作者：DAVE COPELAND

《CityVille》有麻烦了。就在Zynga宣布公司收益减少对Facebook的依赖的6个月之后，这款Facebook最热门游戏仍在艰难挣扎。但Zynga的难题比过分依赖Facebook更严重。

一方面，Facebook和Zynga甚至在Facebook社交游戏玩家人数方面并没有达成一致意见。上个月，Zynga对投资者称社交游戏玩家人数在4月1日至6月30日之间缩水了16%。而Facebook却回应道，玩家与Facebook用户总数一样，都在稳步增长，从去年的2.05亿增至7月的2.35亿。

然而在游戏方面，还存在更大的问题。Zynga仍然是Facebook游戏市场的主宰，在7月排行榜的前10名游戏中，它持有或开发了其中的6款。但这些排名如果不能与收益增长挂钩，这对华尔街的投资者们来说则毫无意义。

Facebook通过为其他开发商打开营销游戏的方便之门，多样化了自己的收效渠道。但Zynga的最大难题切中了其本身的要害。以下是最关键的4个难题：

zynga falls(from penny-arcade.com)

1、Zynga需要新的热作

据说，商业媒体对Zynga的标准描述措辞是“热门Facebook游戏《FarmVille》的开发者。”这些媒体人应该称它为“曾经流行的Facebook游戏开发者。”

玩《FarmVille》的月活跃Facebook用户人数曾达到8300万。到去年底，这个数字直线下降到3390万。

2、Facebook不再通过玩家涂鸦墙推广游戏

据社交游戏开发商PlayScreen首席创意官William Volk所述，月活跃用户的减少部分归咎于Facebook。一年多以前，Facebook改变了应用推广方式，不再通过用户公告栏的自动帖来推广应用。

“虽然用户可能不喜欢所有公告帖子都是关于游戏的消息，但这种方法可以让用户获得成本低于该平台的用户终身价值。Volk指出：“Zynga和Facebook都觉察到那些调整的后遗症。现在推广Facebook游戏的成本实在太高了，即使他们的用户基础雄厚。”

3、玩家不付费

当许多其他游戏开发商都转向消费模式（玩家按游戏时间付费）时，Zynga仍然执拗于免费模式。Volk不认为免费模式是一个可靠的选择，Zynga自己的数据也显示了同样的问题——在它所有游戏的玩家中，付费玩家不足2%。

4、缺乏有效的移动运营策略

成为社交游戏巨头并没有让Zynga在智能手机和平板电脑游戏领域发光发热。在移动游戏市场，小型而灵活的团队模式往往更占优势，因为这里有25万款游戏在相互竞争。

Zynga于4月以1.8亿美元收购了《Draw Something》开发商OMGPOP，那时该游戏的日活跃玩家达到峰值1450万。可惜自从那以后，《Draw Something》的人气和潜力就直线下降了。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Zynga’s Four Biggest Problems

by DAVE COPELAND

There’s trouble in CityVille. Six months after Zynga said it would decrease its reliance on Facebook for the bulk of its revenue, the publisher of the social network’s most popular games is still struggling. But Zynga’s problems run deeper than over-reliance on Facebook.

For one thing, the two companies can’t even agree on the number of people playing games on the social network. Last month, Zynga told investors the tally shrank by 16% between April 1 and June 30. Facebook fired back, saying the number was keeping pace with overall user growth, jumping to 235 million in July, up from 205 million a year ago.

There’s a bigger issue at play, however. Zynga still dominates the Facebook game market, having owned or developed six of the top 10 games in July. But those rankings mean nothing to Wall Street investors if Zynga can’t convert them into revenue growth.

A lot has been made about Facebook’s move to diversify its own revenue stream by making easier for other developers to offer games. But some of Zynga’s biggest challenges cut to the core of the game maker itself. These are the most critical:

(1) Zynga Needs Another Hit

It’s telling that the standard description of Zynga in the business press refers to the company as “the maker of the popular Facebook game FarmVille.” Those journalists should be calling it the “once-popular Facebook game.”

The number of monthly active Facebook users playing FarmVille peaked in June at 83 million. By the end of last year, it had plummeted to 33.9 million.

(2) Facebook No Longer Promotes Games on Players’ Walls

That drop in monthly-active users is partly Facebook’s fault, according to William Volk, chief creative officer of the social media game developer PlayScreen. More than a year ago, Facebook changed the way apps could promote their offerings through posts made automatically to users’ walls.

“While users may have disliked all the wall posts about the games, they made the cost of user acquisition lower than the lifetime value of users on that platform. Both Zynga and Facebook are feeling the after-effects of these changes,” Volk said. “It’s simply very expensive to promote Facebook games, even with the benefit of a large user base.”

(3) Players Don’t Pay

Zynga stuck with the freemium model when many other game makers went to the consumption model, making users pay for the time they spent playing. Volk doesn’t see the freemium model as a viable option going forward, and Zynga’s own numbers back him up: Fewer than 2% of players of all its games are paying customers.

(4) Zynga Lacks an Effective Mobile Strategy

Being bigger won’t help Zynga as more eyeballs migrate to smartphones and tablets. Being small and nimble is often an advantage in the mobile game market, where some 250,000 games compete for attention.

And Zynga’s one big chance to excel in mobile has become an afterthought. Zynga acquired the company that developed the mobile diversion Draw Something in April for $180 million, right when it peaked at 14.5 million daily users. Since then, Draw Something has steadily fallen in both popularity and potential.(source:readwriteweb)