GrrlGotGame - Zynga loses its swinga: Why players are foreclosing on Farmville and Cafe World

Mere months ago, I attended a meet-up in Seattle so packed they stopped letting people into the bar. People went outside to smoke, and found themselves left out in the cold, literally and figuratively.

The force of nature that brought so many out on a school night? Zynga.

The people behind the Facebook games phenomenon Farmville came. They saw. They gloated. Tens of millions of players, growing exponentially daily - almost hourly - all for free. They also casually mentioned the $180 million investment they had received earlier in the week. The room was filled with casual game industry players, all hoping to capture some of that Farmville magic.

What a difference a few months can make.

Today, Farmville player numbers (along with Mafia Wars, Cafe World, and the rest) are in a free-fall. It's bad when you can't attract new players. It's worse when long-term players walk away from leveled-up characters and games. I know, because I'm about to do it myself. Here's why:

• I'm tired of pissing off my friends. A few months ago, I wrote a story about how to avoid annoying your buddies with your Farm/Cafe/Mafia/etc. announcements. Following those basics of good citizenship just don't work anymore... and yes, I know they can turn off the game announcements. Most don't. They just complain.
• Most of my friends have already quit. The volume of dead crops, spoiled food, and unrequited gifts has slowly increased over the past several months, to the point I recently did a head count of who was still playing each game. Assuming I read the signs correctly, I am down to four Cafe World pals and three Farmville buds. This does not bode well when...
• Every "free" game is a designed to get your credit card number. OK, I am mixed on this point. I understand that Zynga is not a charity, and I get that the way they make money is by getting you to buy in-game cash. But it didn't used to be this bad. Case-in-point: Each game offers special items you can "build" by getting friends to send you pieces. For example, a special Cafe World stove that will instantly mix all ingredients, thus saving a lot of annoying clicks. This works great if you have a massive network of people standing by to send you the roughly 4,056 knobs required to complete the stove. (How big is this thing, anyway?) The game is rigged by limiting the items each person can send you, limiting you to one gift from each friend per day, and making item builds available for a limited period of time. If you have a huge network - and some of my friends do - you can score free equipment easily. If not... well, you can buy what you need! And what you'll need is to buy in-game dollars with a real-world credit card. Or you can just abandon all that hard work and stare at your half-built Farmville stable forever.
• Facebook is determined to make it really, really hard to play the games. Facebook used to make all of my friends' game announcements (free food, lost cats, need help whacking enemies, etc.) available in a single, easy-access filtered feed. No more. Now I must plow through my entire feed, which has all but eliminated the announcements. If you look closely, you'll occasionally see "see x similar posts" at the bottom of the announcement. This is where much of the free lawyers, guns, and money are hiding. And, due to some feuding between Facebook and Zynga, you may see these disappear completely. Divorce is ugly, kids.
• Zynga is also determined to make it really, really hard to play the games. Zynga relies on the social aspect for marketing. (Not speculation; this was in their presentation!) This used to be easy, as everyone saw the game announcements in their feeds. If you're interested in games and you see a lot of friends playing a game, you're probably going to try it, right? Well, now that those days are gone, Zynga has gone full tilt boogie on to Plan B: harass players into "inviting" friends to play with them. I can't spend two minutes in a game without being asked if I want to send a present, visit another person's farm/Cafe/etc., invite friends, or the most recent addition, invite friends already playing another Zynga game (e.g., ask your Farmville friends to play Cafe World). Enough! Load my damn game and let me get on with it. Which leads me to...
• I'm just not enjoying myself anymore. That one's pretty self-explanatory.

These factors are all contributing to the rapid decline of Zynga's once rock-solid games. And it's just going to get worse when Zynga makes good on its threat to divorce Facebook and move the action to its own game site. Location, location, location may be a cliché, but it also happens to be true.

Will moving to the web put the final stake in Zynga's heart? It depends largely on how the company handles the shift. I'd suggest hiring a marketing department and building an advertising budget, because what little viral reach Zynga enjoys today is about to dissolve. More importantly - listen up kids, this stuff’s important - improve your games! Because in the end, these aren't really games. They're social pyramid schemes, albeit without the cash buy-in.

And once a player's personal pyramid collapses, game play is the only thing that will save you.