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I'm going to be honest, I tried playing this, seeing as Red Dead Redemption has left me in a trance-like state, looking for any way I can continue getting my Wild West fix withjout going back to the gradually less and less entertaining multiplayer... If it didn't rely so much on paid transactions and ammount of neighbours to do everything, it would be a great game, one that I would have been proud to support. As it stands, it's constant "you have run out of energy! BUY MORE!! ADD MORE FRIENDS TO GET THE BEST STUFF!!!" drove me to delete it from my applications list and pretend I've never even seen it. I can see why people like it, though. | |
All Zynga needs to do is add -ville in their next title and the sheep would no doubt flock to it. I'm gonna stay away from that engine at all costs. | |
Didn't enjoy Farmville.. but I'm finding Frontiersville to have quite a bit more "casual" enjoyment to offer. Its certainly no replacement for full games, but its a good distraction. | |
I saw the word 'FrontierVille' and went, "Oh dear, it's Oregon Trail all over again." | |
So is this one any different or are they just copypasta-ing their old games with some new hats and half a new name? | |
I am slightly mad that the game is getting very popular, but then I saw that it has dropped users, which makes me want to dance. OT: Heh, at least they tried to make it a little different than Farmville. I can give them some credit for that. | |
Not the kind of game I'm interested in, but good for them I suppose. | |
Milk the same concept all over again, just in a different format? Who does that sound like to you? Hmmm... It annoys me people are just gulliable enough to actually like these games | |
Oregon Trail has just become Zyngafied | |
I tried it, wasn't as fun as I had hoped. I fricken wished it was Oregon trail zynga style. That would be Awesome! | |
So, if someone likes a game that you don't, they're gullible? | |
If FrontierVille is even remotely close to a simulation of a frontier, that five million will be cut in half over the next year as famine and disease take their toll. | |
I tried the game for the exact same reason, and I agree completely with your summary. Zinga needs to try to cater to the "Not willing to wait an hour just to chop down a tree" audience. | |
...Sooooo does that mean that Zynga's fanbase will be smaller and weaker for next year's March Mayhem... and thus we can stop them...? (sorry, its all I can think of when I hear Zynga-related news XD) | |
Silly games like this and the psychotic CEO are why I decided to skip Facebook. When some other thing becomes the social thing du jour I'll be there first.
They do, only to the specific 'so not willing to wait an hour to chop down a tree I could GIVE YOU MONEY if you let me chop it down NOW' audience. | |
Hey, you're not the only one. OT: So its basically the Oregon Trail...but with a mix of Farmville......ya, if I had Facebook, I'd try it, but I only have Twitter and Echo Bazzar is basically our Farmville and it suffers the same problems. Having to wait 1 hour just to make one move and in that 1 hour, I completely forgot about. Its really that that stops Zynga from becoming a super power in the gaming industry, but its also the only real way they make money and the only way they could run it without limits is to add a subscription and I can name a number of people who would leave when they learned they had to pay for it. | |
It`s good that Frontierville is working out for Zynga. It`s true that Zynga has lost a number of it`s players. Though the same is true with many gaming applications on Facebook. Zynga isn`t the only one to feel the burn from Facebook`s policy changes. It seems that Social Networking Applications, are suffering as a whole. Though with Zynga it is more noticeable. In the future I would like to see Zynga go into something, not so casual. Something a bit more hardcore, even a simple RPG game for the DS would be nice. The games they have now are nice. They may be casual, but they can be played in a very hardcore way. The people from Mafia Wars are pretty hardcore, and the Farmville people can be pretty intense as well. Thanks again, for another well-written article ^~^! | |
*groans* Why?! Honestly...why? Isn't Farmville enough? | |
Jeez. I wonder if it's cutting into FarmVille's playerbase or if people just juggle all 3 games. :3 | |
Galaxyville, Microbeville,Smallville,Villeville,Facebookville...it will not stop, this type of shit will have even Bobby Kotick going, "Too far man" | |
That are blindly trying to copy Oregon Trail with this game? | |
Is it just me, or is the bear in the picture awesome looking? | |
Uh, holy fucking shit YES! I would play the game if it watching the bear stumbling across a wagon carrying a family of settlers and ripping them to shreds. Man, they should make a game where you just play as a bear, doing bear things and mauling people. It would be called Beary McBear's Fantastic Adventure, and it would be great. | |
In a retail box at Best Buy, it's called shovelware, but stick it on Facebook and it's a "social media phenomenon". Facebook games make the baby Jesus cry. | |
If people who play a game just because it's in 90% the same as the previous one, with some paintjob on the walls here and there and half of a name changed, are not gullible, then I don't know who is. Also applies to people who bought every single edition of Guitar Hero or EA games. | |
Oh joy another Zynga thread. Because everyone loves a bawwwfest, I wonder how they're going to be big evil overlords of the dirty casual gamers this time.
Or you know, they just enjoy it. | |
Try playing some Fistful of Frags, its a HL2 multiplayer mod, it's quite fun. | |
Hmm, first a was tempted to try this to let me continue my western adventure from red dead redemption but it ain't worth signing up on, uhh... facebook...
Nah, they would just name it bearville... It would be a awesome game though. | |
Well, I guess the possibility of letting other people rip you off and take advantage of you CAN be stimulating. Whatever floats your boat, right? | |
What a coincidence, today was the first time Frontierville popped up on my facebook homepage. Took 5 seconds to block it. | |
Stay away from WW2 ville you monster! OT: eh, if he likes selling shallow skins of his old game who am i, or the developers of F.E.A.R, to complain. | |
What if they liked the previous games? They're not gullible, it's just opinion, you know, that little thing that quite a few Escapists know about, but apperently you don't. | |
It's also my OPINION they are gullible as hell. Situation: Game from XXX appears, with half of a title from their previous "hit" game, and people blindly rush to it just because it's an XXX game. Gullibility, fanboyism, fanaticism, it's all the same thing here. Oh, and it was my opinion. Stop telling me it's wrong. | |
Oh goddamn that would be so awesome! See, developers need to think about things like this, instead of sequels to shitty games. I mean think about the multiplayer! One team is the hapless settlers, trying to get across the pass. The other team is a horde of hungry, angry, homicidal bears. I can see the carnage already. And it would be joyous. | |
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FrontierVille Breaks Five Million in Two Weeks
FrontierVille is another big hit from Zynga, amassing more than five million daily active users just two weeks after it launched, but will it be enough to halt the slow decline of its player base?
Zynga may not be everyone's favorite videogame company but there's no denying its popularity with the casual demographic. In fact, "popular" hardly does it justice; hits like FarmVille and Treasure Isle are full-blown social media phenomena, and it looks like FrontierVille, Zynga's latest and greatest, is going to be another big winner. Only two weeks after it debuted, FrontierVille is drawing over five million daily active users, a far cry from FarmVille's 18 million DAU but still a very good start.
Zynga could certainly use another big hit. The company reached a different milestone of a less desirable sort last Friday, sliding below 200 million monthly active users for the first time since November 2009. That figure climbed back to 210 million MAU over the weekend but Zynga's total daily active user count has also slowly been declining, from a peak of over 70 million in July to roughly 50 million now.
According to Inside Social Games, the issue is not a sudden failure to connect with gamers but a slower pace of game releases thanks to a "more rigorous, expensive process" of development, in part due to Facebook's recent changes to notifications that have forced companies to find new ways to promote their games. Zynga averaged one new game per month in 2009 but has thus far released only three games in 2010, half the previous rate.
To be clear, Zynga is in no risk of suddenly falling apart, but it may be forced to look at other avenues of growth in order to keep its numbers up, such as moving to other platforms or localizing its games for markets like Japan and China. FarmVille, in fact, is being released for the iPhone very soon. The times are changing, but for now, at least, Zynga's popularity looks rock solid.
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