfish and the ensuing bun-fight for the market has got ever more bubble shaped. Could it be that 99% of self procliamed industry 'experts' are worthless, out of touch hacks i wouldn't wipe my arse on? Surely not!
Round and round the industry goes. Learning nothing... Ahh well...
Its sad really, Social gaming had the potential to become something wonderful and help hark back to an age of both old school MMOs, text based gaming and help create a new age where websites, multimedia and gaming could come together to create encapsulating experiences and help them interact meaningfully with other players.[1] But Companies like Zygna had other ideas.
The reality of social gaming is total devoid of ideas, content, creativity and in the case of Zynga basic human decency. They have almost singlehandedly choked the life out of the fledging genre (Much like activision did with music games) and made it a byword for extorsion, shoddy data practices, microstansaction hell, lack of content, copy and paste games and utter utter bullshit. Even the word is enough to send hardened game advocates like myself into a towering Zynga based RAAAAAAGE.
Now Zynga hasn't killed social gaming, not by a long shot, but it and its imitators have irreversibly tarnished its reputation. They have its credibility out behind the bins and beaten it mercylessly with slegehammers into a squidgy, twitching pulp. Social gaming has set back the perception of the potential quality web based games by about 10 years. You can run "The Bastion" in chrome for christs sake, but all people think about when you say "Web based games" is stickman fighting and selling digital cows.
So yes, i applaud your joining in with my laughter at the expense of Zynga. Any damage to them is a boost to the games industry in my book.
Zynga is part of the reason we can't have nice things.
[1] For a small seed of this potential see; Echo Bazzar.
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