CityVille Comes To China, Facebook-Free

[vansau]

CityVille Comes To China, Facebook-Free

Hey, if it meant you could get access to half a billion customers, you'd ditch Facebook, too.

Zynga's games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars are pretty much synonymous with Facebook, but it turns out this won't be the case in China. In order to get into the country, the casual game company has had to divorce itself from the social network and seek new publishing partners in order to tap into the country's vast population.

It turns out that Facebook is blocked in China, meaning that Zynga really didn't have a choce if it wanted to get its games into the People's Republic. As a result, Zynga's joined forces with Tencent Holdings Limited, which "runs some of the most popular services in China including the Tencent QQ IM service, web portals, multiplayer online games, and social networks."

Tencent is actually pretty enormous. It's got 647 million active accounts and its net worth ($38 billion) placed third behind Google and Amazon. Unsurprisingly, this makes the group a pretty ideal partner for Zynga, and Tencent will launch CityVille under the new name of Zynga City. The game will be unveiled on the Pengyou platform and will eventually transition to QZone (China's largest social network, which has 480 million users and is still growing).

China's an incredibly tempting market for game companies, especially those like Zynga which specialize in casual games that make money by getting players to spend real-world cash on virtual goods. As a result, it's not too surprising to see the developer get a new dance partner in order for the chance to have access to almost 500 million potential customers.

Source: Geek

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[marurder]

Fact 1
QQ is ONLY used by Chinese and those in/from China

Fact 2
QQ games are ONLY allowed on the Chinese version.

Fact 3
Foreign language support for QQ (I refer to the so-called international version) is abysmal or non-existent. The functions of this version are basic at best. No games or special functions, shortcuts or anything you'd expect from other modern chat programs.

Fact 4
Tencent had a fight with a large Internet security company (called 360 - also China based) last year after the company accused QQ of stealing users information.

Fact 5
Tencent has developed NO products, everything they have made is a copy of something else. Zynga is gonna get so screwed.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Yay, now even Chinese can be trained for spam botting by Zynga

 

[Mr. Gency]

It turns out that Facebook is blocked in China,

Does it bother anyone that I though this was funny.

 

[Roander]

Fact 1

Fact 5
Tencent has developed NO products, everything they have made is a copy of something else. Zynga is gonna get so screwed.

Fact 6
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/96024-Zynga-CEO-Admits-to-Being-a-Scammer
They deserve to.

 

[warprincenataku]

Fact 1
QQ is ONLY used by Chinese and those in/from China

I'm American and I am a strong Active user of QQ and Kaixin.

Fact 2
QQ games are ONLY allowed on the Chinese version.

Yes, but they're not that hard to navigate.

Fact 3
Foreign language support for QQ (I refer to the so-called international version) is abysmal or non-existent. The functions of this version are basic at best. No games or special functions, shortcuts or anything you'd expect from other modern chat programs.

Again, not hard to navigate the chinese version as most items are icon driven.

Fact 4
Tencent had a fight with a large Internet security company (called 360 - also China based) last year after the company accused QQ of stealing users information.

When I registered with QQ, I didn't use real information. This is the case with MOST online sites I register with.

Fact 5
Tencent has developed NO products, everything they have made is a copy of something else. Zynga is gonna get so screwed.

There is already a city game and a farm game on Kaixin that is almost a direct clone of Zynga's respective games. I agree with you on this wholeheartedly.

On a side note, Empires and Allies can be played in multiple languages and there is a Chinese version of FB out there, you just have to find ways of launching it or be Chinese and launch it from another country.

 

[IndianaJonny]

...China's an incredibly tempting market for game companies, especially those like Zynga which specialize in casual games...

And that's putting it mildly. China's games market is forecast to be worth $5.8 billion (£3.5 billion) this year. Tencent has a market capitalisation of 382.7 billion yuan (£36.3 billion) through big gun titles such as Dungeon & Fighter and Three Kingdoms so if Zynga could snatch even some of that revenue it would be a savvy move. Their decision to branch out in China also comes off the back of advice to spread beyond their heavy dependence on Facebook prior to their Wall Street debut (they filed back on July 1st for a $1 billion debut but current speculation suggests they'll sell up to 10% of its shares, hence valuing the company at about $20 billion). For a company that deals almost entirely with the virtual, that's some spread. (Source: The Times July 27: Scotland edition.)