Zynga, Poker and Sudoku? Heard of them right? Previously on Facebook, and now on Google+ too , that’s right. Have you ever wondered what made Facebook so strong in all these years? What was the key factor? The Games. Gaming applications were the points that led Facebook to popularity. Zynga, social network game developers, were the ones who benefited most from Facebook gaming. According to the statistics, Zynga got 44 million active users daily from Facebook. Here are the statistics from facebook
Developer : Zynga
MAU: 198,870,562
Daily MAU Growth : -1,421,923
Weekly MAU Growth: -3,004,491
And just this summer, the news came out that Zynga has Google as its investors now. Later on, Zynga’s amended IPO filing confirmed this news which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 1, 2011. Have a look : Click here
It was indeed a very tactful step taken by Google to boost its gaming network. It is assumed that up till now Google has invested around $200 million in Zynga. Previously, the relationship between Zynga and Facebook had been a stronger one. Under the terms of the five-year exclusive Facebook Credits deal, Zynga signed in 2010, Zynga will pay 30% of every transaction to Facebook. But now, Google is enjoying Zynga’s services at its best. So this is how Google got successful game developers to run Google+.
According to the blog by Google on 8/11/2011 :
“ Today we’re adding games to Google+. With the Google+ project, we want to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the web. But sharing is about more than just conversations. The experiences we have together are just as important to our relationships. We want to make playing games online just as fun, and just as meaningful, as playing in real life.”
Games are an important feature for a social network community to get in line with Facebook, and to grab more and more users' attention.
GOOGLE PLUS GAMES – NOT IRRITATING ONES!
Google plus thought that it was high time it should make a gaming platform for the growing number of its gaming fans. And Zynga and Poker launched interesting games for Google too. Google plus is gradually winning over Facebook games; Facebook pages were always popped up by unwanted updates about how the friends have been doing at their games. This wasn’t enough! Unwanted invitations to join your friends in various games were no less than headaches! Facebook did indeed switch these features off last year. But again last year in September, Facebook had added limitations on its gaming platform. Result : The users were greatly annoyed!
In this regard it’s clear that Google has put everything on the right place i.e make the users feel easy. When the user gets an update from a Google Plus Game, it won’t pop up on the user’s main page. Instead, the user is asked to visit the Games page. Here is a quote from Google help pages:
When you post an update from a game, it won’t show up in the stream on the Google+ home page. On your Games page, visit the Games stream to see a list of game updates shared with you in Google+.
You can interact with posts just as you would from your stream on the Google+ homepage. For example, you can comment on, mute, and reshare posts.
GOOGLE PROVIDING OPPURTUNITIES
Moreover, Google plus provide opportunities for the game developers. There's also a great business incentive for developers to get along with Google, and that is, for now at least, Google is only taking a 5 percent cut of transaction revenue, compared to Facebook's 30 percent. Google plans to introduce more games within a short duration!
Post submitted by Amna Masood Khawaja. MBT's regular contributor and a freelance writer.
