Zynga

I read an article today that the stock of Zynga, the complany that makes Farmville, Frontierville, and a dozen other -villes, is dropping fast. I can't say I'm surprised. I played Frontierville for quite a while. It's a pretty fun game. But the business model is inherently flawed. It's a "free" game. How can you make money off a free game? By offering virtual in-game money paid for with real money.

You can spend your virtual money on the ability to skip a mission, or to purchase the items needed to complete a mission. (Also on decorations, but how many people will buy a virtual rock garden?) Think about this: you can pay money to not play the game. Really. Why would I pay money to not play the game when I can not-play for free by just, you know, not playing? Not to mention the whole reason a game is fun is the sense of accomplishment when you conquer it. Very few people will pay actual money to skip/complete missions.

They made the missions harder to complete in an attempt to force people to pay. When I finally quit playing Frontierville, I had 15 missions in my queue. In order to get the things I needed to finish said missions, I would need to request gobs of items from my neighbors. I can only make a certain number of requests a day, can only receive a certain number of items per request, and can only get a limited number of items per day by answering my neighbors' requests. I counted up the number of items I needed, and it would have taken me at least 2 months to get the needed items, assuming I was able to ask the full number of allowed times and got the full number of answers every day. And that was just for the missions currently in my queue! The only way to catch up is to pay to not play which, as I said, defeats the whole point of playing.

And that's why players are leaving Zynga games in droves, and why Zynga stock is dropping like a rock.