Adventure World from Zynga soon to be released on Facebook.
Social game maker Zynga revealed on Facebook Page that its latest game title will be ‘Adventure World’. The game is developed around a number of different puzzles, maps, and lands. The game is very much influence from the movie series-Indiana Jones: from the main character to the story kine and even the game font and style, but not the same.
Here is a snippet description of the Game:
“Set during the golden age of exploration, you travel the world with friends in search of artifacts, secrets of the past, and adventure! Along the journey, you unlock ancient secrets, culminating in the final secret to be revealed in the lost city of gold: El Dorado!”
Zynga was to go for an IPO in July but will be delayed until November. Over the past few months it has launched many new games like, “Pioneer Trail”- a game within another game, FrontierVille, “CityVille Hometown” and “Hanging With Friends”. Adventure World is the latest game, which Zynga is announcing just within a month when Pioneer Trail was announced two weeks back.
Zynga simply announced that the game is ‘coming soon’ but it is unclear when the game will be released. Adventure World is speculated to be another big hit if given a chance of Zynga’s success story such as CityVille, FarmVille and Empires & Allies. Here is the preview trailer of the game, have a look and be prepared.
Google+ has now joined the race of offering online games on its competing social network platform to attract more users. On Thursday, it announced to offer 16 games from 10 game companies including well known games-Zynga Poker, Angry Birds and Bejeweled. Besides, Google+ is hoping for more investment in social games and is expected to roll out more games gradually.
With the two social giants competing to attract more users to their respective online services, Google+ move to add games is a direct hit to the gaming system of Facebook.
In response, Facebook on Thursday evening unveiled a series of changes to its online-gaming and added new features to improve the gaming experience. It will roll out a live real-time game ticker that gives updates on friends’ activity on apps and games as they play, increase the size of its gaming screen and allow users to bookmark their favorite games on the home screen.
The recent move of Facebook is a necessary measures to boost its games platform , because social gaming is an ever-increasing important part of Facebook’s business which accounted for a revenue of more than $500 million from selling virtual goods last year. It has a user-base of 750 million over the world with more than 1 million monthly active users of the 85 games in the site.
One of the challenging contradiction between the two companies will be that Google+ will offer to charge game developers only 5% on transaction as compared to Facebook’s 30%. It is just one factor of consideration, we hope game developers will at the end choose the best platform with higher potential of users and which delivers the best value.
Have you ever wondered how popular social network games are?
Well, according to a report from research firm NPD Group, 56.8 million people in the United States, which is one-fifth of the total population of United States.
Out of the 56 million people, 35% were entirely new to video games. The ones who have never played any type of video game before. Among them older and female users were more prone to be attracted by social games.
The survey also showed other interesting fact about social games.
Out of the 56.8 million people, 53% were females while 47% were males, indicating that social network games doesn’t appeal more to the fairer sex.
The survey showed that 10% of social network gamers have spent real money on these games and 11% indicated that they are likely to make future purchase.
Social network games are also affecting the amount of spending on other types of gaming activities. Gamers indicated they spent up to 20% less on traditional games since they started playing social network games.
Social network games are part and parcel of Facebook. Its impact and following is massive. Among social network games, Zynga’s FarmVille is the most popular game on Facebook with over 62 million monthly users.
Zynga, the leading social games developer on Facebook, has announced it has acquired Japanese start-up Unoh. Amount of the deal was not disclosed, but reportedly amounts to “several billion Yen.”
Recently, Japanese technology giant SoftBank funded Zynga with $150 million to build a joint venture for developing and distributing social games across Japan.
With the acquisition, Unoh will provide Zynga with a base for the Asian social games market.
Machitsuku! (“Build a City in Japanese) is the current leading title with 3 million users from Unoh on Mixi, Japan’s largest social network. Other popular titles from Unoh include Band Yarouyo! and Kaizoku Chronicle.
Zynga is the biggest player in social games market with more than 230 million monthly active users. Zynga is currently very dependent on Facebook for its revenue. Tapping into different market and diversifying its revenue source and stronghold will definitely help Zynga a lot in fulfilling its plan to go public.
Recently, with the popularity of social networks like Facebook, a lot of its users are getting hooked on one of its most important applications: social gaming. Farmville alone continues to increase by more than 6 million active users monthly. Its users are now about 70 million.
Social gaming has simple yet interesting principles, as well as engaging activities. It lets users interact with each other via competition or through invites from other users. Unlike hardcore online games, these social games let users unwind from their usual routine.
There are many developers who create these free games because it is profitable for them. First, they earn through advertisements that go with their games. The more users play their games, the more money the games earn. Secondly, these social games encourage users to buy virtual goods through PayPal or their credit cards.
Virtual goods are items needed to have that competitive edge in the game. Some would have limited holiday-themed virtual goods. Restaurant City, for example, sells the Festive Fridge and Stove. These items allow gamers to prepare food faster. Priced exorbitantly, gamers who lack points or coins would buy more coins from the developer with real cash.
Due to these online purchases, a lot of social gaming startups earned a whopping $600.5 million this year, despite the fact that revenue went down by 36% from last year. Zynga alone earned $180 million in a deal with Digital Skies Technology.
With this hefty revenue, social gaming startups will remain solvent despite the recession. Indeed, the recession is to their advantage because more gamers now prefer the free Facebook games rather than spending a huge amount on gaming consoles and PCs.
