It has to be a fairy-tale come true for Mark Pincus, the 44 year old founder of Zynga, which is proclaimed to be the most sought after gaming website in the internet market. But Pincus believes that does not fill his greedy-tummy entirely! His ambition is to build an internet icon that symbolizes fun and also produce innovations that would surpass those of eBay, Amazon, Google and Yahoo. After Facebook and Twitter, the next big thing that emerged in the Silicon Valley was the Zynga Game Network. Zynga has been able to relieve people from stress by engaging them with highly entertaining games that’d help users to relax and also build a large network of friends while playing.
An astonishing fact is Zynga’s phenomenal financial success where most of Zynga’s offerings, most famous of which being Farmville and Mafia wars on Facebook, are played free of cost by users. The main and large source of money for Zynga arrives from a small lot of players called “whales” who, for the purpose of winning games and gifting friends, buy the online goods not through virtual money but by paying genuine money. The price of each product (for instance – the pink tractor, a FarmVille favourite or the Breton horse, or the chickens, etc.) varies from $3.50 to $5.60 where extra credits (money) need to be paid for maintenance, fuel filling, etc. In the recent past, the Gaming Giant took a step back in terms of its revenues with drop in its traffic, as every update of a particular player would appear on his/her friend’s Facebook wall, frustrating many users leading to their withdrawal from Zynga games. Also, there appeared to be a ruckus between the 2 Social Networking Sites where Facebook alleged to sell all their gaming applications for real money. Speculators expect more such friction to prop up in the near future.
Albeit, the game wizard Mr. Pincus doesn’t seem too worried claiming they would regain heavy traffic as earlier, with new games like FrontierVille. Pincus also claimed that there was not much of a plummet in revenues since those who quit (bowed out of Facebook due to frustration) never did buy the virtual goods. Rumour also has it that Zynga would launch its very own social-games network thereby abolishing financial worries and also diminishing its reliance on social networking sites like Facebook. Considering Zynga’s weakening relationship, the Revolutionary Gaming Bazaar also has quite a few mammoth business deals up its sleeve. Reports state that Zynga welcomes investment from Digital Sky Technologies and in addition to this prepares to join hands with Google to launch Google Games. This Avalanche-like growth foreseen by Zynga could prove destructive to competition (Electronic Arts).
Would all this and more fulfill Mark Pincus and his motive of transforming the internet into a revolutionary online game-land? I don’t think so, because being the person that he is, he’d always want more. Moreover, Mark Pincus should trust his instincts and believe that online gaming on social media is not a fad. It has and would be growing leaps and bounds into a sustainable business model.
