Zynga has revealed that it is testing a partnership with Bitpay to accept Bitcoins for in-game purchases on some of its Web-based games.
I guess it’s only natural for you to use your virtual currency to purchase virtual goods. The Zynga crowd doesn’t really strike me as the type to amass Bitcoins, but there’s bound to be some overlap.
If you want to give it a try, the test is active on Zynga.com for FarmVille 2, CastleVille, ChefVille, CoasterVille, Hidden Chronicles, Hidden Shadows and CityVille.
Struggling game developer Zynga is gambling on gambling, launching real-money Facebook gambling games including ZyngaPlusPoker and ZyngaPlusCasino in the U.K., where online gambling is legal.
VentureBeat reported on Zynga’s announcement in Barcelona, Spain, where Facebook Director of Games Partnerships Sean Ryan introduced the Facebook games, which Zynga did not specify a launch date for.
The real-money gambling versions of the pre-existing Zynga titles were produced in partnership with U.K. online gambling outfit Bwin.party, according to VentureBeat, which added that Web and downloadable versions of the games were released in the U.K. in April.
By Tricia Duryee at AllThingsD:
Win a chance to play Words With Friends against John Legend, Snoop Lion
or Eva Longoria — but not Alec Baldwin – in Zynga’s first ever Words With Friends Celebrity Challenge.
Zynga is partnering with American Express — and a few other celebrities
— to give away $500,000 to charity. The games begin tomorrow and end
Oct. 3.
By Mike Isaac at AllThingsD:
Zynga’s game playing network is massive — more than 290 million
people play the company’s games each month. The problem is, Zynga says,
those players are scattered across multiple devices and platforms and
can’t always sync up to play the same games.
Zynga aims to change
this. At the company’s second annual Zynga Unleashed event in San
Francisco on Tuesday, Zynga unveiled a unified platform to bring players
together across portals such as the Web, Android and iOS, Facebook and
Google+.
“The social engagement across our network is industry
leading, but it’s also fragmented,” said Manuel Bronstein, Zynga general
manager.
The idea is centered around the Zynga message center —
the hub found on Facebook and Zynga.com that contains a player’s friends
list, an activity feed of friends’ gaming statuses and a list of gaming
suggestions based on what games you and your friends are already
playing.
Also, with the newly launched Zynga API, third-party
developers can beef up their games with widgets previously available
only on Zynga.com, like group chat, a live social activity stream, and a
zFriends list. More social, the philosophy goes, means increased
engagement — exactly what Zynga and partner developers want.
Players
can also connect using the newly launched real-time multiplayer feature
which, just like it sounds, allows multiple players across separate
devices to play with — or against — one another simultaneously. That’s a
far cry from the typical turn-based gaming that Zynga offers, like
those games in the “With Friends” franchise.
The beginnings of the long-awaited Facebook ad network could be here. Facebook ads began running on Zynga.com today.
First reported by Inside Facebook
today, Facebook display ad units including Sponsored Stories are now
being served on Zynga.com, the casual games site from the company behind
popular Facebook gaming apps like Farmville.
"People may now see
ads and sponsored stories from Facebook on Zynga.com," confirmed a
Facebook spokesperson in an email sent to ClickZ. "We don't share any
information about people or advertisers with Zynga and advertisers do
not have any new targeting criteria."
In other words, this is not
really the ad network ad industry watchers have expected Facebook to
launch in conjunction with its Open Graph. Many anticipate a robust ad
network that will allow advertisers to target ads across the web based
on behavioral and contextual data gleaned through Facebook share
buttons, and data collected through interactions on Facebook itself.
Whether or not that will ever come, in the nearer future observers
can probably expect to see Facebook ads running on other sites that
allow people to sign in using Facebook.
Facebook also piqued
interest in its alleged ad network ambitions when news of partnerships
with several DSPs broke last week. Facebook plans to open its site up to
a large pool of data for display ad targeting, allowing advertisers to
target users based on data from the DSP partners.
Advertisers will target people through the DSP partners, and if
Facebook finds a cookie match, an ad will be served on Facebook.
However, they can't combine native Facebook data with that outside data,
which would be sure to ruffle feathers among privacy advocates.
By Devon Glenn on SocialTimes:
As Facebook gets ready to hit the stock market, Zynga’s place in its
ecosystem appears to have changed since last year. The social network announced
that the gaming company’s ads and transaction fees made up 15% of its
revenue in the first quarter of 2012, compared to 19% in 2011.
In March, Zynga had launched its own gaming site
at Zynga.com that would allow users to play with people outside their
networks and to publish their scores without leaving the site. But Zynga
continued to use Facebook Credits as its virtual goods payment system,
which gives Facebook a 30% cut of the profits.
The payments, along with direct advertising from Zynga, generated 12%
of Facebook’s revenue in 2011 compared to 11% in the first quarter of
2012. The additional 7% in 2011 and 4% in the first quarter of 2012 came
from ads from other advertisers that Facebook displayed on Zynga’s
apps.
Via Statista at Visual.ly:
This infographic illustrates the numbers behind social gaming pioneer
Zynga. It contains user and revenue data, as well as growth rates and
net earnings.
This Infographic is designed by Christian Wisniew, Source:
http://www.statista.com/chartoftheday/media/
By Eric Eldon at TechCrunch:
Zynga’s first earnings release
today makes the social game developer’s business look notably stronger
than it had when the company went public in December. Its traffic,
paying user base, and projected bookings are all headed into positive
territory, whereas these numbers had been flat or falling towards the end of last year.
Bookings, the short-term measure of when the company sells a virtual good or other item, were already up last quarter.
But Zynga says in the release that more growth is on the way — a
year-over-year increase of between 16% and 25% in 2012, to between $1.35
billion and $1.45 billion. “We expect that growth will be weighted
towards the back-half of the year with slower sequential growth in the
first half of the year,” according to the release, although the
reasoning isn’t explained.
That’s a bit surprising considering that the company has invested
heavily in launching and marketing a string of new titles over the last
four months or so — these games should be driving bookings up now, not
in half a year. Maybe Zynga knows something about what’s happening on
Facebook, Apple’s iTunes App Store and its other platforms, that it’s
not talking about? Or maybe it is planning something else that’ll make a
big positive difference, like the launch of its long-rumored standalone
gaming portal?
[Update: Zynga executives said on the call today
that, generally, they see older games make more money over times as
serious users get more committed -- that is, spending more. Also, like I
guessed, they hinted that the "Project Z" platform is still in the
works, and will be launching at some point.]
By Christina Warren at Mashable:
Facebook just amended its S-1 filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the documents offer deeper insight into Facebook’s relationship with Zynga.
Facebook amended or added 26 new documents to its SEC filing and these updated documents provide more color on Facebook’s stock allotment and its relationships with other companies.
As first reported by Business Insider, that includes a more detailed look at how Facebook and Zynga work together.
In original IPO filing, it was revealed that Zynga accounts for 12% of Facebook’s revenue. That news was enough to lift Zynga’s stock and made clear that the relationships is symbiotic.
The amended filings include a Developer Addendum effective as of May 14, 2010 that discloses the developer relationship between the two companies.
The documents says, in part:
The parties acknowledge that FB desires to enable Zynga to build the
Zynga Platform on top of the Facebook Platform, and the parties desire
to, amongst other goals set forth herein, work together to increase the
number of users of each party’s products and services.
The parties further acknowledge that Zynga is making a significant
commitment to the Facebook Platform (i.e., using Facebook as the
exclusive Social Platform on the Zynga Properties and granting FB
certain title exclusivities to Zynga games on the Facebook Platform). In
exchange for such commitment, the parties have committed to set certain
growth targets for monthly unique users of Covered Zynga Games.
In essence, what this agreement says is that in exchange for building
atop Facebook’s platform, Zynga got Facebook’s assurance that it would
meet certain growth targets.
Those growth targets are based on a linear weekly growth rate for web
and mobile. In exchange for meeting these targets, Zynga promised
exclusivity of its titles on the Facebook Platform and promised
exclusive mobile integration.
There are more documents in the new filing that also look interesting and we’ll be following the wider story as it develops.
By Stephen Wells at Prism Casino:
The fact that half of the population of the Internet plays social
games on Facebook and Google+ caught our attention. That’s the reason
we’ve compiled some very insightful stats from great authorities on
social media and online games and put everything together in a brand new
infographic we present to you today titled: What Makes Social Games on
Facebook and Google+ so Popular?
By Anthony Ha at TechCrunch:
Everyone likes to talk about how dependent Zynga is on Facebook, but that relationship cuts both ways. In the social network’s S-1 filing for its $5 billion IPO,
Facebook says that Zynga accounted for 12 percent of its revenue in
2011, through a combination of virtual goods payments and advertising.
The number was less than 10 percent in 2009 and 2010.
“If the use of Zynga games on our Platform declines, if Zynga
launches games on or migrates games to competing platforms, or if we
fail to maintain good relations with Zynga, we may lose Zynga as a
significant Platform developer and our financial results may be
adversely affected,” Facebook says.
Despite the fact that they clearly need each other (or maybe because of it), Zynga and Facebook have had rocky relationships in the past. Zynga has been trying to reduce its dependence by pursuing with things like partnerships with other companies and by developing its own gaming portal. Still, it’s probably safe to assume that it will be pretty Facebook-reliant for the foreseeable future — not least because Facebook and Zynga entered into a five-year partnership in 2010.
Social gaming juggernaut Zynga has announced “Project Z,” a platform for playing social games and chatting with friends powered by Facebook Connect.
Project Z, also known as “Zynga Live” and “Zynga Direct,” lets users start their games on Facebook
and bring them to Project Z without interruption, and vice versa. It is
essentially a social network designed specifically for games and
chatting about games, but one that is powered by Facebook Connect.
Social gaming company Zynga has decided to list its shares on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol “ZNGA” when it holds its IPO. The decision was revealed in an updated filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
In the filing,
Zynga says, “We intend to apply to have our common stock approved for
listing on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol ‘ZNGA.’” Renren and LinkedIn, both of which held their IPOs this year, were listed on the New York Stock Exchange, but tech companies are often more likely to be listed on Nasdaq.
Zynga has launched “Adventure World,”
its biggest and most feature-rich social game to date, on Facebook. The game allows
you to explore 5 worlds and 30 dynamic environments as you take on nasty
creatures and find clues to discover the lost secrets of El Dorado.
You can customize your own 3D avatar and choose from an inventory of
tools and gadgets — including machetes, grappling hooks, dynamite, whips
and pickaxes — to help you pass dangerous booby traps and make your way
across wild environments.
Of course, this being a Zynga game, you can recruit some Facebook
friends to help you make your way across the game boards. You can
control a crew of up to 12 friends and use their special tools and
abilities to help you battle enemies, solve puzzles and progress through
the game.
The total game board is more than 40 times the size of previous Zynga
games such as “FarmVille.”
There are also more art and game assets than any previous Zynga game
has had at launch — for instance, you will have to contend with 5 types
of snakes, 4 kinds of spiders and 2 kinds of rams as you work through
the game.
“Adventure World” has more than 200 quests and there are more than
20,000 objects across its 30 maps. You can also choose from more than
10,000 avatar variations so you will be spoiled for choice when creating
your avatar.
This is the first game that has been developed by the Zynga Boston
studio, which created a brand new game engine for “Adventure World.” The
engine includes advanced rendering technology with fast performance,
high frame rates and 3D environments. It also has a world editor that
allows the developers to create larger, more detailed game worlds and
interactive environments with puzzle-based gameplay.
Nabeel Hyatt, general manager of Zynga Boston, said:
When we joined the Zynga family a year ago, our goal was
to not only create a game unlike any other in the social gaming space
today, but to create a completely new genre. We call this genre social
adventure, one where players can explore, discover and team up with
friends on an adventure of a lifetime. We hope our players have as much
fun playing the game as we had building it.
The game, which was
announced last month, is being made available in 8 languages at
launch: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish
and Norwegian. The launch of “Adventure World” follows on from several
other social games and expansions to existing games that Zynga has
launched in recent months. These include “The
Pioneer Trail” for “FrontierVille,” “CityVille
Hometown” and “Hanging
With Friends,” while it has ported its popular “Words
With Friends” mobile game to Facebook.
You can check “Adventure World” out for yourself by installing it on
Facebook.
Zynga, the social gaming giant, has released
details of its new social game Adventure World,
expected to be launched in the next few weeks. The title is an Indiana
Jones style strategy game in which players are required to discover
historical artifacts to make virtual gold and experience points. If
Adventure World turns out to be a success, Zynga may be in a much better
position for its upcoming IPO, which remains stalled due to whirling a
stock market.
“FrontierVille”
fans, grab your 10-gallon hat, pull on your boots and hop on your horse
as a whole new chapter is coming to the Facebook game. Zynga has announced that “The
Pioneer Trail” is launching Friday on the social network.
In “The Pioneer Trail,” you will work your way across 3 distinct maps
— Beaver Valley, High Plains and Avalanche Pass — in order to reach the
safety of Fort Courage. To help you get to Fort Courage, you can select
3 of your Facebook friends to form your Trail Crew. You can designate
those friends as your crew’s doctor, carpenter and hunter, each of whom
have their own special abilities. This gives an interesting twist to the
game, as the more active your friends are on “The Pioneer Trail,” the
faster you will progress.
Zynga’s CityVille, the biggest social game on Facebook with more than 90 million monthly players, has taken Facebook by storm and is available in a number of different languages, but the popular social game has yet to hit places that don’t have access to Facebook — at least until now. Zynga has partnered up with Tencent, China’s leading Internet service company, to launch a region-specific version of the game called “Zynga City.”
Google is said to be preparing to launch a game network that would be integrated into Google+. The game network would offer developers a larger cut of revenue than Facebook and faster performance for their games.
Social gaming company Zynga has updated its IPO filing with a wealth of information, including a list of its investors. At the top of the list is search giant Google.
This marks the first time that Zynga has disclosed Google as an investor in the company. Google is placed at the top of the list of investors ahead of Softbank, Digital Sky Technologies, DAG Ventures and SB Asia Pacific Investments.
The leader in social gaming is undoubtedly Zynga, but the chase is on to catch the king of the market. As such, game developers and publishers 6Waves and Lolapps are combing forces in a merger aimed to take down the Zynga empire.
6Waves is a Hong Kong-based game publisher while Lolapps are game developers, so the partnership makes a lot of sense for the two parties. The newly formed company - 6Waves Lolapps - will take on Zynga directly with internally developed social games but also Electronic Arts that publishes third-party games. It is a significant move in the social gaming ecosystem, but how will it affect users and developers?
