The Future of Social Games and Industry Behind them
Denis Dyack, an experienced video game developer and the founder of Silicon Knights Game studios suggested that the future of Social Games like Cityville and Farmville is a bit shaky.
Company Logo of Silicon Knights,Gaming Studio Owned by Denis Dyack
“It is damaging traditional gaming for sure but…how it’s going to work out is anyone’s guess,” Dyack said in an interview with Industry Gamers. ”The trend that I see is it’s probably going to be one of the biggest bubbles and explosions that our industries seen in a long time and I think when it crashes it’s going to crash very hard.”
Dyack also pointed out that these social games are not “real games” but just look like a “marketing model” as there are so many banners covering the space where these games can be played.
Denis Dyack, The Man who made these Predictions
Most of the social games do big business in terms ad sales and premium memberships which is possibly the motivation behind game developers switching from developing traditional console games to social games.
Over the years, social games from Zynga.com have dominated the world of online social gaming with 44.5 million and 88.9 million monthly active users playing Farmville and Cityville respectively.
Farmville, One of the Oldest Social Game from Zynga.com
With these titles becoming major success, Zynga.com has become a major threat for developers of traditional console games like Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard.
The success of Zynga.com and the popularity of its titles among people are reflected from the revenues it made last years and company’s net valuation. It is reported than Zynga.com received investments worth $500 million for major investors like Morgan Stanley, Fidelity Investments.
Cityville, The Biggest Social Game on Facebook Currently
Currently, Zynga.com is valued at $10 billion which means that it is already ahead of Electronic Arts, one of the biggest video game developers of all times which is valued at $7.6 billion and a little behind Activision Blizzard’s $13.7 billion market cap.
With this growing success in social gaming, many developers have pooled their resources to create social games but still Zynga.com leads the pack. Electronic Arts itself acquired social games from Playfish.com in 2009 which suggests that were aware of the fact that market for social gaming would boom in 2010.
X-Men: Destiny, The Latest Project of Silicon Knights Game Studios
It is natural for Dyack to get annoyed with people and developers preferring social games over traditional console games because Dyack’s Canada based Game Studio i.e. Silicon Knights is the publisher of major console gaming titles like Dark Legions, Gex, Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, currently working on X-Men: Destiny and has no plans to get into social gaming.
As I told earlier Dyack is an experienced video game developer and has seen several technologies emerge and fall. Time will tell whether his predictions hold any significance or not but if you ask me which of the gaming forms would I prefer then my answer would definitely be “Traditional Console/PC Games.”
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