Zynga | Thats Bad Ass! Tech News and Reviews

Posts Tagged ‘Zynga’

Zynga tries to craft a deeper gambling game with ‘Elite Slots’

|

Zynga Elite Slots (Polygon)

Fast payday loans For Every One

While Zynga’s planned foray into real money gambling is still a long way off, the company has been hard at work reinventing slots for the social web. According to an interview with Polygon, its upcoming Elite Slots is trying to tap into social psychology and cognitive neuroscience to give players what they want: a sense of control, progression toward goals, and a social connection. The free-to-play Facebook game adds an RPG element to what would otherwise be a cut and dry spin-to-win mechanic; letting players choose an animal avatar (pictured above) with individual strengths and weaknesses, and “fight” against bosses at the end of each level.

With Zynga’s fortunes sinking, the company is hoping that it can bring its success with…

Incoming search terms:

Zynga Reaches 22 Million Daily Active Users On Mobile, Announces Partners Program

|

Author: JohnnyBells

Zynga ’ s primary mobile officer David Ko pointed out that the company has reached 22 million day-to-day active individuals on mobile. If you think of that Zynga has about 53 million everyday active users on Facebook, it ’ s a rather strong indication that the company is transforming on the Facebook platform (although we can easily ’ t deduplicate these figures for users who make use of Zynga games on several platforms).

On top of that, the company announced a new partners program that will let third-party developers reach its network. Atari, Phosphor Games, Crash Laboratory and others are preliminary partners.

“ It ’ s simpler than ever before to create an app and yet harder than ever before to find an audience, ” Ko pointed out. “ We would like to produce an ecosystem with best-in-class mobile developers and best-in-class mobile games. ”

Becoming a mobile games platform places Zynga in more direct competition with games companies like GREE and DeNA, which have their very own mobile games networks. This is not to discuss the fact that Apple has its own Game Center and that Facebook is moving greatly into mobile app distribution too.

Ko even provided a look at a couple upcoming titles including a brand-new Matching With Support groups title, that must create on Words With Crowds ’ target audience. He even pointed out that Draw Something is nearing its 10 billionth drawing.

Incoming search terms:

Published News Upcoming News Submit a New Story Groups parry sound waterfront property

Zynga by the numbers

|

Author: Margo Tipton

Zynga by the numbers
Our primary focus, the way we've built this business, has been organic development and growth of games that have led to a network that we have further leveraged to bring more successful games to market and that's what you should expect us to continue …
Read more on paidContent.org

Avnet, Inc. Reports Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2012 Results
The subsequent supply chain inventory correction, which has led to negative organic growth at EM in the first three quarters of this fiscal year, appears to be nearing an end as EM's sequential revenue growth has returned to a more normalized seasonal …
Read more on MarketWatch (press release)

Updates, advisories and surprises
(10:12 AM ET) SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG) shares led Dow (DJI:DJIA) 30 decliners early Friday after the world's No. 1 consumer-staples maker cut its fiscal 2012 profit forecast for the second time since Oct. 27.
Read more on MarketWatch

Facebook and Zynga accused of patent infringement for selling virtual seeds and ammunition

|

Author: Eric Moss

FarmVille

Late last week, GameTek LLC — which appears to be a company only on paper at this point — filed a series of patent infringement cases in southern California against some big social gaming companies, including Facebook, Zynga, Electronic Arts, Wooga, Funzio and 6waves. GameTek is asserting a single patent, US no. 7,076,445, which was just assigned over to GameTek last month. The games accused of infringing the patent include FarmVille, CityVille, Mafia Wars 2, Crime City, Bingo Blitz, and several others.

The ’445 patent claims priority back to 2000 and was eventually granted in 2006. There are a total of 19 claims in the patent, but the broadest ones cover in-game purchases for virtual objects like health, resources, weapons, skill…

Incoming search terms:

EA CEO Riccitiello: We’re Taking Dead Aim At Zynga

|

Author: Stacey Cook

The last ten years have been kind to game publishers. The mainstreamification of console gaming has led to enormous sales numbers, budgets rivaling Hollywood’s, and an arms race between the majors to create the next big game. But while EA and its ilk were buying up development houses, expanding like crazy, and having franchise-measuring contests with each other, an unperceived menace was growing in the dark bosom of Facebook. As millions flocked to the new platform, EA continued churning out sequel after sequel until they almost sequeled themselves into a death spiral.

Now the gaming giant says it has learned its lesson, and is ready to take on the new kid in town: Zynga. EA’s CEO has gone on the record saying they hope to hit $ 3 billion in digital revenue in the next two or three years. Big talk, but is it in EA’s DNA?

One former EA executive jumped ship to join Nexon, which is pulling in nearly a billion a year and is expected to announce an IPO soon. If Mahoney had been able to steer EA in that direction, I’m sure he would have, but chances are the suits were too pleased with the growing income from the console business and didn’t want to go chasing butterflies like casual gaming.

EA CEO John Riccitiello is speaking at a US Chamber of Commerce event today, and prefaced his talk by mentioning some big wins by the company in the social space. Their Sims Social game has over 53 million users, and their total user base is approaching 100 million. Sure, that’s less than half of Zynga’s, but considering how poor EA was doing in this market just a year ago, it’s definitely worth celebrating. Tripling your user base over a quarter? You better believe there was champagne involved.

Their goal, naturally, is to surpass Zynga in users, and Riccitiello has set a $ 3 billion goal for online revenue. They have a head start on Zynga there, as the move to further monetize their major franchises through subscriptions and DLC is only just starting to really take hold. They are already making over a billion a year in online sales, but the ways in which EA and Zynga earn that money are totally different. Whether EA will imitate Zynga or take its own path isn’t easy to foresee, but it seems to me that the hard part is yet to come. Repackaging The Sims for a social setting was a cakewalk. Successfully repackaging Battlefield and their sports franchises is another task altogether. At least they’ve got Popcap now. At all events, it’s better than Activision’s approach of sticking their heads in the sand.

Vostu Goes On The Offensive Against Zynga. This Will Get Uglier.

|

Author: Jack Schmidt

Zynga hit Brazilian gaming startup with a massive lawsuit last month, alleging that the company was copying Zynga’s games so closely that they even inadvertently included the bugs. Today, Vostu responded with a 368 paragraph document of their own (embedded below). It’s a longer version of Vostu’s press statement immediately after the lawsuit was filed, which boils down to “I Know You Are But What Am I.”

Vostu’s defense also includes numerous illustrations of how Zynga has copied other games repeatedly over the years. One example – Zynga showed how closely Vostu copied Cityville (see top image here). Vostu includes an image in their response showing how similar Cityville looks to three previous games not published by Zynga:

Vostu also suggests the real reason Zynga sued is a failed partnership negotiation and Zynga’s competitive efforts in Brazil:

Zynga’s deceptive allegations are at their foundation a vicious effort to malign Vostu for competing with Zynga. Zynga has watched Vostu closely as a potential competitor for years, and it even discussed a strategic relationship with Vostu beginning in August 2010. The triggers for Zynga’s lawsuit at this point against Vostu are threefold: (1) Zynga’s entry into Brazil, where it intends to displace Vostu as the leading gaming company on social networks; (2) Vostu’s arrival on Facebook, which Zynga claims as its exclusive turf; and (3) Zynga’s initial public offering, where Zynga must face probing and legitimate questions about barriers to entry in Zynga’s market by demonstrating its intent to demolish any potential competitor it may face.

Zynga, which is in the middle of its public stock offering, won’t be able to respond much or at all to Vostu. That’s because it’s in what’s called a quiet period, and any PR missteps could result in a delay of the IPO. I’d say this was perfect timing by Vostu, but Zynga chose the timing of the lawsuit, not Vostu.

The full documents are below.

Also of note – co-counsel to Vostu is Andrew Bridges at Winston & Strawn, who represents TechCrunch on a number of legal issues. He’s extremely good, and that’s a great sign for Vostu. I think he’s on the wrong side of this fight, though. Zynga has done a lot of questionable things in the past with regard to respecting the intellectual property of competitors, but in this case, Vostu went way over the line in my opinion.

View this document on Scribd

Zynga crowns Lady Gaga as FarmVille’s newest cash cow

|

Author: Markus Smith

What better way to market a game that isn’t really a game than with an artist who isn’t really an artist? Such was the rationale, apparently, behind Zynga’s recent decision to partner with Lady Gaga, the freshly anointed face of FarmVille. As of May 17th, FarmVille users will be able to take a much-needed break from wasting their lives and visit GagaVille — a neighboring but equally fake farm full of unicorns, crystals and terrible life decisions. There, visitors will be able to listen to unreleased tracks from Gaga’s forthcoming album, Born This Way, which they can also download for “free,” once they’ve dropped $ 25 of their parents’ hard-earned cash on a Zynga gift card. The campaign will mercifully come to an end on May 26th, but not before Diet Madonna extends her corporate leviathan to every corner of Zynga’s gaming universe, including Words With Friends, Mafia Wars and anything else your pre-teen cousin spends far too much time playing. Gaga will win. Zynga will win. The human race, on balance, will lose. If you haven’t slit your wrists yet, the PR after the break should do the trick.

Continue reading Zynga crowns Lady Gaga as FarmVille’s newest cash cow

Zynga crowns Lady Gaga as FarmVille’s newest cash cow originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 May 2011 10:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | source BusinessWire | Email this | Comments

Google invests over $100 million in Zynga

|

Author: Stacey Cook

Farmville, Mafia Wars, and other games cost you a lot of time and productivity. They have now cost Google over $100 million. TechCrunch is reporting that Google has invested between $100 and $200 million in Zynga, the social gaming behemoth behind those games mentioned. Google is preparing for the launch of Google Games later this year.

TechCrunch’s sources say that Google’s goal with this purchase is to chip away at Facebook’s social media dominance. It will be interesting to see what comes from this.

[Techfresh]