Tag: CityVille

Zynga Shutting Down CityVille 2, Other Titles To Cut Costs

Zynga released its Q4 and year end earnings yesterday, and the results weren’t exactly peachy. The company was able to increase it’s year-over-year revenue, but everything else was relatively flat. Zynga has to start cutting costs somewhere to turn a profit, and shutting down games appears to be the first strategy on its list.

During its conference call yesterday, Zynga said that it will begin shutting down games that are failing to meet expectations. The first round of games getting the cut include CityVille 2, The Friend Game and Party Place. The unfortunate thing is that all three of these games are less than six months old, and were never really given a chance. All of this is part of a new “guard rails” system that requires the company to prematurely shut down games that don’t find an immediate audience.

The above three games are the latest in a long string of games that Zynga has shut down in the past six months. Late last year, the company announced that it would be closing games like Mafia Wars 2, Treasure Isle, FishVille and others that were not able to find an audience. To cut costs further, it also closed its Boston and Japan studios.

It may look grim for Zynga, but the company says its on track to being profitable in 2013. For one, FarmVille 2 has been an unprecedented success for the company by exceeding expectations and being its best launch in two years. The company is also realigning its teams to work on mobile, real-money gambling games for the UK and mid-core titles to bring in more players.

Will Zynga become a profitable company in 2013? It’s hard to say at this point, but the company seems to be legitimately learning from its mistakes. It used to flood the market with games, but it will now be spacing out releases so that one doesn’t cannibalize the other. The move to gambling and mid-core titles will probably bring in new players as well.

[h/t: VentureBeat]

February 6, 2013
Zynga Launches CityVille 2 On Facebook

It’s old news by now, but Zynga is still in a fair bit of trouble. The company downsized its workforce by 150 employees last month and closed a studio.The move undoubtedly raised some concerns about the future of the company, but the social games maker is pushing forward with the release of a new highly anticipated title.

Zynga announced today that CityVille 2 is now available on Facebook. The game will also be launching on Zynga.com soon. Following in the footsteps of FarmVille 2, CityVille 2 completely rethinks how city building game is played. Zynga attributes the new look and feel of CityVille 2 to Brian Reynolds, a lead designer on FrontierVille, Civilization II and other noteworthy strategy titles.

“CityVille was a runaway hit that brought players a truly social and fun city building experience. It quickly catapulted to the number one most popular social game and it stayed in that spot for more than a year after it launched, reaching 100 million MAU at its peak,” said Mark Nelson, Director of Design for CityVille 2, Zynga. “Drawing inspiration from the original CityVille, as well as FrontierVille, CityVille 2 immerses players in a storyline peppered with quirky and interesting characters, while also delivering a beautiful 3D town where players can compete with or play with friends as they build their unique city.”

CityVille players jumping into the sequel can expect a number of new features that separates it from its predecessor:
Districts, the social center of town – Whether creating the next French Quarter or Chinatown, customizable districts let players’ personal style shine through. Friends can visit each other’s districts to compete for VIP status to earn extra rewards, with the most frequent visitors garnering the honor along with leaderboard bragging rights and reputation points.
Make nice with your neighbors – In CityVille 2, players engage and interact with friends to help build up their cities, and collect crafting supplies from friends. Players can also swap strategy by talking to friends in real-time via in-game chat.
A new view – The 3D graphics in CityVille 2 let players toggle between different camera views, rotate buildings and see their city in ways they never imagined. And, for the first time in a Zynga game, they can also flip a switch to make it nighttime, or daytime.
Hustle and bustle – Like a real city, CityVille 2 features unexpected events. From realistic fires and explosions to vehicle breakdowns and traffic jams, players must respond with their city’s finest. Each interactive and dynamic vehicle serves a special purpose – police cars catch criminals, power trucks repair outages and fire trucks put out four-alarm blazes – and put players in the driver’s seat of each vehicle.
Cast of characters — CityVille 2 features a group of colorful characters that send players on a series of fun and challenging quests tied to a mystery “whodunit” storyline that’s sparked by an explosion at the city’s Mayoral Estate. Some of the city’s movers and shakers include Rosemary Escarole, a community activist; Kurt Steele, a wealthy industrialist; and Tre, a reality TV star wannabe.

Some players may not want to make the switch over to CityVille 2 just yet though. To help keep players of the original game satisfied, Zynga will be releasing a number of expansions for the original CityVille over the next few months.

Zynga desperately needs a hit now more than ever. Sticking to Facebook, however, might not be the best course of action right now. The company needs to aggressively invest in the constantly expanding mobile market if it wants to stay afloat.

November 1, 2012

Zynga Is Top Dog In the Facebook Gaming Market [Infographic]

Earlier today WebProNews’s Mike Fossum reported that Zynga CEO Mike Pincus is selling 15 percent of his stock in the company’s secondary offering to prevent share dumping. The news comes just two days after the social network game developer acquired rival developer OMGPOP to the tune of some $200. That acquisition, which landed the company control of “Draw Something,” currently the most popular game in social media, put Zynga even further above competitors in the social networking game market.

As of today, Zynga has nearly 56 million daily active users playing seven of its games on Facebook. More than 13 million — or nearly a quarter — of Zynga’s total daily users — are playing “Draw Something.” Rivals King.com, wooga, and Tetris Online, by contrast, net only 5.9, 4.4, and 3.8 million daily users, respectively. Here’s a chart from Statista that outlines Zynga’s utter user share dominance:

Despite a stock devaluation earlier this month, Zynga’s overwhelming user share dominance on Facebook, along with its $1.14 billion in 2011, suggest the company’s annoying addicting games will help you ignore your realtime friends for a while yet to come.

Eat Cheetos, Win FarmVille Items with Zynga/Frito-Lay Promotion

The next bag of Funyuns you buy might earn you a Spring Llama in FarmVille. Players of three of Zynga’s most popular social games are about to be rewarded for snacking on Cheetos, Ruffles, Dortios, and Lays.

Frito-Lay and Zynga have teamed up for a promotion that allows Facebook gamers to unlock prizes in FarmVille, CityVille, and CastleVille by purchasing certain snack-sized bags of chips. Players can purchase the specially marked bags at WalMart, and once they’re done munching they must enter a code into the Game Card Tab on the specific game on Facebook.

There’s a different prize for each game and for each different bag of chips. For instance, a FarmVille-labeled bag of Ruffles nets players the “Chip to-go Bistro” while a CityVille-marked bag of Cheetos gets you a “Brilliant Beach House.”

Also part of the promotion are Zynga gift cards, in the amounts of $15 and $25. Buying those will also give you access to a special item. But it you pair a gift card with the codes of 4 out of the 5 participating snacks, you can unlock a “Super Item.” For FarmVille, a Spring Pegacorn; For CityVille, a Glowing Glass Condo; and for CastleVille, a Red Knight’s Horse.

Speaking of food and Facebook social gaming, last month we told you about a new reward service that awards Facebook credits for eating out at various restaurants. Plink allows you to sync up your credit card so whenever you slide it at a Taco Bell or a Quiznos, you earn credits that can be used toward items in CityVille, Mafia Wars, and more.

As Zynga expands promotions and attempts to make nearly everything and Facebook credit-earning opportunity, they might also have something else in mind. CEO Mark Pincus recently said that he thinks Zynga and online gambling is a “good natural fit.”

The Frito-Lay promotion will run from March 1st to April 12th. Here’s a full chart of what you will get from each snack:

CityVille Comes To Google+

One of Facebook’s most popular social games, CityVille, is now available to play on Google+. Now you can build you own city and share it with your circles with CityVille+.

CityVille joins a couple of other high-profile games to become available on the new social network. Users have been able to play Angry Birds and Zynga Poker for a little over a month. As of right now, Google+ offers 18 games in all, including titles like “Zombie Lane” and “Bejeweled Blitz,” on top of the big three mentioned above.

Google games went live back in August. At the launch, Google emphasized that fact that games on Google+ would be all about sharing, but about selective sharing. With Google+ games, privacy and control are paramount – according to Google.

Google’s G+ games product manager Punit Soni echoed the importance of privacy and control with an announcement posted to Google+ this morning –

Welcome Zynga’s CityVille to Google+ games! If you’ve played CityVille before, you know how much fun it is to build your own virtual city, and then work with friends to help it grow. On Google+ you can use your circles to share updates with the people you want to and keep news of your civic accomplishments limited to just the right audience.

Zynga also talked about the CityVille+ launch on their blog –

It’s no secret we’re big fans of Google+ here at Zynga. Last month we announced that we partnered with Google to bring Zynga Poker to Google+, and today we’re excited to add CityVille+ to the new game platform.

CityVille grew to become our largest game on Facebook, so naturally we wanted to “build” a presence for it on Google+. Ultimately, we want to make our games accessible to everyone, everywhere – no matter where they play or what platform they play on.

CityVille coming to Google+ is a pretty big deal for Google. As much as some people like to bash social gaming on platforms like Facebook and Google+, there is a giant user base that truly loves these games.

Can big name social games like CityVille bring people over to Google+? Some have been less than optimistic about the future of the new social network. Maybe social gaming is a way to get more people interested in Google+. And maybe Google can differentiate its gaming experience from Facebook’s with the circles concept. I’m sure Farmville+ is just around the corner.

What do you think? Is this big news for Google+? How do you feel about social gaming in general? Let us know in the comments.

Zynga: 40-Year-Old Moms Are the New Hardcore Gamers [SXSW]

Manny Anekal, Zynga’s Director of Brand Advertising spoke a little today at SXSW about storytelling through advertising, but emphasized just how big social gaming is.

1 in 5 Americans play lots of Zynga’s games, he says, noting that the company is changing the gaming landscape, and increasing the landscape of the overall gaming experience. In other words, people that didn’t necessarily play many games in the past, are playing them now, thanks to titles like Farmville and Cityville. Zynga’s Cityville, he says, has almost a hundred million users.

Manny Anekal of Zynga Talks Women and Gaming Last year, Anekal says, the average user played 68 minutes per day. This is based on browser time, but even if you cut that number in half, he says, it’s an “enormous amount,” even compared to broadcast television.

“More women are playing farmville than watching soap operas,” he said.

The 40 year old mom spents the most amount of time playing these games, and also spends the biggest amount of money, says Anekal.

“She is the new hardcore gamer,” he says.

55% of all social gamers in the U.S. are women, and 53% of Zynga players are women between 25 and 44.

CityVille Hits 100 Million User Mark

Less than two months ago, something called "CityVille" launched on Facebook. Now, statistics indicate it’s hit a tremendous milestone – the 100 million user mark – making the game a huge success and its creator, Zynga, a good deal richer.

You can have a look at stats from AppData that put CityVille right on the verge below. Meanwhile, the game’s official Facebook Page says it has a little over 100 million users. Either way, CityVille’s advance might be slowing a little, but it hardly looks like the game’s growth rate will go negative or top out in the immediate future.

So here are a few more interesting points related to CityVille’s popularity: right around Christmas, it officially became the top game on Facebook, passing everything Zynga and other app makers had come up with before.

Also, Facebook’s last official count put the entire social network’s user base at just 500 million people, and so while that number’s sure to have increased since July, a significant fraction of users are CityVille fans.

Then consider this: Twitter only announced hitting the 100 million user mark in April of last year.

Congrats to the Zynga team.

CityVille Poised To Pass FarmVille As Top Facebook Game

In the tech community, a lot of people profess to dislike Facebook games such as FarmVille and CityVille. They’re snubbed due to requiring little thought or skill, and viewed with suspicion since users are encouraged to spend real money. But there’s no denying their popularity, and it looks like CityVille is about to take the crown.

A few days ago, bloggers noticed that CityVille was closing in on Farmville – long Facebook’s top game – in terms of monthly active users. Now it looks like a changeup is imminent.

CJ Arlotta reported today, "According to AllFacebook.com, FarmVille is taking in 56.6 million monthly active users. 16.7 million users are playing FarmVille daily, with a daily growth of 195,000 active users. CityVille, on the other hand, is taking in 54.7 million monthly active users. 15.6 million users are playing on CityVille daily, with a daily growth of 3.4 million active users."

So Arlotta concluded: "If I’m doing the math correctly, CityVille should take over social gaming’s number one spot tomorrow."

That’ll allow Zynga to put out a press release and/or blog post, and perhaps attract even more CityVille users as a result. (Although the company’s of course just competing with itself; Zynga is behind both FarmVille and CityVille.)

Either way, the development points to people spending more time on Facebook, so the social network will also come out a winner.

Social game developer Zynga, the creators of the popular Farmville and Mafia Wars on Facebook, has launched its latest game called “CityVille.”

Zynga says CityVille is its most social game to date with new features that allow players to build a city, interact with friends’ cities, and build franchise with the help of their friends.

CityVille is Zynga’s first game to launch internationally and will be available in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish on Facebook at Cityville.com.

“CityVille is where Monopoly meets Main Street," said Sean Kelly, GM of CityVille. “Instead of harvesting crops you’re harvesting your neighborhood, instead of clearing your friend’s frontier you’re working on a friend’s franchise.”

“We hope players from around the world have as much fun playing CityVille as we had building it."

CityVille allows players to grow a city, balance the needs of the population, run restaurants and businesses and harvest crops. CityVille also features Zynga’s first 3D-rendered buildings and characters.