Zynga gets money, buys Yoville
Zynga has raised a bunch of money to keep going after their target of building a network of more casual games — a sort of Internet version of a publisher. In fact, ex-EA Chief Creative Officer Bing Gordon has joined their board.
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus says:
He is super-involved in product strategy, brings the gaming DNA to us, and is an amazing CEO coach. He’s already stopped us from doing stupid things.
Like what?
Stupid things like build a PC downloadable MMO game that would cost anywhere from $5 million to $30 million, and would be free to play with virtual goods.
Meow. 😉 But hey, 1.6m daily users can’t be wrong. It’s a serious challenge to the status quo, an example of the mammals going after the dinosaurs. That said, Pincus also says that it’s likely that costs will rise and production values have to improve as more competition and richer experiences enter the arena.
They also picked up Yoville, the Facebook MMO that gets 150,000 daily uniques (see a video), with a 13% tie ratio (today’s stats) — just since May. Those are stats that again, most of the “mainstream” MMOs would love to have.
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[…] 22nd, 2008 at 10:59 pm Max Niederhofer | Venture CapitalJuly 23rd, 2008 at 1:49 am Raph's Website » Zynga gets money, buys YovilleJuly 23rd, 2008 at 9:47 am e-driven.deJuly 24th, 2008 at 1:02 am Social gaming gets hot | The Equity […]
Yeah I’ve been watching zynga and kongregate from an armchair (while on a web hiatus as it were) for awhile now. Lots of players in the horizontal market for web based games now, and its curious to see these valuations in down rounds. I think its definitely based on an increase in the user base.
I did a little empirical survey as a guest speaker at a school career day about 3 months ago (I was the tech speaker). 4 sets of kids rotated through, each set was about 35-45 students. (all were middle school age).
Asked them to raise their hands if they played the following:
PC Based Online Games (10%) (example given: WOW)
Console Games 70% (example given: XBOX, PS)
Web/Browser Based Games 80% (examples given: Club Penguin/Runescape/Mapplestory)
Given internet penetration reaching 90%+/US households (higher elsewhere eg. Korea) and adoption I’d say demographics (and prior usage as an indicator of preference moving forward) support development of web/browser based casual games over traditional MMO’s (especially because the cost of acquisition is almost non-existent compared to MMO’s and Consoles.
Brad Feld goes into some deatils about Zynga’s new round on his blog as well