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June 5, 2010

#Facebook Social Games Bleeding Players #socialgames

 

FarmVille is now down to around 69 million monthly active users, a sharp drop from its peak of around 85 million gamers in March.” –

Gamasutra – News – Farmville, Top Facebook Games Continue To Shed Users

Ouch, an 18% drop in two months because Facebook changed the rules of how Facebook Apps/Games can notify (aka spam) users. Makes you wonder how much people actually enjoy the game. I understand how Facebook notification is important for marketing and making your game go “viral” and “social”, and that would explain if the growth of the popularity of the game decreased due to the changes. The drop in active players however means without actively being marketed to, the existing players are not interested in playing the game!


The problem with FarmVille, in short, is that the business logic dictates the game design too much. The revenue incentives of Zynga make the game experience worse for the players, who are looking for more than killing time.” – Kari Silvennoinen from Tech It Easy: Farmville is An RPG Game (great read!)


I don’t think social games is a fad, but obviously we are still a long way to go to figure out how to make proper use of this new platform. How to create actual sustainable value instead of milking whatever is left before the next thing comes along.


Posted via email from Brandon Wu’s Road to Where He Wants to Be


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