#farmville
Zynga's next big Facebook game is an improved version of FarmVille currently beta testing under the name Big Harvest, reports TechCrunch. Their source says the game is being tested out in the Phillippines. More »
#farmville
Social gaming giant Zynga, the team behind FarmVille, is taking a French developer to court because it released a game called PyramidVille. More »
According to the resume of advertising man Alex Harvey, over the course of the past year he "Contributed concepts and copy for several new business presentations, including the successful Malibu Black and FarmVille 2 pitches". [Alex Harvey, via superannuation] More »
#zynga
The worst we normally get from irate psycopaths are angry/entertaining emails. For Zynga boss Mark Pincus, though, things are a lot more serious, to the point where he needs an absurd amount of security to ensure the safety of his family. More »
#zynga
Barely three months after the company's initial public offering are several Zynga insiders looking to get rich by selling off a hunk of their stock. That includes founder Mark Pincus, who will offer a wad of shares valued at more than $200 million. More »
We've already heard from Zynga how the company plans expand its scope a little bit from its very popular Facebook-only titles. Zynga founder Mark Pincus says in an interview with Om Malik that its policy extends to current tech being built to share saves across the cloud. "In other words, you can play a game on a computer and call it up on Xbox," Pincus says as an example, "and you resume from the point you left off, except the game play will now be customized for the Xbox controller." Game information will be shared, but the experience will be different.
That's already the case for Zynga's games on iOS -- they have a very different feel when played on mobile devices, and have even found different audiences. "Words for Friends doesn't do as well on Facebook as it does on the iPhone," for instance, "because they are a mobile first experience. Our poker game does well on the mobile as well."
This doesn't mean that Pincus is saying Zynga's working on Xbox ports of its titles. Instead, the company is building out the tech right now to extend these games out in various forms to even more platforms in the future.
#humor
This is Jason Baily, the CEO of East Side Games, with a mic in hand and some beef with Zynga, makers of Facebook games like Farmville. The world doesn't have much of it, but it could really do with more video game stand-up comedy. More »
Whoever said money can't buy friends? It certainly wasn't Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose company today filed for its initial public offering with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. According to the filing, Facebook seeks to raise $5 billion if and when the company goes public -- the filing is still pending approval from the SEC.
Also revealed in the filing was news that the social platforms biggest game developer, Zynga, accounts for "approximately 12 percent" of Facebook's revenue. Zynga had its own IPO late last year, which sought to raise $1 billion in going public.
That 12 percent is enough to have Zuckerberg and co. worried about going public, as the filing notes, "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." So, uh, here's hoping Google+ doesn't get into games, eh?
Last week, while game developers were howling that Zynga—creators of FarmVille—were the makers of a game called Dream Heights that maybe ripped off another hit game, Zynga didn't want to talk about it. More »
#zynga
Do you like playing Zynga's Facebook games? There's something wrong with you. Not because you enjoy them, what you do in your spare time is your business. Your problem comes in thinking they're games. More »
According to one financial analyst, Facebook gaming phenom Zynga is spending a massive $300 to acquire each new customer, who then goes on to give the company just $150 in return purchases...
Zynga's initial public offering (IPO) didn't exactly go swimmingly. It required assistance on its first day, and the stock currently sits below the initial $10 price. Speaking with the Wall Street Journal, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus tried to smooth over feelings about the overhyped and underperforming stock.
"Our goals were we want to raise a billion dollars. Through going public, we wanted to add some more great long-term investors to the company. All of that was successful," Pincus said, as the WSJ pointed out that the stock dipped on its first day of trading. "I don't blame anybody because from our standpoint, we think it was successful. It was many times larger than the other tech IPOs that had just happened recently. We think we're now well positioned to move forward in the future."
In discussing Zynga's allegedly harsh corporate culture, Pincus says the attrition rate for the company is a little over 3 percent, which he claims is lower than Silicon Valley's 14 percent average.
One thing that hasn't slowed is Zynga's company and executive acquisition train, which recently picked up EA Interactive's former head, Barry Cottle, who joins Zynga as executive VP of business and corporate development.
Zynga stock finally roared out of the gate and on to the trading floor yesterday at $10 a share, but investors weren't hugely impressed with the social gaming company. The stock started up a dollar at $11, and then dropped back down two, and then thirty, and then fifty cents during the day, leveling off at $9.50, which Forbes says was thanks mostly to "a stabilizing bid by Zynga's underwriters," which means Zynga's investors stepped in and bought up enough stock to keep the price up.
So what happened? Shortly put, Zynga's stock wasn't really worth what it was priced out at. An initial public offering is designed to be priced a little low, in order to drum up demand for a company's stock from the public (not to mention raise some money). But Zynga went high and, as a result, didn't quite get the graph it wanted today.
They didn't sell the FarmVille, so to speak -- ZNGA will likely be trading fine on Monday (and $9.50 is fine for the highly competitive gaming industry; THQ is sitting down at 75 cents right now). But Zynga's hype phase appears to be over. Now the company needs to prove it can sell more than just cow clickers.
#farmville
The company most responsible for making Facebook a gaming destination will start to have their stock traded on Wall Street today, with shares going for $10 each. The initial public offering will likely make Zynga the second most valuable video game company after Activision but ahead of Electronic Arts. More »
Step right up, step right up! Waiting for that next patch of corn to grow in Farmville? Just hanging around for your friend to make his next move in Mafia Wars? Then you need to make the most of your time, my friend, with the most splendiferous stock offering this year: ZYNGA!
Or, "ZNGA," as it will be known today on the Nasdaq Stock Market, trading for the low-low (but on the higher end of expected) price of $10. Yes, $10! And because Zynga is feeling so generous about its stock price, you won't even have to wait 10 minutes or pay any extra credits to purchasing more than one at a time.
Forget all those negative feelings you may have heard about the company. Ignore the claims of a "sketchy" business model. Today's the day to get in on the ground floor and ride that bubble into the sun!
#farmville
Farmville creator and king of casual games Zynga is in the midst of preparing employees for a Friday IPO, a source close to the company tells Kotaku. More »
Zynga is doing extremely well, especially for a company that started by piggybacking on a social-networking site, Facebook, and making games about farming. Zynga is in the process of launching its IPO, and while it won't be worth as much as initially expected this summer -- dropping from an expected high of $20 billion to a current possible low of about $10 billion -- Zynga is positioned to be worth more than EA, currently valued at $7.7 billion, and to compete with Activision Blizzard, which is valued at $14 billion.
Zynga plans to raise roughly $1 billion for its IPO and has begun a nine-day pitch process to convince investors that the company is truly worth it, with plans to sell shares for $8.50 to $10 each under the Nasdaq label, "ZNGA." Zynga's offerings would mark the largest for a U.S. Internet company since Google in 2004, but with Facebook expected to eclipse it in 2012.
If you're an interested investor, surveyor or slideshow-lover, you can view Zynga's complete IPO presentation right here.
Printing money is a lot easier than you might think. The conventional method of using a giant steampunk-tentacle robot to steal printing plates from a maximum-security bank vault is no longer necessary; these days all you need is access to Facebook APIs and the suffix "ville." Zynga, having no reason to halt their eternally forward march into a dollar-filled future, may be looking to add another printing press to its already well-stocked stable of money making franchises.
The domain detectives at Fusible have unearthed several recently registered URLs, all related to the presently unannounced IP Forestville. Registered through MarkMonitor, an intermediary used by A-list companies to register and hold domain names, the addresses run the gamut from forestvillegame.com to forestvillewithfriends.com and forestvillezynga.com.
Forestville.com is not among the registered domains, however, as it already belongs to the Forestville Central School District. Nothing else is known about the project as of yet, but we'd put good money on this being a micro-social Forest Whitaker simulator.
Printing money is a lot easier than you might think. The conventional method of using a giant steampunk-tentacle robot to steal printing plates from a maximum-security bank vault is no longer necessary; these days all you need is access to Facebook APIs and the suffix "ville." Zynga, having no reason to halt their eternally forward march into a dollar-filled future, may be looking to add another printing press to its already well-stocked stable of money making franchises.
The domain detectives at Fusible have unearthed several recently registered URLs, all related to the presently unannounced IP Forestville. Registered through MarkMonitor, an intermediary used by A-list companies to register and hold domain names, the addresses run the gamut from forestvillegame.com to forestvillewithfriends.com and forestvillezynga.com.
Forestville.com is not among the registered domains, however, as it already belongs to the Forestville Central School District. Nothing else is known about the project as of yet, but we'd put good money on this being a micro-social Forest Whitaker simulator.
Food consumed today: Nothing. I'm being fueled by music. Specifically, one song: "Eye of the Tiger." It's on repeat and nothing is gonna get in my way.
Afternoon. It's brisk in NYC and I'm bringing the heat to Zynga. If that bubble won't pop on its own, I might as well start passing around a bottle of wake-up juice!
Angry Birds developer Rovio allegedly rejected a $2.25 billion acquisition offer by Zynga over the summer. The report comes from a New York Times piece about how Zynga's tough corporate culture may gush talent as soon as unhappy employees with stock make bank on the IPO.
The piece also mentions how Zynga lost out on acquiring PopCap earlier this year for nearly a billion in cash to Electronic Arts, which offered a mere $750 million with performance bonuses.
Clearly, if Zynga offered more cash and lost to a company like EA (which had its own share of image issues in the past), it's not hard to contextualize that the Farmville publisher has a slight employee perception problem. At least Zynga execs can dry their tears with thousand dollar bills.
#zynga
Farmville andCityville developers Zynga made their name on Facebook. But Facebook makes the rules on Facebook, and Facebook takes a cut of a company's profits on Facebook, so Zynga is now looking to sell more of its stuff to you directly. More »
Never before have our hearts received news with such confusion: In a recent interview with IGN, Toy Story writers Alec Sokolow and Joel Cohen hinted at their next project: A movie adaptation of Zynga's Farmville franchise. "We're in conversations with Zynga to do something with one of their brands," they teased. "Can't really say too much on that front yet, but 'Old MacDonald' didn't have a factory, if you get our drift." We do not get your drift. Your drift makes us sad.
We trust the two to craft a compelling story, but we worry there's not enough rich source material for them to base it on. All we know is we're not looking forward to receiving a hundred daily invitations to go to the movie from our distant, distant cousins and fourth grade math teachers.
You can tell a lot about a person based on their agricultural lot in Farmville: For instance, one look at our fertile lands, and you'll know we're firm supporters of firm arugula, well-fed livestock and laying out pumpkin patches in the shapes of genitalia. Also, if you check back in a few months, you'll be able to tell how much we love ex-New York gubernatorial candidate and Rent is Too Damn High Party founder Jimmy McMillan, because we'll have his campaign signs plastered all over our farmgrounds.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, political marketing consultant Michael Hendrix says Farmville will allow players to post candidate signage and do door-to-door campaigning later this year. Hendrix works for the Michelle Bachmann presidential campaign, and didn't specify whether users could campaign for any other candidates. We've contacted Zynga to find out the specifics.
Also, we should be more specific: We're talking about campaigning for real-life political positions. Not the mayor of Farmville, a position we'd still probably vote to fill with Jimmy McMillan. (Come on, that facial hair? How could we not?)
