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FarmVille Now Worth More Than EA
tekgoblin writes "Zynga, the creators of the popular hit Facebook game FarmVille, should be happy today as the company's worth has passed that of EA (Electronic Arts)."
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This just shows the power of casual games and social interaction within them, similar to Wii but even better.
I can already see how many posts here will be about how dumb the game is and how only dumb people play it, but I don't think it matters. People like it and the company is making more money than EA. They don't have piracy problems, they have lower development costs and a have HUGE untapped market to gain that will most likely grow a lot more in the future as this all is still so new. But that they already passed the industry giant EA really shows something.
And good for them and the people who play FarmVille and other social games on social networking games. I think it has been over 20 years that we have talked about how to get gaming to be more "normal" and how to get girls to game too - this is it. Let people enjoy the games they like.
Someone will say "hardcore gaming is dying" soon...
Soon we'll have nothing but Cooking Mama and Farmville. No more Counter Strike.
Sort of nitpicking but if you click through to the businessweek source article, you'll notice that Zynga Game Network's value is an estimated worth while EA's value is a stock-market value. You should note that the former is estimated by SharesPost Inc. while the latter is determined by the Nasdaq Stock Exchange (in the past year EA has slumped almost 20%).
That's not to say Zynga isn't worth this much, I had a very shocking realization one day as I went to 7 Eleven to pick up some milk. Zynga has partnered with 7 Eleven in selling and marketing FarmVille, Mafia Wars and YoVille items and 'currency.' That's right, like a phone card you can get a prepaid Farmville card at any 7 Eleven (at least in my area) and they were putting free items on Slurpees, Big Gulps, coffee, candy and fast food they sold in the store. So you'd get this little peel off thing giving you a bulletproof vest in Mafia Wars and then it'd tell you how to log in to use it. I bet that alone got a lot more people hooked on Facebook -- just to get to their free item in Zynga's game (and this is why I feel borderline justified to call it a stratagem instead of strategy)!
For sometime now you've been able to buy WoW prepaid cards at 7 Eleven and there's been a handful of Xbox/PS/Wii games behind the counter but when I saw the shelf space and signs devoted to this stuff I knew it was going to dwarf all other forms of gaming very quickly. I know there are plenty of other reasons but when you see something completely outside the realm of where you think you should see a social game (I was going to 7 Eleven to pick up some skim milk), it really hits you right in the face how big this is going to get. Put yourself even spread out across the entire United States with ~10,000 locations of advertising and insertion and you're going to beat anything EA can put out with its billion of dollars. In order to compete with this, EA would have to put a demo disc of four different games targeting different ages for free on the counter of 7 Elevens (like a separate AOL disc for three different consoles and CPU). Despite how relatively inexpensive that would be for them, they aren't going to do that. And that's how Zynga wins out, the illusion that it's 'free' paired with efficient mass distribution of the free concept.
My work here is dung.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Does that say more about Zynga or EA?
Technoli
Next thing you know they're going to start buying franchises and turning them all into FarmVille clones.
To be honest, EA refurbishes all the same crap, so this is not a surprise.
Ha, so thats what? 2 cents total? Obviously I kid, but seriously, EA hasnt really done much good lately. Their games are stale, ever since (and possibly before) they murdered the NFS series, porche unleashed was amazing... Then it had to go gangster etc... Gangsters and Boobs sell... /eorant
Do I see a FarmBoobs in the future of Zynga? I sure hope so...run and farm that... home boy.
you know you can fry stuff putting things into things that dont like the things you put into it...
Because while the business of games might be big money, the business of making good games seems to just trundle along beneath the radar.
Bethesda, Valve, the indie shops and the other mouselike critters just keep cranking out the fun in the underbrush while the tyrannosaurs battle it out. Nobody notices that faint dot in the sky that gets a little bit brighter every night.
Facebook has an application blocking feature which keeps me blissfully oblivious that there are more Farmville users than citizens in my country.
Not that I'm saying there's anything worse with playing Farmville compared to some other random game online, but I _just don't care_.
.: Max Romantschuk
It's a sad day if it's cold hard cash they're talking about. When I was 14 I took a tour of ea in burnaby it was the highlight of my youth and encouraged me to be more active in computer programming. I didn't end up choosing comp programming as a career in the end but I still write in c/c++ almost everyday
Are you implying EA is making high quality games now?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." - H.L. Mencken.
Facebook's change of policy could make Zynga worthless overnight. EA on the other hand holds hundreds of IPs, studios etc. These two are not even comparable or in the same league..
I've always felt that one of EA's greatest challenges has been recognizing disruptive technology and capitalizing on it.
This played out numerous times with the PS3 vs. Wii, PSP vs. DS, and especially regarding micro-transactions. There is a producer at EA who, since at least 2005, was not only aware of how important MTX was in Asia, but that we couldn't keep believing that cultural barriers wouldn't keep games on the pay-per-month subscription model forever here in the U.S. I remember going to his brown-bag lunches and saying "Wow, here's a guy who gets it!" But no one took social gaming or micro-transactions seriously back then: it was Sims, Warhammer, Madden, and Pogo. Speaking of, imagine if EA had immediately recognized how powerful a platform Facebook was, and flooded the early app/games scene with MTX versions of Pogo games?
Now we're seeing the advent of Social Gaming 1.0 mixed with these micro-transactions, and already it's been so disruptive that a completely new company with low budget games has surpassed an industry giant that spends tens of millions per title. Why? Because the market has been broadened yet again, far beyond the bounds of the comfort zones most larger companies have established for themselves. EA hasn't ignored this, of course, but they reacted late and with the time-honored response of buying a company that specializes in the area, hoping to get into the market immediately.
Admittedly, the current state of games on Facebook is... I don't know, someone said it was like the Atari days before the big crash. Yet imagine what Social Gaming 2.0 will look like as more high-quality games and free-to-play 3D MMOs start hitting the browsers.
I was wondering who was still playing that game...
..can you farm freely without limitations, inspections, and land usage restrictions.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
"Ba-zynga!"
Farmville may be worth more than EA but only because Farmville's worth is measured in these stupid coins that you can't use for anything.
Is it April 1st already?
Well, it probably just says more about the stock market than anything else.
It's not that hard to find (usually temporary) situations where it acts... strangely. E.g., back when it was a subsidiary of 3Com, at one point Palm was valued so high that the shares 3Com owned in it were worth more than the total worth of 3Com. With the obvious paradox that then the rest of 3Com was essentially worth a negative number, although they were turning up a tidy profit and all. With the also (not so) paradoxical situation that a bunch of "pundits" and shareholders were actually wanting 3Com to get rid of those other divisions, although, again, they were actually turning a tidy profit.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Here is the original article instead of some shitty blog spam.
My mom is retired and came to visit for a couple of weeks. I know I was pretty shocked seeing her play farmville, she's not someone who I would have ever envisioned playing videogames and yet there she is, a decent amount of time everyday playing Farmville. I have to give Zynga and Facebook credit here, that's where she got hooked. I don't even have a Facebook account myself and never tried Farmville but props for them for making a game that can be addictive to someone a gamer never thought he'd see playing a game.
Less dense shit rises.
Farmville is worth more than EA like AOL was worth more than Time-Warner.
. . . it's not.
- oakbox
Not just answers, the correct questions.
(can't remember the actual source) I heard that last year or so that Zynga made (grossed?) something like $240 million from Farmville et al.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Which was itself a rip off of Harvest Moon.
We desperately need someone to do a +1 Godel and arrange their farm like a Go board.
It would give entire new meaning to "Life or Death" questions for your farm!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Weed For Speed
Despite all the trolls who cry that a game doesn't have crysis-like graphics, its a good thing to have more 2D fun games.
I would personally like to see more SDL games like Wesnoth.
So, we have valuations of facebook and zynga that are:
a) speculative
b) so high that knowledgeable people say, "really?"
c) based on unsustainable annualized growth rates as high as 250% http://www.secondshares.com/2010/04/06/zynga-5-billion-valuation-buy-%E2%80%93-early-leader-in-social-gaming-is-printing-money/
Draw your own conclusions.
Zygna is the John Farson to EA's Gilead, and the rest of the video game market is the Affiliation. Zygna is going to rise up, seemingly from nothing, leading the weak minded and dumb, and overthrow Gilead and the rest of the Affiliation. Nothing will be the same in their wake.
Of course, Zygna isn't the cause of the world moving on, they are merely a symptom. This doesn't bode well for us real gamers, us gunslingers.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
http://gawker.com/5527403/mark-pincus-the-facebook-desperado-making-off-with-millions
Is nobody going to chime in and point out that Zynga is in the business of stealing the work of others, changing a few tiny features, and then claiming it as their own? Their CEO even said, "I don't fucking want innovation."
Read on here.
That's a bubble waiting to burst. With that maths in mind, Solitaire would be more valuable to Microsoft than their entire Xbox department.
DON'T PANIC
http://xkcd.com/802/
"Best trivia I learned while working on this: Man, Farmville is so huge! Do you realize its the second-biggest browser-based social-networking-centered farming game in the WORLD? Then you wait for the listener to do a double-take."
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
I have never played farmville and have no interest in ever playing it. One of my kids plays it but doesn't spent ridiculous amounts of time with it. At first I was critical, but thinking about it, they think the games that I play are an equal waste of time. Are WoW or Sims really any "better" sure they are prettier but in the end its still just a time waster.
Almost all zinga games are pyramid schema games uses and built upon your network. The top active ones drives and force other users to be active and there is no escape from it full of spams unwanted enforcements from the game. It's a working business model but an ugly unethical one!
wait... excuse me while I puke.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
http://kotaku.com/5675347/woman-kills-baby-for-interrupting-farmville-session
Your stereotypical zombie farmville player.
A lot of people argue here that playing PC game X is no different from playing Farmville. Obviously these people either never played a PC game or Farmville.
Farmville is a micro-transaction game were there is NOTHING micro about the amounts involved. WHY do you think this company with a simple game line-up is now bigger then the largest game publisher in the world?
Because people don't just enjoy harmlessly playing a rather boring game for whatever reason, they are forking over TONS of cash, with no end in sight. If I spend 1200 dollars on a new PC, that is it. I got a new PC, it will last me at least 3 months. A farmville player can spend a fortune each and every day with no end. And not all people can handle that.
And don't talk about how you can play for free, because if people played for free Zynga wouldn't be this big. Zynga is a bookie who never pays out. People spend and spend and they never can be finished. That makes it very disturbing that a company with such a simple line-up can rake in so much cash. This might be the ultimate tax on stupid. Move over lottery, a new king has arrived.
And that that is the other loathsesome element. Many of the players who play are not the types with money to burn. I can afford to piss away 1500 euro or so a month, it is pocket money, everything else is payed for plus plenty of savings. But I am not playing Farmville. The people who play are, well those who are not smart enough to have a sense of worth. I sell my old gaming rigs when I buy a new one, getting a fairly decent return on my money. Farmville game? Sell your farm, what do you get? It is money down the drain.
But people watch sports? Indeed they do. For a fixed cable fee on a TV that lasts years. They don't spend 1 buck every minute to watch a soccer game that never ever ends. Yeah, you can go to another continent for a match but then you got something for your money, people who you gave the money did actual work, not just flipped a bit on a server. A farmville shop item has no value, there is no limit to them, no resale value. Yet millions are spend on it.
No, Farmville is not just a game and not just a hobby. It is as insideous as holding a fake raffel that never pays out and people can and do buy an infinite amount of tickets. That would be illegal. We would protect people against such a scam. But because Farmville is just a game, it isn't subject to any regulation, any sense of common decency.
But ask yourself again, if Farmville is harmless, how did Zynga get to be bigger then EA?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The only difference is that in Civ III I get to kill people.
And in Farmville, people kill you!.
(I realize that this girl probably would have killed her baby anyway as she didn't know not to shake it; whether the baby interrupted a game, tv, or a texting/phone conversation. Sad for sure.)
My guess is Madden 2020 and Madden 2030 will still sell like hotcakes, but Farmville will have a shorter life cycle.
Some people don't like to exercise. They find it laborious, tedious, exhausting, even painful.
Other people love to exercise. They find it invigorating and get all depressed and grumpy if they have to skip it.
Same goes for any complex brain activity.
So does crack cocaine.
I'm the same way. I couldn't care less about professional sports. I won't watch a game unless somebody I know(as in personally) is playing in it. Even then it's easy to get bored. I'd much rather be playing.
I don't read AC A human right
grows bigger, and bigger. :) When is a game not a game? When it's not a game and zillions of morons play it anyway. That's the game, the selling of it, not in and of itself, because any real gamer can see that. Still, have fun giving yourself away to your info "providers."
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
I love all the elitist geeks in here slamming what other people like to do with their free time as a waste. You may get a big stiffy spending 10 hours struggling to compile the latest *nix app, but I guarantee a large % of those 62 million farmVille players think that's a waste of time too. I have a lot of friends that play farmville. Personally I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole, but if they like it, who cares? They aren't wasting MY time.
Ironic isn't it, since you get people shouting all day long on here about wanting to use their media/computer/apps/OS/golf cart the way THEY want to use it. Stop with the sour grapes. You coulda designed a rediculously simple, highly addictive game with social interaction and made millions, but you didn't, probably woulda been a waste of time...
http://jacksonville.com/news/crime/2010-10-27/story/jacksonville-mom-shakes-baby-interrupting-farmville-pleads-guilty-murder
Alexandra V. Tobias just got convicted for shaking her baby to death because he was crying while she was playing Farmville. I don't know anybody who was killed for disrupting Madden 2010.
Does anyone remember the game Farm Town, which FarmVille was an almost exact clone of? It's sad when the original creators of a brilliant idea lose out on seeing any success because they didn't market it as well.
Farm Town may even have been a clone of an even earlier game. But FarmVille definitely was modeled very closely on Farm Town.
This just in from the AP wire services: Planned Parenthood Federation of America has wholly endorsed the online game Farmville as one of the best ways to aid in population control both in trials and actual use.
FragHARD or don't frag at all
but I seriously doubt that a "social gaming" company with 3 successfull games in a market space limited to 150 million users is worth more than a traditional game publisher with multiple successful games in a market space with more than 1.9 billion people (the number of people connected to the Internet, the real number is probably bigger)
...or is that the just the part of your "completely missing the point" strategy?
Zynga games are (according to you) somehow NOT a part of that 1.9 BILLLLLIIIIOOONN market?
Everyone on the Internets buys EA games constantly?
Are you even aware what kind of games Zynga is pushing?
Ever been to Facebook?
The point the parent poster was making is that EA is in business of selling DVDs.
Which is a physical object with mass, size etc.
Some of their products even come in a huge promotional box - just so you could play a game for a couple of hours.
They also cost significant amounts of money - both for the software AND the hardware.
And even should they switch to a completely electronic form of software delivery - their software weighs several gigabytes.
On the other hand, those Zynga games are basically free (or appear to be) - unless you REALLY want to spend money on them.
There are no software and hardware requirements other than that which is needed to browse the internet today.
And the items that they DO sell to their players cost $0.00 to produce, deliver, stock, install...
REGARDLESS how big their or 7/11's commission on the items is - they are making money cause their products cost basically NOTHING to produce and deliver.
They can be making 0.00001% of the purchase in that deal AND STILL making loads of money cause they are selling ACTUAL IMAGINARY PROPERTY.
Forget IP-rights bullshit - this is the real deal. They are selling single bits of information wrapped in hot air.
And the best part is - putting their "products" on consumables means that thousands of people who actually DON'T play their games will also be giving them money anyway.
They are basically making money out of thin air.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I'd say she probably is happy it isn't as complex and she can just poke around for a few minutes a day and be done with it.
Zynga in their early day, partnered with many of these cell phone survey companies. Offerpal was a huge one they operated with. You would sign up for a free DS only if you gave your credit card, did 3 marketing surveys, and had your cell phone billed for a subscription based joke service. They had all sorts of deals involving subscriptions or free shit, which ended up eating your wallet without you realizing it.
Nobody can say that Zynga was never out to scam people. Zuckerberg knew this too. Just like the youtube guys didn't want to remove infringing content too soon, or else they'd lose traffic, zuckerberg allowed these scams to take place because he wanted zynga to grow. Now look where we are.