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Comment by jbri | Hacker News Reader

There's a difference between the triple-A mass-market games you see at Gamestop, and the social games you see on Facebook.

Pointing out that AAA-games are expensive to develop in a discussion about social games is missing the point a little, I think.

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I think forrestthewoods is pointing out that making games, even social games, is hard.

Sure it's possible for one person to develop a successful social game. But how many of those people can develop two successful social games? 5? 10+? The only name that comes to my mind is Zynga.

It's only a problem if Zynga chooses to purchase other people's winning games at huge rates. You can't throw half a billion at every kid who writes a successful game and expect in-app cash upgrades to offset it. Making a successful game is hard, but at the scale of the market, there will always be another kid next month with an unexpected hit on his hands.

Zynga can make it work either by continuing to develop successful games on their own, or by backing down from Instagram silly money on their buyout offers. But they can't make it work by pretending to be the gateway middleman for a distribution network they simply don't own.

That's the issue though. Zynga's whole business model depends on this being false: "Sure it's possible for one person to develop a successful social game." One dedicated guy can soak up some ridiculously large fraction of their 2015 revenue if you believe your own statement is true. Because the popular fall 2015 game will be by That One Guy Studios and not Zynga.

If you think social games are easy or cheap to make then you don't know very much. That goes for both facebook and mobile.

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