Is PetVille Zynga’s Next Big Hit?
Zynga’s at it again with another virtual world game, PetVille, which lets users raise a pet. If it sounds familiar, that’s because it’s extremely similar to Playfish’s most popular game, Pet Society. Zynga now has competing applications to most of Playfish’s top games and they don’t appear to be stopping. You might as well call Zynga a “social gaming factory” as they continue to roll out one game after the other, all of which have similar game dynamics.
Just two weeks ago the company announced that they had surpassed 100 million monthly unique visitors, which means their average user plays at least two Zynga games a month. For now the company is focused on using similar game dynamics which is essentially simple virtual worlds in which users manage an owned property or character and build out a custom environment around the characters or properties.
Revenue is then generated via the sale of virtual goods. The business model is sound but the question is how long can Zynga rely on this single game dynamic? It appears that the model is working extremely well as the company has outperformed all other Facebook application developers. While there may not be much of an incentive to change strategies, I can only imagine that a diversification of game algorithms would reduce their risk, if not add value to their existing portfolio.
For the time being, the current game dynamic works and FishVille, which the company recently launched has already grown to over 22.9 million monthly active users in under a month. With that sort of success, there’s little incentive for Zynga to shift their game plan. Now the only question is whether or not PetVille will experience the same success that the company’s last few games have experience. There’s a good chance it will.
Source: All Facebook
