Pop Cap and Zynga - the difference?

[Volafortis]

PopCap makes fun, addicting games. Zynga makes tools for exercises in dicking around.

The difference is, Stuff like Plants vs. Zombies actually has gameplay value, while Zynga really doesn't have the nice polished fun gameplay of PopCap games.

 

[Pegghead]

Why are Pop-cap games considered better than Zynga games? They aren't associated with Facebook.

/Thread

But idiotic calls and quips aside Let's do a case study of the titles two most successful games, for Pop-cap I'll take plants vs zombies and for Zynga I'll take farmville.

Plants vs zombies had a charming and instantly recognisable visual style, streamlined gameplay that combined tower defense, strategy, unit management, tense action, was addicting in a "I'm having so much fun and the levels are keeping me hooked and knowing that I'm nearing the end" kind of way and had a charming theme song,

Farmville is a Facebook application that became immensely popular because of two things

-All the self-considered hip to the jive teens and teen-fussy mothers of today use Facebook for lord only knows what reason

-It is this same demographic that enjoy never-ending, not fun or engaging in any way games such as the sims who are farmville's target auidience and chief consumer base.

It has an uninspired, uninspiring visual style, it's havily tied in with facebook and feels like a second job.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

For starters they make two completely different types of games. Yes that is right Farmville is not a casual game and never will be. It gives actual casual games a bad name. Zynga makes these things called social games which involve spamming invites and gifts in order to get more gifts in return. You also get better at the game depending on how many friends you have that play it. Yep thats right has nothing to do with skill or time put in. It is all to do with how spam advertising you can do for the scammers that are Zynga. Damn those spambots I mean people. Also I have played Zynga's games and got to about lvl 60 in Mafia Wars and about 20 in Farmville so I do have a valid opinion of it.

Popcap makes actual puzzle games. Although they all end up roughly the same they do make actual games. They do not spam people, force people to invite more friends or t ry get you to add their toolbar. That is why people like Popcap in contrast to Zynga.

 

[AlphaOmega]

Because Popcap made this:

The most fun Tower Defense game I have ever played.

 

[Georgie_Leech]

Well, one company makes games, another makes time sinks, for starters. Pop Cap games, for all their simplicity, require some degree of skill, whilst Zynga Apps require none. Finally, Pop Cap games are fun because of gameplay, while Zynga is fun (to some) because of the "rewards." A bot could be programmed fairly easily to to open the "game," Perform task x, gather item y, get reward z. However, doing that in a tower defence game would be silly. The whole point is to play it, rather than sink hours into it.

 

[CD-R]

Pop Cap may make casual games, but they are at least games. The games Zynga makes aren't even games, they are collections of status bars.