Wednesday 28 October 2009
Down on the farm
Zynga have done it again. Farmville has 62,304,652 monthly active users on Facebook. Absolutely incredible. What is worse, I'm one of them. I started playing a few weeks ago and now I have to check it everyday to see how my pumkins and strawberries are getting on.
What is it about these games that make them so sticky and popular? Well I'll pick out a few characteristics that I think lead to success:
1. The game format is universally recognisable, e.g. everybody knows what a farm is and roughly what happens on a farm. This has several benefits:
a) Simplicity. Almost no learning curve
b) Common language. The vernacular is instantly recognisable
c) Universal appeal. Including, different ages and nationalities
2. Time limited features. The strawberries are ready to harvest every 4 hours. If you don't harvest they will wither and die!
3. Hoarding psychology. The more you play Farmville the bigger your farm gets. You acquire more stuff. This appeals to a deep seated psychological trait that I'm only starting to fully appreciate. As I have mentioned in previous posts, the psychology is very similar to gambling.
4. Social. You are playing with your friends. This has a number of knock-on benefits:
a) Competition. You want to out perform your neighbours
b) Fun. It is fun to compare notes and just to talk about the fact that you are playing this game (like I am now)
5. Facebook. Huge international audience. Quick and cheap distribution platform. Built in viral features mean limited marketing spend required.
So Zynga have a template that they can apply to any universal format. A template that is being continually refined to greater and greater effect. However, as people dissect and copy the template the question is whether they can maintain a dominant position? I also wonder how the evolving Facebook platform will impact Zynga going forward.
Personally, I think they should be able to dominate just about long enough to IPO. If I were them I'd be planning to do this soon, before the competition demonstrate that there is no magic behind creating these apps.
I think it would be great to learn from Zynga's template and apply it to online gambling. Facebook Ts&Cs preclude gambling. However, there may be new revenue models and game formats out there that are acceptable to Facebook. The Zynga template is one example.
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