Zynga's Latest Strategy: Get Women To Sign Up For War
Zynga can't keep people down on the farm. Its main product, Farmville, is shedding users. So why did the company just release Empires & Allies, a game that won't appeal to its core demographic: women?
Launched two years ago, FarmVille at one point had 32.5 million daily users. Now the number of people coming back on a daily basis is down from that by nearly a third. Zynga has resorted to stunt marketing In an effort to staunch the wound. Last week's GaGaVille promotion with the over-exposed Lady GaGa will provide a short term bump in users and that's all.
Zynga management reasonably thinks that players of its Ville games are getting as tired of them as everyone else on Facebook already was. In an effort to move away from CityVille (isn't that an oxymoron?), FrontierVille and WhoVille (I wish), it has put out a game that involves war and strategy.
As someone who has been playing board games since Mr. Moneybags was a mere Monopoly clerk, I can tell you that war and strategy are exactly not the things that get most women interested in playing a game. And given that the average social media gamer is a 43-year-old woman with too much time on her hands, that is a problem.
In a bid to make the game more gal-friendly, Empires & Allies is being described as Risk meets Ville. Gaming sophisticates are saying it's more like Risk meets Settlers of Catan -- and if you don't know what that is you should. In Settlers you develop an island by building towns and trading resources with the other players -- until it is time to screw them over. It is what Monopoly would be if Monopoly was fun and has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide in the last 15 years.)
Further, the game's logo even has a woman waving a red flag at the head of an army. In case you thought the red flag still stood for something else, it also has the outline of a cute dog on it. While it's nice design work, it's unlikely to have much impact. According to a study by the Lifetime network, only 25 percent of women who play games online are likely to play war or strategy games.
Sorry guys, but you can't put lipstick on a tank. Actually, you can -- but it isn't pretty. Trust me. More to the point, you can't get WOMEN to put lipstick on a tank, and that's what Zynga wants to do.
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