Zynga was founded in 2007 in San Francisco, California, by Mark Pincus, an American Internet entrepreneur with the love for games and computers. Once called Presidio Media, Pincus changed the name of its new startup after his beloved dog, Zinga, an American bulldog which has been since the symbol and “face” of the company.
Zynga is a provider and developer of social games that today are played by millions of people all around the world, but that is now menaced by the success of free casino games online which last year caused them to lose 25% of daily active users in one quarter. Will Zynga transform itself in a gambling platform like other companies have done in the past or will it remain faithful to its origins?
This is yet to be known. Zynga literally changed the way people play games developing social games that work stand-alone on mobile phone platforms like iOS or Android, taking advantage of the increasing number of people who started using smartphones. Its success grew even bigger when they launched their most famous games on Facebook. Who hasn’t ever played Farmville, Chefville, Words with Friends or Zynga Poker once in their life? Their games are really addictive and keep people entertained for hours. That is why Pincus and his team decided in 2012 to launch their own platform for social gaming and created zynga.com, a website where people could get the chance to play their favourite games off of the Facebook environment, offering new and improved services to their customers.
In fact, the Zynga.com platform seems to be made just for them. Gamers can play with their friends, but also with other people from all around the world who share their same interests. They can create profiles, recommend others their favourite games, help them through the game and chat, just like a real social network.
Zynga had what it takes to win and wallop its partner Facebook in the war of social games, but then something happened. In 2012, the company had fallen from a pre-money evaluation of about 14$ billion to 2$ billion, but also didn’t manage to maintain its success on Facebook and other mobile platforms like iOS and Android, leading to the loss of millions of users every day. This is when the company started considering bringing its own identity into question and taking a step towards real-money gaming, that is gambling.
Can this new vision really be the key of success of Zynga? It appears so, as the shares have been particularly sensitive to the change. When the company claimed to be considering real-money gaming, their shares got up 10% and fell back by 5% when it was clear they didn’t have any tangible projects towards it.
The company has already something in common with gambling companies: their games are tailored towards monetization, making players want to play more and pay for it. The transition would probably be very easy and painless, but it seems the company still believes in its values and wants to focus on free to play social games. The experts think that if they refocus on their core capabilities and play their cards right – i.e. concluding the acquisition of NaturalMotion – Zynga can gain back its customers and be even more successful than before. The game is not over yet!
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This post was published with the express approval of the publisher (A. Mourad). A. Mourad is a freelance writer in the field of online gaming.
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