Slashdot Mirror
Sad Day In FarmVille: Facebook's New Game Developer Program
Nerval's Lobster writes "If struggling online-games developer Zynga thought things were bad before, they could be turning a whole lot worse: Facebook is rolling out a pilot program for small- and medium-sized game developers. 'Through the program, we will work with select game developers and provide promotional support for their games in placements across our mobile apps,' reads a note on the Facebook Developers Website. Facebook is promising those developers access to the social network's '800 million monthly mobile users,' a variety of analytics tools for measuring their games' impact, and a 'unique targeting ability' for finding the right audiences — all for a cut of the games' revenue. 'We will be collaborating deeply with developers in our program by helping them cultivate high-quality, long-term players for their games,' the note added. Zynga benefited mightily from its relationship with Facebook, but other developers have subsequently realized they can utilize many of Zynga's tricks — and the social network's enormous audience — for their own ends. King is now Facebook's top app developer, largely on the strength of its Candy Crush Saga game. If Facebook encourages more small- and medium-sized developers to jump into the social gaming, it could fill the arena with even more competitors, which could prove bad news for the already-reeling Zynga. But for Facebook, the benefits are obvious: if any of those tiny-for-the-moment developers create a hit game, the revenues will come flooding in. That would supplement the social network's ad revenue, all while ensuring it doesn't need to overly depend on a single large developer with a set portfolio of games. Zynga has already been suffering from gaming-studio closings, games being shut down, and a declining user-base."
They want the Jerk Store back.
so I can block that app as well.
Couldn't Zynga benefit from this too? If they're smart and quick, and able to develop new games using these tools, then they could eliminate some of the heavy lifting of developing a game and benefit from this stuff too.
Maybe my question seems sort of obvious, but I guess I'm more pointing to is there something with the way that Zynga is that prevents them from using this toolset? It's bad for Zynga because of increased competition, but it can also be good as it may strip away some of the layers of stuff they had to do on their own such as analytics tools, while they still retain significant resources to focus on game development. So is this really bad for Zynga?
Because what I think when I log into FB is, "y'know, this is great, but it would be even better if there were 10X MORE bullshit spam postings from my friends on my wall written by games."
if FarmVille shuts down, there will be mass suicide of Librarians across the county
Sad Day In Slashdot: Headline Is Incompl
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
FUD, FUD, FUD
"We will be collaborating deeply with developers in our program by helping them cultivate high-quality, long-term players for their games"
I thought the developers job was to develop high-quality long-term game play.
The is the biggest software pirate I know. I don't feel sad for them.
Privacy is terrorism.
I ended up deleting my account last month. (Or at least I think it is gone now, got an email saying something bout 14 days)
At some point the app decided to disturb me when someone shared a picture or whatever. It used to be only when some wrote to me or replied in a thread I also had commented on. So I disabled notifications which also ment I would not get notified about a message to me.
Facebook also decided some time ago to send me emails if I had not checked my account for half a day, saying "someone wrote something!!! Go check it out", which I also had to disable.
So it seems that they have been working really hard at making sure that we have to check the damn thing all the time. Nagging you if you don't and if you try to disable the nagging you don't get the stuff you care about.
So I ended up saying fuck it, why bother trying to figure this shit out and closed my account.
And as I expected, only a handful of my "friends" noticed I was gone.
Also the last time I logged in. Two of my videos had been deleted due to copyright violations. As I remember, it was shot with my phone and was extremely uninteresting 20 second family party stuff. But the stereo was playing music so that might be the reason. Jesus Christ.
I think the business lesson here is clear. Whenever you're trying to evaluate the likely success of a business, ask yourself if the business is efficient for the market it covers or not. In the case of facebook games, a bigger company is less efficient, because there's no benefit to throwing dozens of developers at a tiny browser game for casual players. 2-3 people can develop a top tier game in this market, the trick is coming up with the right mechanics.
There's also no natural monopoly in browser games, unlike, say, a connection network like facebook.
Zynga should have stayed small, and just enjoyed it's huge profits from the early hits.
At first I was confused by the headline, but then I realized tha
I think I always hated Zynga, but now I'm realizing that I actually hate Zynga-like behavior. These games are not even meant to be fun. They're meant to make you feel bad enough to actually spend money. They are hurting humanity psychically. They must be destroyed.
Zynga's market share is declining not because of the competition from other game vendors, but because people are waking up to the fact that Zynga really only has three games under a bazillion brand names: the click and grind "adventure" that gives you little leeway to change the game's outcome; the farming game; and gambling games.
Zynga has never invented anything unique. They've just relied on their special arrangements with Facebook to get a leg up, and now that those special arrangements are coming to an end, they're finding they've wasted their time on same-old-same-old that no one wants to bother with anymore instead of actually innovating by developing and deploying new game concepts.
People get bored with click-and-grind once they realize they can't "win" unless there is something else about the game to keep their attention, like a real RPG offers with it's character development and choices along the way. Zynga offers you little to no such choices.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Both Zynga and Facebook are doomed and clueless.
Social media is not multi generational. Sites become unfashionable.
Already young kids shun facebook and it's only a matter of time before facebook morphs into a 50's and over dating site.
The problem with getting unpopular is huge swaths of users are effectively dead ends for active users, so just like myspace you can message 50 people and get 2 replies.
Any social media site should be seen as having a maturity point, and a falloff to where it must morph into something else, like a dating site for whatever generation still uses it.
Sounds like a sad day for anyone who doesn't play stupid games on Facebook, and just wants to use it for communicating with friends/family. More games means more annoying invites to block.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
You did not just go there, did you?
Even "bad" games have followers. My issue is not with the games themself, their gaming-quality (which will be of different value to different people) or their likenss to other games (some of the most popular games are just "rehashes" of others - think Wolfenstein, or the was majority of the older (and very popular) point'n'click adventures), Tetris (and other puzzle-game) clones) it is with the underhandednes of their business.
So in other words, if they just made horrible games that somehow got popular, that would be just fine. its all the shady stuff that is bad.
If going there is the only way to encourage someone to explain exactly why Zynga's copying of function is any less defensible than FSF's and Linus's copying of function, then I have no choice.
From the FB developer's site:-
This is FB's monetisation plan for mobile, apparently. My guess is that you will get an Admob-like bar or its equivalent within the FB mobile app.
Maybe Monsanto is up for buying out the farms?
What does "Facebook's New Game Developer Program Could Troub" mean?
Is some guy called "Could Troub" the new game developer, or is there a missing ellipses in the title?
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
there you have it as the masses get wind of it all they start not partaking
have a great spying fucking penis filled cock ridden day
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