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Only reason I link to the article and post here is because although games like Farmville, Mafia Wars, Vampire Wars and all other other Zynga games are not MMOs, I wanted to forward the notion that these games are 'Free to Play". And the fella is almost worth 1 billion.
Can we make a leap that F2P games may even be more profitable than subscription models?
http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/110811/billionaires-in-the-making?mod=career-leadership
Comments
I just read an article about him this month in a magazine. He reports there are .....
62 million Zynga game players per month!!!! 62 million- OMG!
That puts MMO's to shame!
See, F2P is indeed a viable and sound business model, but, try and tell SOE, EA, or, any of the other 50 thousand gaming companies that, and, they'll say the numbers are wrong, or, they'll make up some BS line saying that its not true at all.
Personally, I would love to see CCP add F2P downgraded version of Eve, think of the players who'd play then. But, you'd all have to remember the way Funcom hosted Anarchy Online, playing as a froob, then, if you wanted, you could bump the account to P2P.
these games are money traps, good for the CEO's and bad for the players. I have seen many a Mafia Wars and Castle Age player go broke playing these insipid games. With the money they make, it sure isn't going into development, essentially they are pure crap and should be avoided at all cost. All their players come from FaceBook and most of them have never heard of MMORPG's, I know, I have 4900 friends and when I invite them to play the games listed here, they have no idea what I'm talking about. It really is a shame
Actually that does little to prove that F2P is a viable business model.
Zynga has a history of shady dealings in order to make profit, particularly in plugging 'game perks' for participating in what can be considered scams and phishing attempts with Zynga's "business partners".
Furthermore, those 64 million "players" is an extremely skewed number, because it counts every single account, per game, even if someone logs in for a second. Not only that, but even a smaller percent of the actual true number of 'players' actually pay anything at all. Then there's the whole fact that the development cost of said games is peanuts, as is the actual cost to maintain said game when compared to something like a AAA MMO.
In the end the "worth almost 1 billion" is an estimated value of the intangible worth of the company, which in the case of highly digital based companies, is usually a longshot guess at the actual money making potential down the road.
Call it a BS excuse if you want, but it's more truth than the assumption that F2P will work if applied to anything. F2P has only proven viable in niche scenarios so far, and even the places it does do well, it's not overly so.
It is great that now 2 people will become billionares off of a stupid website where people feel the need to post what they are doing every moment of their life for some cheap validation from friends clicking "like" next to their posts.
BTW I am having spaghetti for dinner!!!!
3 people like this
hahah!
<---------------Likes SnarlingWolf's post
EGAD, haven't had spagetti in at least a month, think I'll have that for dinner also
Whenever the F2P/modern MMO fanbois go on too much I point them here. A mixture of bad revenue model and social gaming on an inferior computer (smartphone) are where we are headed. Enjoy your old school and new school MMO’s while you can I am not sure they will even be around in five years time.