Games should be free, says Zynga
Zynga, the developer behind Farmville, has proclaimed that all games should be free in the future.
The message came from the desk of Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus, who outlined the philosophy of Zynga in the letter by saying that all games should be 'free, social, accessible and data driven'.
'From the beginning, we have strived to lower the barriers to play in people’s lives, wrote Pincus regarding game accessibility and social game design. 'We want to build games to play with our parents, our children, our co-workers and our best friends...Every week our teams test new features to make our games more social. '
'Free games are more social because they’re more accessible to everyone. We’ve also found them to be more profitable. We have created a new kind of customer relationship with new economics—free first, high satisfaction, pay optional.'
'Our culture combines the creative with the analytical. We develop and operate our games as live services with daily, metrics-based player feedback. This allows us to continually iterate, innovate and invest in the content our players love.'
Pincus also expressed the belief that games should be used for the good of all, explaining how some microtransactions in Zynga games have been used to raise money following natural disasters.
Does Zynga's vision represent a viable path for the industry as whole, or is this a case of self-promotion within a short-lived social gaming bubble? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
Previous Article
24 Comments
Discuss in the forums Replyhow would microtransactions work on the witcher for example?
I have very little problem with advertising but it needs to be done in an unobtrusve way.
and agin this just isnt possible on some games
Take a game like Uplink for example how would you go about making that free?
Plus Farmville is not exactly free now is it.
Regardless if its just cosmetic or game changing, some multiplayer games benefit from players having equal opportunities. I don't think could could ever play a MMO as serious as WoW if it was bombarded with microtransactions.
I'd rather use game mechanics and knowledge to beat/progress faster than others players.
Although I do understand that it's alot harder to play new paid MMO's as you don't want to me paying full for a game every time a semi-decent one comes out just to find out it's terrible.
A weekend is still two days, would a lawyer want no pay if he worked a weekend?
Fixed
That said, Nicholas Lovell from Mode 7 Games nailed it in this blog - Why Free-to-Play is not the answer to everything. It's a really great read.
Micropayments, subscriptions or advertising are the only way that games will be free. He talks about games being free then mentions micropayments in their games - how is that "free"?
Or rewarding, theres a difference
Was going to say the same thing, but shortened to: "Zynga, come back when you make a game"
a lawyer has one customer, a game has millions
??? that doesnt make much sense
granted if a game that took one person a weekend to make was exposed to millions of people it should cost a penny, but not free. If you support it by advertising then it may cost nothing upfront but there will be an implied cost in the advertising
Wrong! Gaming should be for geeks and nerds. Not the normals!