Zynga stock prices

Oh look.... what a surprise... Zynga's stock is dropping in value and is now down to $8/share.

Duh.

The only surprise to me is that anyone actually invested in the first place. I mean, come on? Who looks at a company, sees that it has already burned through millions of customers and is now on a consistantly downward trend in every way that counts - daily users? monthly users? profits? .... and thinks "hey...I wanna get in on that" ?

I'll tell you who - other people that missed school on the same day that the Zynga folks did... the one where the teacher explained that it is easier (and cheaper) to keep the customers you have than it is to get new ones all the time. S/he probably also mentioned, I would think, that it is also easier (and cheaper) to get new ones that it is to get the old ones that you irked into leaving back.

I don't play any Zynga games but Farmville so I can't talk (much) about those - I have tried a fair number of them though, and in every case, left for similar reasons... the same reasons that people talk about all the time in the forums, on their facebook walls, and so on ... too many quests, too much tedium, too much begging required. The reasons we say to hell with it and shut down our cafes or fishtanks or pioneer village or cities or whatever are not secrets - but they might as well be, cuz Zynga certainly doesn't have a clue.

The ~funny~ thing is that the very same (obnoxious) things that caused so many of us to quit all of Zynga's other games are now being ported right into Farmville..... We stayed with Farmville because it was different - it allowed us to do things our way, to make our own decisions about where to put what, what to plant, etc etc...

Now....? Not so much.

Now we have quests - complete with obnoxious icons on the side of our farms that won't go away unless and until the quests are completed. So we all end up being told what to grow, in what order, and how many of each we need... what critters to harvest... what crafts to make... what to collect.... hello....? Zynga...? We loved Farmville because it allowed us to decide.... not you.

And we have buildables. Each with their own myriad of stupid building materials required. It wasn't bad enough that our boards, nails and bricks are no longer good enough to build all the crap they demand that we build (and if you try to bypass it, they'll remind you over & over & over) - now they change the building materials half way through, also. So you wind up with bunches of totally useless building parts halfway through each building project.

It really isn't rocket science. All that is required is a basic understanding of how farmville players are different from other game players.

And again ... no secrets... the forums are FILLED with discussions that clearly state what is needed, what annoys us, and what is causing so many to first, stop coughing up real money for farmcash and ultimately to stop playing altogether....

We want shared storage. WE want to decide what theme(s) we want to use on each farm, and what items belong there. It irks us to have a whole bunch of ice, snow, Christmas items that we can't move into Winter Wonderland. It irks us to have had to place things on Winter Wonderland (for the stupid quests we didn't really want to do in the first place) and now not to be able to move them to the farm where we DO want them. My jingle bell horse belongs on my main farm with my other horses. That is where my horses belong. MY choice, dammit... and the fact that you won't let me do it my way is a constant irritant.

We want rotatable buildings (and pens). We are control freaks, okay? We like to decorate and to have choices. That's why we play Farmville. A building that can't be turned restricts our decorating options and annoys the hell out of us.

We like pretty, we Farmville players.... we gripe about things like foals that are as big as or bigger than their parents, gaps that can't be filled caused by a lack of attention to footprints around things like ponds and so on, and moats, tracks & fences that can't be properly lined up.

We are collectors.... we like to have ALL of....whatever.... for me it is trees; others like mastery signs, horses, sheep...what the hell ever.... you have created a game that appeals to collectors ... and a great many choices of things one might collect .... what would then possess you to destroy people's collections? How many times do we have to tell you that once you break a collection (by wiping out people's limited edition crop gardens with your stupid turbo boost and refusing to fix it, for example, or by making a tree available only to those able & willing to donate to a particular cause; or by putting horses into the mystery game, or... how many ways HAVE you found to break our collections, Zynga? How does it benefit you?) ...anyway ... once the collection is incomplete, it is no fun any more and people find it much much easier to walk away .... to stop buying ....and again... to stop playing.

And hey...did I mention that we are control freaks? We do not care to be ignored, lied to, disrespected, or treated like naughty children for having opinions.... not in the game, and not in the forum either.

Zynga had a good thing going... but they spent most of 2011 shooting themselves in the foot .... over and over and over again.... and refusing to listen to their customers.

At least in Farmville... I'm guessing, though, after looking at the stats for a few other games, that this lack of respect, concern and basic understanding of what motivates us goes far further than just FV.

No surprise at all to me that their stock price is heading in the wrong direction... in fact, I think it is exactly the RIGHT direction.