Zynga's downfall: lack of innovation players falling interest

Lead: Tach Gekely (Tadhg Kelly) is a 20 years experience in the game designer, or well-known game design blog What Games are founder, currently provides a number of companies to provide game design and development guidance. He writes today from a professional perspective on the reasons for Zynga's decline. The following is the main content of the article: User behavior Elusive Although Facebook's number of users has exceeded the 1 billion mark, for Zynga, the pain will continue because the same game patterns are overused and will only make less revenue. However, moving the game seems to present another scene. New games designed for the types of games that have been successful on Facebook, such as role-playing games and pet games, are often among the top earners in the income rankings. These games have a good revenue-generating capability, and they perform better than the flash-based version of the game, especially on Tablet PCs. "CSR Racing", "Rage of Bahamut", "Dragon Vale", "the Simpsons tapped out" and "Clash of Clans" and other games are widely used in the application of the purchase mechanism, but also in the search for free ecosystems. As with the attitude of social games two years ago, many people now want to know the secret of the success of these new games, and some even ask me directly whether these games are typical examples of second-generation (G2) games or "New frontiers" of security. In this respect, my answer is in the negative. On the question of game iterations, I always like to quote Conrad (Joseph Conrad) to illustrate his point: "For ordinary people, the ocean seems vast, boundless, no compassion, no faith, no order, no memory." In short, the sea has no memory. "Platform Amnesia" when we look back at the changes in the game platform over the past few years, we find that the user's movements are like the sea. I don't mean to say that the transition between game platforms is a change in shape. For example, when Nintendo invented a new type of gaming machine, they often put it on the market with traditional brands, although some gaming industry journalists would attack the lack of creative approach, which often worked. People will look at it as a brand new product. Platform Amnesia (platform amnesia) is coming again and again, for those of us who have long studied the game industry, the trend seems a little odd, but it really does exist. Facebook is the biggest beneficiary of platform amnesia. In the past, the vast majority of people never played a continuously updated web game, and as a result, simple interaction and the reappearance of traditional ideas seemed to be new concepts again. The smartphone and tablet revolution has changed the expectations of millions of of users. Can you play cheap or free games on your phone? This is a brave new world. This kind of platform turnsChange often brings new ideas-what I call the "founding works" (Founderwork), which play a role in benchmarking and allow many other games to imitate. For example, "Angry Birds" is the template for "You Draw Me guess" (Draw something). But the new platform will also produce a large number of shovels (shovelware, meaning pirated products). A powerful example of this is that when Nintendo invests a lot of resources to continue to make the Wii, DS and other products to the success of the game quality, many of the shovel will also be followed. Shovel a guerrilla-warfare developer creates a shovel to get a slice of the fast-growing market trend. It often wears a popular game "coat", inherit its "host" platform successful marketing story, but often in the implementation of lower. Its developers mainly seek to use the environment of the existing platform, the game itself is not expected high, may be "a shot to withdraw." Because the attitude of shovel developers is only "done" rather than pursuing quality, they have a certain window period before the player gets bored-often for 3-5 years. Sometimes the shovel will bring fun to the player, but one of the important features is that the play is of low value. Once the player's interest in it increases and other developers start offering more value than the original developer, the shovel will quickly be left behind. It is at this stage that the importance of the platform or the market trait will emerge. Game consoles are short platform: in the gaming industry, developers and gamers want core technology to be upgraded every few years, so in a sense they want the game to be an important product-both winners and losers will change. Players are eager to have a major upgrade every five years, to get rid of new experiences. Facebook and PC are representatives of long platform. Instead of evolving every few years, they have backward compatibility, so they shut out competitive software. In the "Long platform" market, change will be more incremental trend, the audience will become a more focused, more tribal characteristics of the group, the interest in the platform will not dissipate. This group is familiar with everything that was experienced before the platform. As their expertise in interacting with the platform matures, their value expectations are rising. Unlike the sea, the "long platform" audience has memories. The lack of innovation in games may be due to innovation--witnessing the ups and downs of Nokia and BlackBerry and the rise of the iphone--most of us may think of mobile phones and tablets as "short platforms." But I think they have become "long platforms", like the early stages of the PC market before the two common standards have been established, but the problem is that they now have these two standards. Mobile devices now have a stable, sophisticated operating system and a developer community. Their major innovations today focus on shape, size and screen size, not interactive mode. Users are accustomed toThe use of stores to purchase applications for these ecosystems to make their own contribution to the development. Game developers will never move away from the touchscreen in these devices and change their control--and no doubt the user does not want them to. Like previous mouse keyboards or web browsers, touch-screen mobile devices have reached a peak in development. This is great news for developers who want to build G2 games. The time is ripe for those who seek to gain deeper, more valuable interaction with the audience. But for developers who are more accustomed to developing shovel pieces, things are getting pretty tricky. New mobile developers have begun to stagnate about game innovation, fearing that Apple would rewrite the terms of Cross-platform game promotion. For a long time to come, they will also be worried about strategies to attract and retain users-whether through advertising or social media. But I think there is a deeper reason for this problem. The boredom of the player makes Mark Ping (Mark Pincus) encounter a great threshold for life, and the same emotions will almost hit the mobile game in the same way. Static game design, creative and play difficult to get a breakthrough, these once troubled web game problems also appear in mobile games. Even successful developers such as Ngmoco must be wary of this trend, as the value of play is considered an important factor in the eventual return of the platform audience. It is indeed a great boon for developers to experiment with technology and product values in the Mobile world, and it is good news for mobile platforms (especially iOS) to be faster to commercialize. However, the G2 game is about the value of play rather than the release, commercialization and value of the product. In the past, it was profitable to develop simple games like the basic rules of waiting time and role-playing level maps, but this is not a long-term solution. In a sense, social game developers must revisit the art of game design. No platform can maintain the status of "perpetual motion" only by reusing the same level of content. Players want a variety of game types, and they have reason to expect more. This problem can no longer be ignored, whether it is related to the game mechanism, simulation, narrative, or any other reason. Just because you landed on the ipad platform doesn't mean you won't be attacked by the kind of force that is tearing up Zynga. Sail)