Looks like the Skinner Box is becoming less effective. A little Extra Credits thing I picked up there.
Zynga's Profits Continue To Drop
- Thread starter vansau
- Start date
And 80% of the people celebrating will indulge in the game industry's other awful business practices, like 15 dollar map packs, yearly iterations, etc.
I don't get it. Is it an "it's okay when I'm doing it" sort of thing, or what?
I don't get it. Is it an "it's okay when I'm doing it" sort of thing, or what?
time to celebrate
sucks for the people losing there job though but they will all right(hopefuly). well the talented ones should at least be able to find a job
good riddance to this Skinner box factory
sucks for the people losing there job though but they will all right(hopefuly). well the talented ones should at least be able to find a job
good riddance to this Skinner box factory
Eh. I'm in the "not surprised" camp. I got tired of their stuff quite quickly.
Strange thing is that I was well into Farmville at first, when it was a fairly simple, lunch break kind of game. Then they kept continually developing it, but not making it better... merely more complex, comprehensive, and an all-round time and mental effort sink. Plus you had to get deeply collaborative with everyone on your facebook, and generally -almost- everyone hated you for it, as you were drowning their social networking with stupid begging letters from your avatar. I think I tried to do that once and gave up...
Eventually it all got just too much effort for hardly any payoff (in order to get a bigger farm or do any of the more fun things, I was going to have to pay real money - and I'm sorry, if I'm going to lay out cash for this kind of game, Harvest Moon is my one and only true farm-game love), with no hope of really getting anywhere unless I both doled out quite a lot of cash and also somehow convinced a large contingent of my friends to do similar.
I can see what they're doing and why they need to, in order to keep their business afloat, but I don't think it's a sustainable model in the long term... that said, getting a steady revenue stream from 4.4% of a sizeable chunk of Facebook's huge userbase in return for what can't have been that huge an artwork or coding outlay (and fairly minimal server costs I would reckon - your communication with Zynga is on the order of a few bytes per second once all the image data's cached, a typical farm can probably be represented in 20kb or so, and the total of all shared resources is likely under 100mb) isn't to be sniffed at.
Strange thing is that I was well into Farmville at first, when it was a fairly simple, lunch break kind of game. Then they kept continually developing it, but not making it better... merely more complex, comprehensive, and an all-round time and mental effort sink. Plus you had to get deeply collaborative with everyone on your facebook, and generally -almost- everyone hated you for it, as you were drowning their social networking with stupid begging letters from your avatar. I think I tried to do that once and gave up...
Eventually it all got just too much effort for hardly any payoff (in order to get a bigger farm or do any of the more fun things, I was going to have to pay real money - and I'm sorry, if I'm going to lay out cash for this kind of game, Harvest Moon is my one and only true farm-game love), with no hope of really getting anywhere unless I both doled out quite a lot of cash and also somehow convinced a large contingent of my friends to do similar.
I can see what they're doing and why they need to, in order to keep their business afloat, but I don't think it's a sustainable model in the long term... that said, getting a steady revenue stream from 4.4% of a sizeable chunk of Facebook's huge userbase in return for what can't have been that huge an artwork or coding outlay (and fairly minimal server costs I would reckon - your communication with Zynga is on the order of a few bytes per second once all the image data's cached, a typical farm can probably be represented in 20kb or so, and the total of all shared resources is likely under 100mb) isn't to be sniffed at.
A 4.4% conversion rate for f2p is still not bad at all. The problem with zynga is that too much of their marketing depended on facebook spam. Once that was cut off they didn't really have anything else to go on other than the momentum of all their current players.
Well that and their games are crappy.
Well that and their games are crappy.
What that you say? Zynga's mindless psychological manipulation machines games, are a fad, and a totally unsustainable business model?
LE GASP!!
LE GASP!!
I'm sorry but if you're looking for a comparison of ethics you're going to have to aim lower. I recommend invoking Godwin's law.Zachary Amaranth said:
For those who feel who would feel sorry for the lower employees if Zynga went down:
"Gee, I sure hope Robotnik's reign of tyranny doesn't end, I would hate to see all of those Swat Bots become obsolete."
Nah, I think you did the desperately grasping for an argument thing well enough I don't need to try.arealperson said:
Are you just offended because you are one of the people who continue to support similar business practices while decrying the ones you don't personally like, or do you just like to throw out "Godwin's Law" for fun?
I threw out Godwin's law because I honestly believe that comparing a $3 map to buying time between interactivity periods is simply ridiculous in the extreme. I really don't feel there's a point in trying to argue the obvious difference in quality of gameplay between Call of Duty and any of Zynga's games, but if you'd like to try in Zynga's favour go right ahead.Zachary Amaranth said:
You threw out Godwin's Law because you were desperate to make an argument but had none.arealperson said:
I'm pretty sure I didn't have to say anything more after you invoked it; you'd already pretty much lost any credible ground right there.
I humoured you for a while, but if you think quality can be objectively quantified, I'm pretty sure you've got nothing real to say.
Please, if you do have something real, meaningful to say, go for it. but that you brought specifically Call of Duty (not the sole offender) tells me your bias is showing, and this really does come down to "I hate that other people are enjoying other things than me!"
This is going to get very repetitive, very quickly, but I threw out Godwin's Law as advice in an attempt to ridicule your choice of argument with $15 map packs. Yes, that means you were the first to bring up Call of Duty-like prices.Zachary Amaranth said:
I'm going to make the difference in quality clearer, because you seem to have a hard time understanding. Can quality be purely objectively marked? No, but there are objective indicators as to which points are worthy of praise. So, I ask you this. If one person created a Call of Duty map, do you think the value of his time is worth only $3? Now I can make that exact analogy in terms of Farmville. If one person changed the time parameters between 36 hours and 12 hours on upgrading one of your virtual farms, do you think the value of his time is worth as much as $1?
I'd rather Zynga collapses and dies in obscurity.
They not only effectively plagiarized the games that made them all their money, but their games aren't even games; they're just digital hamster wheels!
If you want to play Farmville for free, just download Progress Quest.
They not only effectively plagiarized the games that made them all their money, but their games aren't even games; they're just digital hamster wheels!
If you want to play Farmville for free, just download Progress Quest.