"Free Facebook games make $20 per user"
Free Facebook games like Farmville can make around $20 per user, claim analysts.
The claim comes in the wake of rumours suggesting that EA has bought Facebook game-maker Playfish for a whopping $250 million USD, suggesting that free games like Farmville may not be as throw-away as some of us might like to think. Playfish's user base alone has grown from 35 million to 60 million players in the last year alone.
“Numbers for Facebook games are hard to come by but across the web, many freemium games are generating ARPPU (average revenue per paying user) of around $20,” wrote Gamesbrief founder Nicholas Lovell.
“Free does not mean unprofitable,” said Lovell. “Facebook users have become accustomed to the freemium model, whereby they have the option of paying for virtual goods, which might give them special powers, accelerate the levelling-up process or allow them to express their identity.”
The money generally comes from microtransactions obviously, with the strength of that business model being that there's no upper limit on what a user might spend. Rather than simply buying the game once, players might many items over a much longer period.
“It is not a binary choice between £0 and, say, £4.99. It is a sliding scale between zero and a very large number indeed. Bigpoint, for example, have several users who spend over $1,000 each month on virtual items in their web-based games such as Dark Orbit.”
Play Farmville? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyTo paraphrase, since the Dungeons & Dragons MMO started offering a free to play option (bolstered by micro-transactions) they've noticed a significant percentage of players spending more per month than they would of had they just paid the full subscription fee.
I think it says a lot about the way we perceive money in general. Siphon it away from us and we're generally none the wiser, try to take it in one lump sum and instantly our better judgement starts to consider things like value (is that a fair price?) and desire (do I really want this?).
Reminds me a lot of the way we think nothing of the change in our pocket. Start putting it in a jar on the nightstand every day and suddenly you have £50 in coins.
$1000 :p
It's still ridiculous though.
Or have money to burn!
two options for you:
1. Select Hide Farmville when you next see anything in your feed about it, you'll never see it again.
2. Use facebook lite at lite.facebook.com - no 3rd part apps at all.
As the famous meerkat may say - "simples"....
Will try both those suggestions ! thanks mHod
Thats about my average pay per 3d build on second life, help me, help me! Tier (server tax) for second life can run into multiple thousands a month.
If you were that rich why would you waste your time\money on games like that
I'll stick to buying games off of Steam, thanks.
In the mean time, I might double check that I have ZERO applications that have access to my facebook account.
Anyways, when you have extra money lying around and you start spending it on games you gotta take a break. I sure did.
Normally ripping off other peoples games like;
Cafe World = Resturant City - Playfish
Mafia Wars = Mob Wars (read the info here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mob_Wars))
Farmville = Farm Town - SlashKey.com
Zynga, Inc are making a killing by copying other peoples ideas, and improving on them.
It is all relative, 1000$ is next to nothing in Vegas, Monaco or Baden Baden.
whats nice for them is most of the facebook crowd have never played these games.. so to them inviting 100 people they don't know as friends to play a game is ok.. IccleD is dead on with zynga, they steal and make it better
with that kind of money on the line, living like huang back in 2007
If Zynga can churn these glorified spreadsheets out, and take money for it, then fine; I wish I'd thought that up first.
The quicker people get introduced to pure, unabasherd GRIND the quicker they'll be at the door asking for a more substantial experience. It wouldn't take a massively creative team to introduce some slightly deeper elements to any of these games, and I desperately hope that their player base starts asking for a richer experience. But maybe they just want to get to level X (when X = +1 over whatever my friends level is/are)