When I first signed up to Facebook, Zygna was complete spam. All my friends were playing FarmVille and whatever else and for the most part I ended up just blocking the apps.
Hilariously, someone still managed to "send" me something to do with Farmville. This was still pre-paying for things on Facebook, so I logged in, took one look at the actual numbers on the game and literally - within a week or so of very casual play - had more "virtual money" in the game than those people who had been spamming me about Farmville for months and playing it every day, tending their crops for hours on end.
I "spent it" all on crap, spammed all those other friends with the crap I sent them, then blocked every Zygna app that appeared from being on my Facebook.
Since then, my Facebook was so locked down that I saw literally nothing but my friends posts and the adverts on the right. Just lately, I've been getting random spam again but, from what I can see, people just aren't playing the games any more. It was a novelty to have a game where you could "ask your friends for help" or whatever, and send each other virtual cushions or whatever it was, but it wore off very quickly. The games themselves really had no balance or strategy to them. Literally within days of just creating a field of the most profitable crop, harvesting, and keeping selling it off, I was able to "afford" virtual items that my friends who'd played for months couldn't.
So if the games were rubbish, weren't balanced, and have now become adverts for spending real money, and people have stopped playing games on Facebook anyway, I don't see why Zygna is worth anything at all.
Don't get me wrong, I abhorred the Free-To-Play culture of gaming for years but just lately I got into things like TF2 and it's actually quite fun to play - the base game was always pretty good anyway, even back in the TF days - but the added value of: get a "rare" item, sell it off, rinse and repeat, etc. does make it more "engaging". It's not something I'd put money into, generally speaking, but I did pay for a few things on TF2 basically because I think Valve do a wonderful job and I bought their "map pack" that pay the community map-makers a bit too (probably a pittance, but it's something). But the game has to be fun and playable, if you're making a game, and even more so if you're making one where you expect people to pay. TF2 is actually good at getting out of your way and not requiring you, or spamming you, to pay money for things. I felt my payment was more like one of those "pay what you think it's worth" kind of indie deals, in terms of TF2.
I don't see Zygna making games good enough to do the same. And even Facebook itself is starting to die off, just waiting to be replaced by the next fad. I don't think Zygna is worth anything at the moment, and in the future it's only going to get worse. I'm just shocked that they actually make any profit at all.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
