The game offers exciting gameplay, in which the player can adopt a baby panda to take care of him. While there will undoubtedly be shoppers who will lament the loss of their favourite hair care product, players in online games who build homes, nurture digital characters and become part of a virtual community are more emotionally invested.My Talking Panda is a Virtual Pet video game for kids. Why shouldn’t Zynga cancel games that have not gained traction, much like Procter & Gamble would pull a tepidly-received product off the market? It can, Wharton experts say, but the repercussions are likely to be magnified because Petville is different from a bottle of shampoo. Moreover, Zynga has had difficulties translating its online games to the smaller mobile screen. A change in the policies at Facebook – the platform used to play most of Zynga’s games – has made them less visible on the social media network and also promotes Zynga’s rivals, according to a November 15 story in The Wall Street Journal. Zynga, whose shares have fallen by three-quarters from its December 2011 IPO price of $10, said revenue growth is slowing. Zynga, ironically named after Pincus’s late bulldog, euthanized Petville on December 30 as part of plans to decommission 13 underperforming games. “Pincus became ruthless about canceling games that weren’t working.” But the title didn’t take off in a viral way when it launched, so Pincus pulled the plug on it,” the trade publication said. He spent $3 million developing an unnamed role-playing game. “If a game didn’t take off, Pincus had no qualms about killing it. But CEO Mark Pincus spared no sentiment for failing games, according to the article. It religiously monitored what succeeded and failed in its games, then moved to adapt. In a December 2011 profile in VentureBeat, Zynga was described as a “metric-driven” company that combined intuition and data. It was a labour of love for the team that made it.” Zynga is a ruthlessly commercial entity,” says Phillips. “They don’t value the experience, but only the revenue. “I more than got my money’s worth.”īut Phillips, a freelance game designer, has harsh words for Zynga, whose Farmville game she has played before. ![]() It wasn’t something that came along every day,” she notes. She was sad the game ended, but harbours no ill feelings. The effect, according to Glitch player Andrea Phillips, was to give the fans a sense of closure. ![]() If they wished, players could download images of their characters to save them on their computers. It also let each of the 11 giant characters in the game say goodbye while the “forehorsemen” of the Apocalypse acted as town criers, announcing that the “end is nigh”, among other farewell rites. The company apologised profusely for its action and announced the end weeks in advance to give players time to mourn the loss of their digital avatars in Glitch’s whimsical world. You'll also receive messages on behalf of our partners. Games publisher Tiny Speck, founded by Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield, said it decided to close down its flagship game in part because it “has not attracted an audience large enough to sustain itself and … it seems unlikely that it ever would.” You can take your lousy credits and shove them! I hope … karma comes around to get you and you think back on how many people you upset and lost due to stupid, greedy decision to remove Petville.”Ĭompanies often need to shutter unprofitable businesses, but was there another approach that Zynga could have taken? Consider how Glitch, another massive multiplayer online game, or MMO, handled its exit at the end of 2012. “I love my little friend.” Another fumed: “Zynga ! And I will NEVER play any of your games again. So sad,” a player wrote in one of more than 2,300 posts on Zynga’s Facebook page announcing the game’s closing. “This is the last day my little friend will be alive. When Zynga recently pulled the plug on an underperforming online game called Petville, the outcry from its virtual-pet owners was loud and visceral.
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