Zynga’s FarmVille proved to be a runaway hit when it launched back in the heady days of 2009, and three years later millions of faux-farmers still habitually tend to their digital crops every day. Slowly but surely though, the number of users coming back to get their fill of farm life has begun to decline. Sure, the company has bolted on new features and locales over the years, but even after… → Read More
Zynga became a public company with $3.75 billion dollar market cap in part by taking existing physical games and introducing them to your browser and social graph. Poker and Scrabble are just two that immediately come to mind. But, lately we’ve seen Zynga flipping its model, turning to the offline world in an attempt to find new life beyond browsers and smartphones. As Eric reported in February… → Read More
This morning Zynga announced that it’s expanding its FarmVille franchise into an exciting new territory: Orientalism!
Yes, there’s a new FarmVille add-on called — wait for it — Jade Falls. Now, fantasy stories set in exaggerated “Asian” locales are a familiar part of popular culture. But at least Disney (Mulan), DreamWorks (Kung Fu Panda), and BioWare (Jade Empire) offered some creativity… → Read More
“The online farmers will not be able to choose to grow cannabis or bananas, but undoubtedly there will be some strange decisions, some decisions I would not have made.” — Richard Morris, farmer
Because it’s hard hitting journalism week here at TC (and pretty much every week in my world!) I’m just going to throw this one out there: Some actual farmers in the UK have decided to turn their farm into… → Read More
With the success of Zynga’s newest game CityVille, the gaming giant’s first game, FarmVille, has taken a backseat in terms of buzz. But despite the competition from its sister games, FarmVille is still posting impressive usage numbers on Facebook; with 14 million daily active users and 44 million monthly active users (this data doesn’t include usage on Zynga’s mobile apps). FarmVille is still the… → Read More
The global virtual goods industry put up some very impressive numbers this year. From special Easter eggs to virtual ad campaigns, virtual goods sales have grabbed their share of headlines over the past twelve months. Now with social gaming on the rise and everyone from your teenage nephew to your grandma to your old rugby teammate buying a “little something” to sweeten their online game, here… → Read More
We knew Zynga’s Facebook game CityVille was a hit if the company ever had one (and it’s had several already) but the growth that it is displaying is simply mind-blowing.
Last week, the Sim City-esque game logged about 61.7 million monthly active users, effectively eclipsing its other hit game, FarmVille. Today, CityVille is at close to 72.5 million monthly active users, which means that it has… → Read More
Zynga’s hit game Farmville is coming to the iPhone, says the gaming giant’s CEO Mark Pincus at this morning’s WWDC keynote. This should make the 35 million daily players of Farmville players overjoyed, as now they can create their virtual farms on the go. Oddly, Steve Jobs pronounced Zynga, “Zenya” in the keynote. Twice.
The app looks like Farmville on Facebook, but formatted for the iPhone. The… → Read More
Look, I know Farmville is popular. Okay, really popular. Okay, insanely popular. And while it does have plenty of mainstream appeal, I still find it hard to believe that it has controlled two of the top “Hot Searches” items (for the U.S.) all day long on Google. And yet, according to Google Trends, both “farmville.com the game,” and “www.farmville.com the game” are the number two and three hottest… → Read More
Today, backstage at the Crunchies, Zynga’s Mark Pincus revealed a pretty impressive number the Zynga.org wing of the social gaming company, Zynga: They’ve raised over $1 million dollars just from virtual goods for school children in Haiti.
Anyway you slice it, it’s a pretty impressive number. But it’s even more impressive when you consider that this million dollars came just from the sale of one… → Read More
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco, CA
Berlin, Germany
Boston, MA
