How A Facebook Game Makes Zynga Millions | Hacker News Reader

How A Facebook Game Makes Zynga Millions

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31 pointsHunchr53 comments

Could this facebook game thing be a fad?

I remember back in high school when web games like Earth 2025 (games.swirve.com/earth/) were quite the rage and everybody was playing them. This lasted for a year or so until the novelty wore off. Some still play but the casual players are gone and the audience is a tiny fraction of what it once was.

I've noticed that my FB friends that play FB games tend to stop playing after a couple months. The games are mindless, cookie-cutter and repetitive for the most part.

<EDIT>I don't think WoW is a good comparison as there is clearly a huge depth between it and Zynga games. The experience is entirely different.

"Easy come, easy go" could apply to this market. I mean these games come out of no where to millions of players. These are not hardcore gamers that develop strong loyalty and build communities, but "casual" players that probably started playing because their friends are.

"Casual" gamers are notoriously fickle. Look at the Nintendo Wii, which is the most popular console but has the least average amount of titles bought per owner (which is where the real money is.)

In 2-3 years I would not be surprised that after all this over-exposure these x-ville games will be significantly less popular. These "games" have more in common with Tamagotchi and Beanie Babies than Wow or Call of Duty... </edit>

Hasn't stopped World of Warcraft players..

No way, my younger brother has been playing an MMORPG for like 3 years and he's not bored at all, he spends like 30USD a month on that game.

Games entertain a long time (years) that's a fact.

Some of us played for years, long after the fad wore off. The difference between the swirve games and facebook is that a community grew up around the game. From what I've seen of the facebook games, it's mostly your existing friends. I haven't heard of Mafia Wars meetups like E2025 or Utopia had, for example. (And yes, there were ways to get extra turns via various offers. I remember having to research something on goto.com every day, as one.)

What swirve did well is create a community. That's what an online game should aspire to, and I have only seem glimpses of that with the facebook games, even with the obnoxious updates.

There were Facebook clones of Swirve games that had similarly rich communities around them, but those games don't make as much money as the X Wars or the X Ville games.

Maybe they are faddish, but it doesn't matter, as long as your payback period is short. No one is putting millions into developing rendered polygon worlds for these games. The challenge is to keep it fresh and come up with new ones that will get people on board.

They have a great idea on making money of users. Instead of charging a larger amount to let them play the game, they charge a numerous smaller amounts for different objects in the game. First, people are more willing to part with, let's say, 25 cents for that one cool fish than with 25 dollars for a game. Second, once you get them pulled into the experience, they will be even more willing to spend money. Surprisingly, I don't see that kind of pricing used much in other areas.

It seems like it worked well in the arcades. Back when I couldn't afford a Playstation or a TV, I could rent some time on Tekken, and even got to play it with my girlfriend and meet other people at the arcade.

I haven't ever bought anything on Facebook, but it would really improve the profitability of these games if there was a super easy payments system there to avoid the huge hurdle of the first time someone has to get the credit card out of their wallet. Once they have the numbered stored, incremental purchases are lubricated, as in the case of iTunes, where it is very easy to make a casual $0.99 purchase.

The minute you refer to the game as "stupid" you lose the ability to understand why it works.

I don't really see why. We can pretty much all agree that the lottery is also 'stupid', but it works, and it's quite clearly understood why it works.

These sort of games work because they get people addicted, and then blackmail them into paying money to make the games easier for them.

I think "blackmail" is too much. The offer is not misleading, even if it seems like a waste of money to us.

The other way of looking at it is that people are paying to be entertained by an entertainment product.

It's a gray area, but IMHO that's not what's happening here.

It's more of a bait/switch than an honest upfront cost for entertainment.

It's not about entertainment or bait/switch - it's low challenge accomplishment. The 'Villes let you feel like you've accomplished something, even though all you put into it was time and money. Usually accomplishing something takes true effort and creativity, with a risk of failure, but these games are "accomplishment lite" with no risk of failure.

Yes and no. There's a school of thought that the player should be allowed to play a game any way they please, that play is a creative process and the game is a box of tools to make an enjoyable experience.

The player makes their own fun by setting themselves goals and challenges that match their personalities and skill sets (that they find enjoyable). As their skills develop (or they simply get bored) they naturally find new, different, more challenging things to do until the game can no longer satisfy them.

Zynga provide a free framework and a whole load of extras to enable people to have fun. You can progress for free according to a number of pre-designed interpretations of how you can progress in the game, or you can short-cut for cash and do the bits you really enjoy, and you spend more as you explore different options. It practically screams "revenue stream".

Obviously it's all set up to make loads of cash, but I see it as enabling fun rather than a scam or "accomplishment lite".

Oh, don't worry, I think it's practically the epitome of fun. I just think the fact that there's no challenge aside from spending time means the fun will run out quickly.

The only way they could be blackmailing you is if they said something like, "if you don't spend money, we will tell everyone on facebook how much you suck at maintaining virtual fish!"

I don't think this is exactly the case. They sell a service. Whether you deem it a service of value or not is irrelevant.

The fact someone sells a service doesn't mean it's right, proper, etc.

Gambling is heavily regulated for a reason. I would say that games like these should be regulated just as much.

Imagine going to the arcades, playing street fighter II, and it saying "We know you can't get on the score board because you suck, but if you pay $20 we'll put you at the top of the score board anyway". Would that be completely fine and above board?

Like many drugs, gambling is heavily regulated because of puritanical values, not because regulation helps reduce the social impact. These games are not gambling at all, and share no more in common with gambling than any other form of capitalism.

And yes, it would be totally fine. If you don't like it you don't have to play Street Fighter II. And given that it costs 50 cents a play and has a steep learning curve, that's effectively what they do in a roundabout way.

They share a lot. They are addictive, and the further in you get sucked, the harder it is to stop. Because of this, the further in you get, the easier it is to be exploited and taken advantage of.

I don't think it's about being puritan, it's about protecting the most vulnerable members of society from themselves.

For example, say you get 95% of the way through a game, then the game asks for $100 to get past an absolutely impossible stage, they'd probably get a fantastic amount of people spending the $100 reluctantly. Which IMHO isn't a nice way to do things.

You can't protect people from themselves, that's the problem with those laws. Research shows this time and time again. Anti-gambling laws don't protect gamblers, they just move them from safe, legal, regulated casinos to scammy underground gaming halls and instant bingo ticket parlors. Anti-drug laws don't decrease drug use, they just increase violent crimes.

But that aside, thankfully capitalism doesn't require you to find a "nice" way of doing things. I'm as addicted to shaving as any player is to a Facebook game. (We could both stop, but don't want to.) I'm even more addicted to food. But that doesn't mean Gilette and Whole Foods are scammers.

I don't think that's a good analysis. Anti gambling laws does indeed push the hardcore gamblers into underground gaming halls. But the important thing it does is stop lots of people getting hooked in the first place. Same with drugs etc.

Having said all this, it's clearly extremely lucrative to setup games like this.

i'm actually going to agree with matt's original point. if you call an app 'stupid', then you are preventing yourself from being able to empathize with its users. if it's successful, then it is fulfilling some sort of need. by putting yourself in opposition to the people whose needs are being met, you are making it impossible to see what they get from it.

of course, the fact that matt refers to users of products he doesn't like with terms far, FAR worse than 'stupid' kind of negates his point.

That's ludicrous. Selling someone something in game is no different than selling them something in real life. Do makers of razor blades blackmail users? What about Apple with iTunes DRM?

And if you think the lottery is stupid, you should not ever work in the game design industry.

The issue isn't as clear cut as that.

They are offering you an 'easier game' for money. When you're competing against other people, that's an un-level playing field.

I'm pretty sure people who run lotteries think they are stupid. They are a tax on the poor, but they're extremely effective at raising money.

People who run lotteries do not think that the lotteries are stupid. I know a lot of people who work in the gaming industry, you can trust me on that.

Some may think people who play the lottery are stupid. There's a very big difference.

We're splitting hairs now and down to the meaning of "lotteries are stupid" :)

I see your distinction though, I was meaning the latter when I said "lotteries are stupid".

There is nothing to be lost in calling something stupid if you believe something to be stupid. The article gives a good illustration of why the author believes it is stupid.

Calling something stupid does not mean the author is saying there is no money to be made in such things.

In fact stupid things are often the most lucrative.

like fart apps?

There is a lot to be lost. It means you cannot emphasize with the people who enjoy it. It means you cannot replicate or iterate upon it, or apply those concepts to other things in the future.

It's dismissive, and you should never be dismissive of something that makes $250m per year. It clearly has a lot of value that the author doesn't understand, and since he has dismissed it he will never tap into that. That hurts him.

I don't like Twitter (which makes $0m per year) very much, but I try to understand it, play with it, and find out what people do like about it because it will inform product design decisions that I make in the future. I know that a LOT of people do like Twitter and therefore it cannot be stupid. In fact in some ways it must even be brilliant.

how about when prognosticators refer to iPhone users as "people who have wet dreams about Steve Jobs?" by your logic, that could have contributed to why certain predictions about said users were so disastrously wrong, yes?

http://mattmaroon.com/2007/05/03/why-the-iphone-will-be-a-fl...

The iPhone model I referred to was a flop. It was on track to underperform Apple's predictions. It sold very few units. And it even only got as far as it did when they cut the price so soon after launch that the people who did buy it right away were pissed off. Price was a large part of my argument, and I'd argue still that I was not incorrect. The original iPhone was clearly a disappointment to Apple.

The 3G unit was not a flop.

Man! How hard do you have to pretzel yourself to refer to the iPhone as a flop? So they didn't make as much money on the first one as they did with later models, so what? They were completely changing all the rules, so it's not much wonder that it took a couple of iterations to zero in on the best revenue model.

And you didn't address the real point of my comment at all: it's bad to call a Facebook game "stupid," but it's fine to call iPhone users "people who have wet dreams about Steve Jobs."

You are blinding yourself to why Apple is successful, which is costing you.

No pretzelling involved. I specifically was talking about the iPhone that was just about to released, as evident from the date on the post, and said that only Apple fanboys would buy it. That turned out to be largely true. You can't take my statement and apply it to future models or other Apple products and then marvel at their incorrectness. Well, you can (and did) but it's not fruitful.

There's a big difference between a $500-600 unit (with 2 yr contract) that has no 3g and no App Store and a $200 unit (with 2 yr contract) that has 3g and an App Store. They're the same device in name only.

One is priced for businesses, but without business features. The other is priced for consumers, and with much more consumer appeal to boot. One was a flop, the other a roaring success.

I don't think that only Apple fanboys buy the current iPhone and have never said that. And I'd guess between us, I have a much better understanding of why Apple is successful, as you probably vastly understimate marketing and cult appeal.

Good at least to see someone making games for people other than the hardcore crowd.

IMO, this shows that in gaming there isn't a straight line of worst-to-best but instead there's lots of different types of games that appeal not only to different types of people but different moods a person is currently in.

I had an email saying a Zynga user with my email address had withdrawn money from a Mastercard (which wasn't mine - nor do I own a Mastercard). Emailed Zynga to tell them about this odd semi-fraudulent activity, and they couldn't give a toss. Total idiots.

I didn't lose any money, but it was unnerving.

I believe that giving coins for inviting friends is explicitly disallowed in Facebook's TOS.

Is that article just a couple of screenshots of them playing a game??? That is even cheaper than a virtual machine gun in Mafia...

Ironic.

While a lot of us are thinking about cool new tech, lisp, twitter, and all the other kinds of stuff we love talking about on HN, these guys are writing simple flash aquarium apps and raking in millions.

Perhaps running your own startup about a lot more than simple monetary success. I know I want to make people's lives better in addition to controlling my own destiny.

But still, sure looks like a sweet spot to be in. I bet the field is probably way overcrowded by now, though.

Field is "never" overcrowded.

Before Google beat the crap out of everyone there was Yahoo, Altavista, Excite etc. Before iPod came there were numerous mp3 players. Before Zynga, there were numerous Facebook apps and countless Flash games.

So, if you want to do it and have a good idea, I'll say do it, give it a shot. Whats the worst that can happen, some time wasted. Lather, rinse, repeat...

That's an excellent point. I stand corrected.

It's not that it's necessarily any worse or better, it's just that competing in a crowded field is necessarily different than only having a dozen or two competitors. It's just different skillsets and tactics.

I'm much more comfortable with offering something fairly unique in a smaller market with fewer competitors, but there are those businesses that do very well in huge markets with hundreds of competitors.

Either way, the odds are against you. So you pays your money and takes your chances.

Search doesn't benefit from a network effect, whereas social games do. It's the same defense that Ebay/Craigslist enjoy (though admittedly less ironclad).

Someone like Zynga has brutally low customer acquisition costs compared to a new social game developer (because they can cross promote to existing players for only the opportunity cost of showing other low-CPM banners).

This sort of thing is worse than gambling. I'd say there's a strong case for regulating things like this. It's just preying on the addicted/weak/stupid surely.

It's almost a bait and switch:

1. Get user addicted to game 2. After some time, tell user they can progress quicker through the game if they pay money (Blackmail).

How is that any different than how I used to pump quarters into Street Fighter II arcade games back in the day?

Because that's an upfront honest price to pay the game.

This is blackmail later on. (You want to do better at this game? Sure, we can fix that for you, just pay us some money).

How on earth is that blackmail?

From the couple of games like this I've played, it is still entirely possible to hit the limits of the game without spending a dime. It will cost you quite a bit more time and effort, but still possible.

Its more akin to an arcade game where the first play is free, but if you want a continue you have to pay a quarter each time. Sure, its a little bit shady, but its still a valid way to get money from a user. Look at all the sites/service that use a freemium model. Look at things like DropBox. Is that blackmail, since you will eventually fill up your free 2gb, and have to pay for it if you want more?

Because it's moving the goalposts once you're committed.

It's not the same as freemium at all.

A game, where you're competing against other people, that operates on a non level playing field, is unfair. Allowing people to pay money to progress faster in the game is taking advantage of peoples idiocy.

But the goalposts haven't moved at all. There's simply a vendor on the sidelines selling rocket boots for 25 cents. Its not like these games start you off on a path, tell you "oh, once you've played for X long you'll be able to get Y," and then changing it so that once you get to X you find out that you also have to spend a dollar to get Y (some of these games might, but the ones I've played haven't, they've all been very clear up front what costs money and what doesn't). Most of them don't even make it so that you can't get to the goalposts without paying money, they just make it take considerably longer.

I fail to see how charging money for faster progress is taking advantage of idiocy. As another example, look at television programming. I can get a half dozen broadcast channels for free. If I want more, and want to get more out of my tv watching experience by having more choice in it, I have to pay for cable, who then offers me various packages, depending on how much each of those channels is worth to me.

It doesn't make it idiocy to value things differently than other people. I value $10 a month more than HBO. Does that make all of the people who pay for HBO idiots? Does that make all it blackmail for the cable company to offer a trial of HBO when I sign up (admittedly, that practice is slightly shady, due to the difficulty to stop the channels after the trial, but that is a completely different issue)? Just because you put more value on your money than others do on a shiny digital fish doesn't make them an idiot, it makes them someone who values shiny digital fish.

-To your edit:

Well, if that was the way things were from the start, sure. Say you go to the arcade, and pick out your game to play. To make this all fit well, lets pick tetris. As long as you know from the start there are various "powerups" you can buy throughout the game, it seems totally fair. Its 1 quarter to start the game. Later in, you can buy various powerups, like double points for one level for another quarter, or the ability to choose your next block for a quarter.

Does it make things different? Yes. But it certainly doesn't make them unfair. The options are open to everyone, those at the top and those trying to get there. Its fair, but is a little shady.

The difference is the barrier to entry / improvement. In the case of a quarter machine slot game it's pay to play, while it's a bait and switch for a game which only allows you to continue by paying more money regardless of how well you are doing in the game. It's not necessarily illegal, but it surely is deceptive and won't win the game any fans.

I've been playing one of the zygna games myself.

To the level I've got, plenty of things would be easier if I was willing to spend money, but I haven't found anything I can't do for free.

I believe that is strongly tied to why they have become so popular so fast. You can go into the game, pick it up, and become fairly good quickly. If you continue on with it, you slowly get better as time goes on. You then get a friend to join, and they have to start at the beginning. They could spend the days/weeks it took for you to get that far, or they can spend $5 and get there in a tiny fraction of the time.

To generalize it, its easy to get a handful of people to do something. If you offer it to them for free, there are plenty of people who will go out of their way to advance as far as possible. Once those people start getting friends involved, the friends will want to get that far too. By offering them a quick advancement in exchange for money, you can then make a tidy profit.

My upvotes will probably be swamped by the disagree-downvotes, so I'll explicitly thank you for taking this controversial position.

I don't fully agree with you, but there is something very similar to online gambling in these games. (Wasn't Texas Hold 'Em one of Zynga's first games?) Casual games with virtual goods are an expertly engineered environment that is evolved through constant refinement to maximize money extraction -- like slot machines or indeed entire casino buildings. As with casinos, it may turn out they make a significant portion of their revenue from people prone to addiction or suffering from other mood problems, soothed temporarily (but perhaps made more dependent/despondent) by the games' synthetic reward system.

And while I don't support government regulation (of either games or gambling), cultural norms will need to evolve, for individuals and peer groups, that moderate participation. Otherwise, profit-maximizing addiction-engineering will do real damage.

The checkout form for virtual good purchases may someday include a tiny link to "Gamers Anonymous" just like the tiny print and brochures about "Gambler's Anonymous" near casino ATMs and cashier cages.

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