18 months ago Zynga was pretty much unstoppable, loved and hated in equal measure the games publisher was teflon reincarnated with its farmville and mafia wars titles. However 18 months is a long time in an ever shifting digital market where user allegances are short and players go as quickly as they had arrived.The original Mafia Wars hit its peak on Facebook at around 45 million monthly active users in the summer of 2010. Now it has just 4.4 million monthly active users. Users come and go with most trends, what was popular last year won't necessarily be as popular this year but what I find alarming is that 40 Million players upped and left, where did they go, what are they playing now?. From a financial perspective losing 40 Million players is going to have a massive effect even if lets say only 2% of those users were actively dealing with microtransactional business in the game.
Zynga continues to expand its original Mafia Wars game and recently launched its Chicago city. Zynga helped monetize the game through a series of branded deals that promoted virtual items based on movies such as Scarface and The Green Hornet.
Initially it was perceived that social games were a massive threat to traditional videogames but the results buck that trend in the case of Electronic Arts. According to Appdata, The Sims Social now draws in 65 million monthly active users (MAUs) – the closest it has ever got to Cityville’s current 71 million user mark.Ho monthly users just nine months after it launched.
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