From when I began to play Frontier Farm (Thursday) to Today, I have not found out the funness in this game. Therefore, I was surprised when I realized that Zynga is expecting to reach $500 revenue in 2010. However, after reading the interview with Zynga's CEO, I began to understand how their games succeeded.
First of all, it is not as time consuming as other games. This also relates to the hardcore vs. casual gaming discussion that we had in the beginning of the semester. I also realized that people I know who are into this game are all employed. They do not have much time playing normal games and as Mark Pincus points out that "One of the biggest reasons people don't play games is they say that they don't have the time," Zynga games are, in fact, addressing modern people's concern about not wasting too much time on entertainment, yet get the chance to enjoy gaming.
Secondly, the platform of Zynga's game is the world largest social platform: Facebook. The biggest attraction about facebook is that you get to socialize with your "real-life" friends and Zynga games definitely benefits from this function. The fact that friends can have fun together in the same game at anytime is a major attraction because there aren't that many chances when you and your friends are playing in the same game at the same time like those games outside of facebook. Therefore, part of Zynga's success has to give credit to Facebook.
According to Mark Pincus, their games earn money only from the selling of virtual goods. However, I am kind of surprised by Mark Pincus' explanation of why people would buy those virtual goods because according to him, people buy goods for the sake of standing out in crowd and "changing your friends' view of you," which is saying that Zynga games are actually competitive games that allow people to compare and show off their goods.
Question: would you buy any virtual goods on FrontierFarm? why and why not?
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