Most who play Mafia Wars predicted that Mafia Wars 2 would fail. It's nothing like Mafia Wars and just about all of us have blocked it. The
application stats speak for themselves. In the last 7 days, there has been a drop of 3.5 million players!
Players no longer worry that Mafia Wars 2 will replace Mafia Wars. Players are still leaving Mafia Wars at an alarming pace and the future of the game is uncertain. Maybe Zynga isn't cut out for a Mafia themed game. The game we play today is nothing like the one we played in the height of it's popularity. Spam and Reward Points purchases became more important than player retention and the
current metrics are the result.
Zynga is better equipped to handle games that have happier themes and more fluff. When you are happy, you don't really mind spamming.
CastleVille has taken off and continues to grow. The monthly average users are now over 20 million. It seems like Zynga no longer cares about Mafia Wars and this may be why. Boycotts and petitions demanding things from Zynga is not the answer as the state of Mafia Wars is too fragile. If I had to deal with thousands of unhappy players in a game that is dying anyways, I would just say screw it, kill the game and go make a new one. If and when the Zynga IPO is approved, we will know better how to proceed with trying to get them to listen and hopefully save the game.
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Zynga is trying it's best to kill MW BEFORE the IPO. Can you just imagine the horror show of 3.5 million stockholders bitching about the state of the game would be? (Assuming that, like me, most players would find their way to possessing 1 share of stock.)
ReplyDeleteI'm not so sure I would agree with your conclusions, given only the data you provided in this post. You have to keep extraneous variables in mind if you're going to generalize. On the Mafia Wars chart above, note that the DAU for the month is fairly level. We see a small dip over about a week early in the month, around Veteran's Day. Then towards the end of the month, around the 22nd, just two days before Thanksgiving, you see the DAU numbers begin to fall. Both of these two spans of time have something in common: They both surround two US federal holidays. What you're probably seeing is the loss of players who do their MW business (or at least -some- of it) at their place of employment and/or school. Around Thanksgiving, you have people travelling, and I dunno about anyone else, but the MW android app, along with the Atlantic City locale, have disappeared completely. I'm not going to say that really, really poorly-thought-out turkey event didn't do some damage to the DAU, but neither can it be considered the sole reason.
ReplyDeleteLove the site. Cheers.
Please remove this post, so that this is not fixed!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is a horrible post! I hate those damned "happy games" you speak of... if Zynga shuts down MW or MW2... I am going to THE SIMS full-time... to hell with it all! By the way, I am one of those rare people WHO LOVE MW2 as well as MW! Different strokes for different folks I say! As for that damned Castle game... their new games always have a spiked increase in the beginning... after that, they taper off like the rest of them!
ReplyDeleteI'm reading these articles about how Zynga is surprised that Mafia Wars 2 isn't meeting their expectations. They spent a year developing that pig, they can't figure out why people hate it and they are pointing fingers.
ReplyDeleteImagine if Zynga had spent all those resources on fixing the problems with the current game instead of developing MW2 that no one asked for in the first place? That's all that we asked for before they started in with all the spamfest events. I think that those are a result to keep up the revenue stream on the backs of the players that are left playing the game and it's sad.
It's going to get much worse too after Zynga goes public. Instead of merely enriching themselves instead of caring about their customers they will be trying to enrich their stockholders as well. I fear that the customer will be completely lost in the mix.
I have played MW from the start.
ReplyDeleteThe problem and reason a lot people have left is bots. If you play and don't bot your unable to stay up with those that do.
Zynga’s IPO is scheduled to price on December 15 and begin trading on the stock market the following day. The number of users as well as profits are falling, and the new games (Castleville excluded for now) are failing, miserably. They have been unable to match the success of the games that made them big and they are completely dependent on Facebook for revenue. Zynga made offers to Rovio (Angry Birds) and Popcap.com both of which fell through. Popcap actually took a LOWER offer from another company. So many negative reports are out about work conditions, how they treat employees, etc. Plus the competition there. I used to spend money on the game, perhaps $40/mo or so, but I haven't purchased RPs in quite a while. A few weeks ago I saw them opening in the $15/share range, exploding and making some people rich. Even risky investors have the Elvis' with this one. Funny, I read some articles today from just before Google went public and a lot of people said "don't get this one" and "10 reasons to stay clear of Googles IPO". Google traded today at $620/share. LOL. Zynga is no Google
ReplyDelete