theurge14: Anything related Zynga gets deleted promptly from my phone. Sorry Words with Friends retards, it was called Scrabble before it was stolen and filled with ads. Sorry Draw Something people who kept nudging me, I'm not drawing a picture of "ISLAND" again for the 400th time for 2 coins that I can spend on... nothing.

Omg, does Words With Friends SUUUUUCK.

Makes a game of Scrabble look like 3D chess, ffs.

Thank god Mrs. Pungent got over her short-lived addiction...

Spindle: At least with Zynga games, spending money just leapfrogged you to a level that you could otherwise get to with time and persistence. The real evil are the games that tout themselves to be "Free forever" yet if you don't spend a bunch of money, you'll just get steamrollered by other players that have money to cough up.

/Evony, I'm looking at you.

Evony? Fark that. Travian. Christ I've spent $200 a year on that goddam game. You can't win survive unless you kick in a couple bucks. It's a text based browser game without any moving graphics whatsoever.

amindtat: [indiegameschannel.com image 317x401]
Rest in Pieces Zynga

HA! +1.

SacriliciousBeerSwiller: If I didn't have serious ethical issues with the concept of betting on failure, I would have shorted the hell out of this stock. Seriously, who didn't see this coming?

Short selling isn't exactly dancing with the devil.

Every time you invest postively in a stock, you are, in effect, 'shorting' all its publically-traded competitors that you DON'T invest in.

Ain't no ethics in capitalism...beyond what you bring in yourself.

I hope this is a sign that Zynga's done for. They have ruined the gaming industry. Every jackhole in the industry is now trying to move every company to their shortsighted business model. I can't even tell you how many people in the industry I have heard say that they are no longer going to make games for gamers because that doesn't make as much money as making games for casual players. I keep trying to tell people that in the near future gamers will still be playing games, casuals will have moved on to the next fad. Most companies don't want to invest in non-social games anymore unless they have a COD or Halo or similar label on them. It's disgusting that there's some sort of perception that it's all about extremes. As if you can only go the route of making a dumb casual ptp game or invest $50m+ into a franchise or would-be franchise sure thing. I've just heard too many people who have given up on the concept of just making good games and that really sucks for those who are truly passionate about making games and not just about making money. I hate money guys. They always find a way to make a quick buck, tank an industry, and then parachute out as the plane is crashing.

contrapunctus: Up until March of this year, I worked for a gaming company that decided to switch from console to Facebook products. I was pretty much shouted down by all of the marketing/MBA bureaucrats when I suggested that we put our faith in technology and artistry, not a "flash in the pan" business model. All of them pointed to Zynga as the example to follow.

The whole "social gaming" industry is going to crash dotcom style because the people in charge of it have no intuitive sense of what works long term.

Unfortunately, that's true in many of our industries...we've churned out a generation of MBAs that can't think beyond the next quarterly report.

It's part of why China is eating our lunch...beyond labor and environmental regs, they're making money off stuff WE invented...but our engineers couldn't find U.S. executives willing to put money into it.

xanadian: Good.

F*ck Zynga and their business model.

Can't be quoted enough.

PawisBetlog: Morrigan: I can't help but think this whole "social" crap is another "bubble" waiting to pop. Like others have commented; consoles are not dead. I still spend time playing Skyrim even though I've finished the main quest. I don't play those stupid social games, and mobile games are fun for an hour then lose their novelty.
I'm not by any means a financial analyst, but I'm savvy enough to know this can't sustain itself.

I agree on the social media from a consumer standpoint. I had a passing fancy with a couple games on Facebook, but it lasted a few weeks and then I was back to the same things mentioned multiple times here. Real games. Skyrim, Civ 5, etc.

And as far as social media and companies, I don't go to Facebook to get told what to buy, where to eat, etc. I'm not going to "like" your page because I like your restaurant. I go there to check in with friends, see pictures, and argue politics.

Yelp is going to eat your lunch on the consumer side. I'll put reviews of restaurants on there because it's relevant, and I can use it when I'm hungry, not get hit with it when I'm trying to find out where the party is this weekend.

Does, or does not, Yelp "massage" their reviews, in exchange for money from the restaurant?

Because the last couple of local joints I checked...places I eat regularly, and LIKE...the reviews were negative, and pants-on-head retarded...

One woman complaining that my favorite sub joint didn't heat up her tuna sub...after admitting she hadn't asked them to...

Priapetic: In their rush to monetize, Zynga and Facebook will kill the goose. Just watch.

I take Zynga's decline as one of the few bright spots in evidence of our progress as a culture. Now if we could just get more people to stop wasting their time in such an extreme manner (i.e., Facebook), perhaps we could pull our societal airplane out of its tailspin.

Even such colossal wastes of economic resources and time as television and sports serve society by creating shared experience to facilitate collective identity and cooperation, and (occasionally) present instructional morality and ethics situations (a la ancient Greek drama). Farmville? All the resource consumption and waste of time with no societal benefit. If anything, it isolates people and draws them from past times that DO add to societal value. Even if it's just getting off the couch and going outdoors for a walk.

Yeah, like complaining on fark about people wasting their time...

This is bad news for..............Ouya
And the 1000's of people who gave them 4 million bucks for something that don't even exist yet

They're also carrying the anchor of being more or less dependant on staying in Facebook's good graces to even do business. No thanks. If I wanted to invest in a company whose entire business model is predicated upon forces totally beyond their control playing nice with them, I'd buy airline stock.

So... they spent $200 million to acquire a property and reported a lost of $108 million for the same period. In other words they made $92 million profit but just spent a shiatload of money for something that might be profitable.

I might be a bit contrarian here, but



Buy-Zinga

Priapetic: In their rush to monetize, Zynga and Facebook will kill the goose. Just watch.

I take Zynga's decline as one of the few bright spots in evidence of our progress as a culture. Now if we could just get more people to stop wasting their time in such an extreme manner (i.e., Facebook), perhaps we could pull our societal airplane out of its tailspin.

Even such colossal wastes of economic resources and time as television and sports serve society by creating shared experience to facilitate collective identity and cooperation, and (occasionally) present instructional morality and ethics situations (a la ancient Greek drama). Farmville? All the resource consumption and waste of time with no societal benefit. If anything, it isolates people and draws them from past times that DO add to societal value. Even if it's just getting off the couch and going outdoors for a walk.

If I get one more farking Zynga request on Facebook I'm gonna lose it.

BudTheSpud: Crabs_Can_Polevault: A lovely sentiment and all-really, it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of anthropomorphized ass-cancers-but the damage is done. The momentary success of their "business model" of creating games but charging for playability has spread to a lot of other big-name manufacturers of so-called "games." And degraded the whole notion of "games" for everyone else.

I miss Electronic Arts. And I mean the original, artistically inspired Electronic Arts, not the digital sweatshop that it's become.

[cdn.wikimg.net image 250x350]
[www.retrogameguide.com image 339x480]

/Never forget...

Still have M&M I think.... Never did finish the damned game just kept killing Cuisinarts to speed level. Never played Starflight. My friends and I were too busy playing melee in Star Control. Those were the days.

I can imagine that unexpected decline being fairly punishing. I did a battery of those games, like 4 at once, until one day I realized, all i was doing was clicking functionally the same buttons on different games, that basically did the same thing. I was like a hamster pressing a food pellet button, or worse, a button that showed me a picture of a food pellet.

So i cold-turkey stopped, and suddenly realized I'm not checking my facebook every few hours for the cooldowns so I can click another button and wait another couple hours.

Optimus Primate: contrapunctus: Up until March of this year, I worked for a gaming company that decided to switch from console to Facebook products. I was pretty much shouted down by all of the marketing/MBA bureaucrats when I suggested that we put our faith in technology and artistry, not a "flash in the pan" business model. All of them pointed to Zynga as the example to follow.

The whole "social gaming" industry is going to crash dotcom style because the people in charge of it have no intuitive sense of what works long term. Hell, 75% of the executive branch at my last company had never even worked in gaming before being hired. Sure, they understood charts, graphs, and Excel spreadsheets, but if you asked any of them to make any kind of creative or aesthetic decision, they'd give you the blank stare.

Videogames are an inherently creative medium; if you put pencil pushing dweebs in charge of your projects like Zynga has done, you're toast.

10 years from now, Epic will be here, Valve will be here, and Rockstar will be here. Zynga will be in the same shiatpile as Webvan and flooz.com.

This is it in a nutshell...perfectly explained. Zynga is a self-destruction waiting to happen! Already the idea of playing most Facebook Games is a joke, with most people who do play them will only admit it after some embarassment.

I'm currently playing King's Bounty: Legions and Marvel Avengers. In addition, I play some games for 10 minutes a day to help out my friends and vice versa. I've even spent $15 on King's Bounty.

Am I supposed to be embarassed by this?

LarryDan43: In april Zynga insiders dumped 43 million shares at $12 a share. Lawsuits coming?

Unfortunately, the wastes of space at the top have already gotten enough cash from the rubes to have:

1. made the Zynga example a viable business model
2. ... well, the "wastes of space of the top" should have been lynched, not given a profit.

The Jami Turman Fan Club: Optimus Primate: contrapunctus: Up until March of this year, I worked for a gaming company that decided to switch from console to Facebook products. I was pretty much shouted down by all of the marketing/MBA bureaucrats when I suggested that we put our faith in technology and artistry, not a "flash in the pan" business model. All of them pointed to Zynga as the example to follow.

The whole "social gaming" industry is going to crash dotcom style because the people in charge of it have no intuitive sense of what works long term. Hell, 75% of the executive branch at my last company had never even worked in gaming before being hired. Sure, they understood charts, graphs, and Excel spreadsheets, but if you asked any of them to make any kind of creative or aesthetic decision, they'd give you the blank stare.

Videogames are an inherently creative medium; if you put pencil pushing dweebs in charge of your projects like Zynga has done, you're toast.

10 years from now, Epic will be here, Valve will be here, and Rockstar will be here. Zynga will be in the same shiatpile as Webvan and flooz.com.

This is it in a nutshell...perfectly explained. Zynga is a self-destruction waiting to happen! Already the idea of playing most Facebook Games is a joke, with most people who do play them will only admit it after some embarassment.

I'm currently playing King's Bounty: Legions and Marvel Avengers. In addition, I play some games for 10 minutes a day to help out my friends and vice versa. I've even spent $15 on King's Bounty.

Am I supposed to be embarassed by this?

Yes.

wildcardjack: So... they spent $200 million to acquire a property and reported a lost of $108 million for the same period. In other words they made $92 million profit but just spent a shiatload of money for something that might be profitable.

I might be a bit contrarian here, but

[3.bp.blogspot.com image 200x200]

Buy-Zinga

Please tell me that you're joking.

BudTheSpud: Crabs_Can_Polevault: A lovely sentiment and all-really, it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of anthropomorphized ass-cancers-but the damage is done. The momentary success of their "business model" of creating games but charging for playability has spread to a lot of other big-name manufacturers of so-called "games." And degraded the whole notion of "games" for everyone else.

I miss Electronic Arts. And I mean the original, artistically inspired Electronic Arts, not the digital sweatshop that it's become.

[cdn.wikimg.net image 250x350]
[www.retrogameguide.com image 339x480]

/Never forget...

Starflight was one of the few of those sort of games I ever finished. Good times.

The Jami Turman Fan Club: Optimus Primate: contrapunctus: Up until March of this year, I worked for a gaming company that decided to switch from console to Facebook products. I was pretty much shouted down by all of the marketing/MBA bureaucrats when I suggested that we put our faith in technology and artistry, not a "flash in the pan" business model. All of them pointed to Zynga as the example to follow.

The whole "social gaming" industry is going to crash dotcom style because the people in charge of it have no intuitive sense of what works long term. Hell, 75% of the executive branch at my last company had never even worked in gaming before being hired. Sure, they understood charts, graphs, and Excel spreadsheets, but if you asked any of them to make any kind of creative or aesthetic decision, they'd give you the blank stare.

Videogames are an inherently creative medium; if you put pencil pushing dweebs in charge of your projects like Zynga has done, you're toast.

10 years from now, Epic will be here, Valve will be here, and Rockstar will be here. Zynga will be in the same shiatpile as Webvan and flooz.com.

This is it in a nutshell...perfectly explained. Zynga is a self-destruction waiting to happen! Already the idea of playing most Facebook Games is a joke, with most people who do play them will only admit it after some embarassment.

I'm currently playing King's Bounty: Legions and Marvel Avengers. In addition, I play some games for 10 minutes a day to help out my friends and vice versa. I've even spent $15 on King's Bounty.

Am I supposed to be embarassed by this?

I play Battle Pirates. Kixeye isn't good by any stretch of the imagination, but they're not quite as frogballs retarded as Zynga. And KABAM basically just does prettier ripoffs of Kixeye games but has a fanbase made of equal parts toxic waste and raw sewage. Kixeye games, while you can definitely pay to win, to actually do so requires paying absolutely sickening sums. Just paying a bit basically just gets you a tiny bit of entertainment (still not worth any part of my entertainment budget, but I'll grant them that). Just avoid any of the obvious whales and it stays pretty fair. They're mostly actual strategy games, and involve more choices and skill than simply clicking a button. No facebook begging involved with any of their games really, either. For something I can manage on a second screen while on hold/on call with clients they're not bad games.

TravelingFreakshow: The "pay to win" business model needs to die, period.

Its the same business model as the arcade.

PunGent: FB charges me a single cent, I'm never logging in again.

Hell I don't log in now. My G/F handles rejecting friend requests from vapid twunts I would not have spoken to 20 years ago, and I am sure as hell not going to bother engaging with now.

Lady Indica: xevian: Jon iz teh kewl: [www.farmviller.com image 100x100]

i actually shelled out $20 of REAL money to buy one of these awhile ago. what does it do? well, nothing. it just sits there. i don't even PLAY Farmville anymore!

So people are going on about spending money in a game? Let me tell you my EVE story some time and my mass of assets which, like your $20.00 what-look-likes-a FarmVille item, cost me around $1700 bux to get and I can't get them out of the station I put them at.

If the game is entertaining, even for a week, I will spend my money on it.

You should check out Team Fortress 2. You can buy hats! ;)

You ain't kidding, sister. Those people are freakin' lunatics. I preordered a Sam and Max game a while back because hey, I like those guys and the games, and I got some random TF2 hat as a bonus. Sweet. Now, because the intersection of people who play TF2 and people who like Sam and Max is a pretty damn small set, it's apparently uber-rare and I get 2-3 people a day messaging me about it trying to get me to sell it to them. It's gotten to where I'm just keeping the damn thing out of principle any more. Don't ask me WHICH principle, but I'm sure there is one.

Sticky Hands: The "place to waste some time while I look to score weed and tail" business?
I've been playing these new online games all wrong.

Arcade games were designed to be overly harsh on players to force them to pay, social games are the same.

Also people can try to blame Zynga for the business model but they didn't make it. Freemium, micro transactions, and in-game purchases have been around for almost a decade. It is also no different than paying for a service except instead of a flat monthly free (like MMOs or Xbox live) it is an on-demand, instant transaction.

Hell Diablo 3 has the real money auction house. If you buy the best gear available that game is literally a mouse clicking game, anyone with a brain and a mouse can play it. The hilarious thing is that they have brainwashed "hardcore" or "base" gamers so much that they charged them $60 for it.

/Owns D3 and has played plenty of MMOs
//Plays Indiana Jones: Adventure World and Woodland Heroes, both solid Facebook games

Madbassist1: PunGent: Does, or does not, Yelp "massage" their reviews, in exchange for money from the restaurant?

Because the last couple of local joints I checked...places I eat regularly, and LIKE...the reviews were negative, and pants-on-head retarded...

You might be on to something. I checked Yelp for one of the best restaurants in our area. Seriously its great. There were only two reviews, and one of them was just outlandish. There's no way what he described happened to him in that place.


Yelp is absolutely worthless to me. I used it to target several new places, based on the glowing reviews that bore no resemblance to my experiences. I gave up on it.

Reading this thread, I decided to check out a couple of places that are notoriously bad around here. Sure enough, glowing reviews. Including the jerk place nearby that is filthy, has no parking (reviews laud the "private" parking in the rear lol) and sports an inadequate buffet table which ensures lukewarm chicken curry sits there all day breeding bacteria. It is disgusting and has had ongoing trouble with Health Dept and is known by locals to make you sick unless you were raised in W. Africa. Yet Yelp is nothing but glowing review after glowing review written by some self important "foodie" wearing ironic glasses.

I installed a Nintendo Emulator on my Galaxy SII. Long as I keep it plugged in at all times I can steal all the fun I need.

Evony? Fark that. Travian. Christ I've spent $200 a year on that goddam game. You can't win survive unless you kick in a couple bucks. It's a text based browser game without any moving graphics whatsoever.

Ah yes, Travian. Spent months of my life and hundreds of dollars... only to be completely and utterly destroyed on the day after The Natars were unleashed. The brutality of it is beautiful, actually. That game made me immune to whatever temptation Zynga might have offered.

It get's especially annoying with these "pay to win" games when parenting your kids. Basically a kid nowadays needs to be a very astute consumer when choosing a video game franchise to invest in. You literally need to sit down with your kids and go through the math, and even with some good research they still occasionally get burned -- i.e. they pay for a game and then find out that you can't really complete it or something without forking over significant additional dough.

Definitely I try to steer them to games with a one-time price for full game, with possible pay-for independent expansions later. Or alternatively games where the free-to-play portion is sufficiently satisfying to stick with for a while.

But any game where you will lose to the guy who paid more is a big no-no.

Anyway, now you have to have conversations with your kids about "business predators" in addition to the "sexual predators". Don't get fooled by the free "candy" ...

PunGent: Every time you invest postively in a stock, you are, in effect, 'shorting' all its publically-traded competitors that you DON'T invest in.


You... can't possibly be serious, can you?

jabelar: Anyway, now you have to have conversations with your kids about "business predators" in addition to the "sexual predators". Don't get fooled by the free "candy" ...

Isn't that more or less the same conversation? Though, I suppose the general case is a bit depressing: "If someone is offering you a thing/experience at terms that seem to significantly favor you, watch your back because you're not seeing the whole picture."

This explains why Facebook's stock took a dive... or was it the other way around? Wait, you mean they're not the same company?

1000101: Evony? Fark that. Travian. Christ I've spent $200 a year on that goddam game. You can't win survive unless you kick in a couple bucks. It's a text based browser game without any moving graphics whatsoever.

Ah yes, Travian. Spent months of my life and hundreds of dollars... only to be completely and utterly destroyed on the day after The Natars were unleashed. The brutality of it is beautiful, actually. That game made me immune to whatever temptation Zynga might have offered.

Oh so you know too! End Game is completely insane, even if your meta-alliance is the eventual WW winner. Hell that game continues out of the game too, with text messaging or skype planning sessions. There is nothing nice about the game play, in which ONE server game is approximately 300 days, so there's plenty of nights where you're up for 28 hours clawing your eyes out fending off attacks and chiefing other villages before your hammer village gets erased. Twice. AND you blow another $50 speed re-building. Again.

/taking a year off after 4 years of non stop playing.
//hit me up in January if you want to play with another farker.

Just so we dont all forget, one of the best got danged video games, Stronghold (the origional TSR AD&D one) was basically click, build characters, watch them kill crap, get gold, click to upgrade characters, watch them kill stronger crap.
I'm not defending them, but c'mon don't think for even a second it's nnot a tried and true methodology. Hell most RPGs are kill stuff/upgrade/kill more big bads although with a great story. This way tho instead of story it's social interaction, sorta.

However, glory to the death of Zynga, may you rot with the 5 dollars I spent on Farmville.

/check out you dont know jack's facebook game
//totes worth 10bux.

intelligent comment below: PunGent: Every time you invest postively in a stock, you are, in effect, 'shorting' all its publically-traded competitors that you DON'T invest in.


You... can't possibly be serious, can you?

Yeah, impressive, that one. Reminds me of the time a recent college graduate (music school) said to me, "When one stock goes down, that means the other ones go up, right?" "Yeah, sure, kid."

Played Farmville until it got too laggy. Bought the unwither ring for $40. Worth it to me. I could log on and get my crops whenever I felt like it, and I felt it was worth it for the amount of time and enjoyment I got out of the "game".

Now I'm playing Castleville. Also paid about $40 recently for something that will give me crowns back, so I never have to spend money again. Again, felt it was worth it for the enjoyment I'm getting.

What really helps with the "beg your friends for shiat" aspect is to make an alternate account, go to a message board and invite all sorts of randos to be friends, and use a site like gamersunite.coolchaser.com to post and grab items from people's feeds. Almost no one I know plays facebook games, but I like to log on when I get home from work and click some buttons before I play D3 or WoW to click more buttons.

wildcardjack: So... they spent $200 million to acquire a property and reported a lost of $108 million for the same period. In other words they made $92 million profit but just spent a shiatload of money for something that might be profitable.

I might be a bit contrarian here, but



Buy-Zinga

That EBITDA does not mean what you think it means

Priapetic: Even such colossal wastes of economic resources and time as television and sports serve society by creating shared experience to facilitate collective identity and cooperation, and (occasionally) present instructional morality and ethics situations (a la ancient Greek drama). Farmville? All the resource consumption and waste of time with no societal benefit. If anything, it isolates people and draws them from past times that DO add to societal value. Even if it's just getting off the couch and going outdoors for a walk.

Let's be honest here, people will just go back to watching TV.

Night Night Cream Puff: BudTheSpud: Crabs_Can_Polevault: A lovely sentiment and all-really, it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of anthropomorphized ass-cancers-but the damage is done. The momentary success of their "business model" of creating games but charging for playability has spread to a lot of other big-name manufacturers of so-called "games." And degraded the whole notion of "games" for everyone else.

I miss Electronic Arts. And I mean the original, artistically inspired Electronic Arts, not the digital sweatshop that it's become.

[cdn.wikimg.net image 250x350]
[www.retrogameguide.com image 339x480]

/Never forget...

Still have M&M I think.... Never did finish the damned game just kept killing Cuisinarts to speed level. Never played Starflight. My friends and I were too busy playing melee in Star Control. Those were the days.

+2 internets to you for being the third person I know who used those chumps to speed-level. Once I hit level 40 or so I'd fly to E4, teleport to the oasis of +50 to all stats (can't remember the real name of it, but it was 2 north and 8 east of where you 'landed'), then fly to C2 and hoof it over to the mountain where they lived. With any luck at least one person would survive the barrage of frenzies and get mad EXP. If I was really lucky, it would be my thief, who could then open the black chest and get the crazy-powerful gear.

And don't forget, always train in Atlantis to get the most HP and MP per level. If only they had allowed you to port your MM2 characters into MM3...

Xeen is still my favorite of the pseudo-3D games, and 7 was the best of the actually 3D ones.

Mighty Taternuts: TravelingFreakshow: The "pay to win" business model needs to die, period.

Its the same business model as the arcade.

True. At least, it became true some time in the late 80s when game designers let people add extra money to keep a game going. Before then, it was one quarter=3 lives and your money won't help you in this world.

"Pay to win" also manifested in the cottage industry of spoiler magazines for console games, the ones that told you the answers to all the puzzles and how to get to the end of each level. You'd pay money for a game, and then you'd pay extra money so you wouldn't have to play the game.

BudTheSpud: Crabs_Can_Polevault: A lovely sentiment and all-really, it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of anthropomorphized ass-cancers-but the damage is done. The momentary success of their "business model" of creating games but charging for playability has spread to a lot of other big-name manufacturers of so-called "games." And degraded the whole notion of "games" for everyone else.

I miss Electronic Arts. And I mean the original, artistically inspired Electronic Arts, not the digital sweatshop that it's become.

[cdn.wikimg.net image 250x350]
[www.retrogameguide.com image 339x480]

/Never forget...


By the time EA were releasing games on console they were already in decline. Their earlier games on Apple II, C64 and Atari 8 bit were truly creative, absolutely original and completely unique.

Archon
Realm of Impossibility
Seven Cities of Gold
Adventure Construction Set
Racing Destruction Set
Mail Order Monsters
Worms
MULE

Plus more. Those were all fantastic games that were like nothing else that had come before and precious little since.


Mind you, by comparison Zynga makes even today's shambolic Electronic Arts look reputable.

Zynga doesn't care about most of the casual previous players in this thread. They chase after whales, people that drop thousands of dollars a day into their games. And yes, there are those idiots out there. Those are Zynga's customers, that they care about. Everything and everyone else is a loss-leader.


Consider this carefully if you want to invest in them.