Jeremiah Johson and Ben
Just 13 days after launch and Zynga’s new game FrontierVille has already passed five million players. This is reportedly Zynga’s first fully in-house developed game and is a major escalation in the social gaming space. Game play has often seemed to be almost an afterthought to the social aspects of the games.
As competition has risen and given the amount of money at stake, we will probably see a great deal more attention and investment in the actual game experience. This should take the industry more towards the intense financial investments and development time for video and console games, while still requiring them to find that secret sauce that makes the games an unstoppable viral monster. And, as it migrates ever more into a hits driven business it will deliver both more losers and more profits into the hands of the few winners. Great for the players.
