Is it too late for Farmville?

Another change in management at Zynga... another faint hope that perhaps now they will actually listen and DO SOMETHING to fix the exodus of players.

Honestly though...I'm not sure that Farmville CAN be fixed any more...  have they left it too late?

Some of us are still around though...  we know the game is dead and should be buried... but we remember what it once was and stick around... always hoping...

So...what WOULD it take for Farmville to stop the mass exodus?

What would they need to do to win you - and your money - back? 

For me, what they would need to do is LESS. Much less.

Less new trees, horses, birds on a stick, mastery signs, water features...what-the-hell-ever.... 

Remember the excitement over the owl on a stick that showed up in mystery boxes? It flew!!!

Had. To. Have. It.

It was unique - then. Now, I couldn't even tell you where my original owl is... but hey, I have about 30 ...maybe 40 ....other birds on a stick that fly ... big whoop.

Every time they manage to hit something we like, now, they go nuts.... oh look... they liked the space trees - lets make 6,457 more space trees and see if they'll pay 6 or 8 FC for each one. Uh ... no... no, we won't. How many times are you going to do this routine before it sinks in that overwhelming us with more of the same ain't going to work?

Chill out, settle down, and STOP overwhelming us with more of whatever-it-was-we-liked than we could ever possibly care about.

Less broken collections

Biggest mistake Zynga has made with Farmville - well, one of the biggest, anyway - was in the destruction of our collections.

I liked the trees. I can afford to buy FC to get the trees...and I used to. Now though, we are totally awash in trees. They release ridiculous numbers of new trees every week .... Monday, Thursday, in quests, as prizes for this, that, and the other thing, with each new farm release.... 

I can't possibly keep up. And many of them, if you missed them, too bad for you. Some of them even show up in ways that are on "slow rollout" - which means, actually - too bad for you - you're not in the favoured few who got that feature so no tree (or horse, or bird on a stick, or...what-the-hell-ever for you...

Collectors don't like to be thwarted. We really don't. Once you break our collections, we sulk, and we with-hold our money.

You want my money back? Smarten up!

It's too late to fix existing collections ... there are too many holes now.

You could, however, reboot the whole collector appeal thing with a bit of creativity.

Me, I still like the trees - and I still think that the people who design & draw the trees for Zynga are amazing. So ... let's think of a way to fix the tree problem, shall we?

My suggestion would be to develop a level 3 tree.

Go back to the very beginning - look at the old level 1s and 2s ...and now make a level 3 for those sets. Still has to grow in the groves/orchards (don't even THINK about a new structure!) - but to make it different from the ones we know, have the seedlings grow into either the old level 1 or 2, or a clone of itself. 

This will allow - eventually - people who missed out on early trees to complete their collection.

The important thing here is that you MUST restrict these new trees to no more than 1 or 2 per week.

Now think about other things that people liked - or might like - to collect.

Not sure how to fix/re-boot those? Ask us... I bet people in the forums would be thrilled to be asked for feedback if it was actually going to be used. No doubt there are other ways that the whole trees debacle could be approached, also ...

The key thing here, though, is that you MUST limit items to no more than 1/2 week so that whatever-it-is remain worth having, and collectible.

Well darn. I've gone on quite long enough for one blog post already and have barely even scratched the surface!  Lots more I want less of ... but that's a topic for another post - or two :)

In the meantime...what do you think? Is it too late to save Farmville? If not, what does Zynga need to do to win you - and your money - back?

Zynga avoids addressing problems yet again

Zynga slashes work force by a fifth, warns on bookings...

according to this article, Zynga has been struggling to retain players ...and because they can't, they are slashing their costs by letting 20% of their workforce go.

Such a crock, that.

Zynga has, for more than a year, been doing NOT ONE THING to retain players.

In fact, they have been basically kicking us in the arse and telling us not to let the door slam behind us on the way out.

In every game that I have every played of Zynga's, they persist in making the same errors over and over.

They have absolutely NO interest in listening to players or in understanding the reasons certain people play certain games and accommodating these various players.

And as of the last several months, they have trashed their one remaining strength area: customer service, adding it to the very long list of things that "we once did well but now can't be bothered."

People are NOT leaving Zynga's online games in favour of mobile games or multi-platform games the way Mr. Pincus would have the media and stockholders believe.

Mr. Pincus, apparently, also has no interest in actually paying attention to feedback from players.

We WANT to keep playing your games. A whole lot of us have invested a whole lot of time & money in our stupid farms or kitchens or frontiers or whatever... and we would like to keep right on playing.

But you've hired a whole bunch of developers that do not play the games and do not have respect for those who play the games they work on. And you've hired a whole bunch of managers, it seems, who also do not play the games and do not have respect for players. And hey, guess what? You've hired a bunch of customer service reps who do not play the games and do not have any respect for those who do...

surprise, surprise!!  It doesn't work.

This, I believe, is the single biggest reason for Zynga's failure to thrive.

Used to be that the people that worked there played the games (and therefore, had respect for players).

Zynga got too big for their britches. They got rid of the people that loved the games, and replaced them with people that didn't even WANT to work for Zynga - they picked up a lot of their ~talent~ through takeovers and buyouts.... and they didn't bother to make sure that those people were adequately supervised, and they didn't bother to listen to any of their players any more cuz hey, if you don't have respect for us, why bother to listen?

Critical errors that all trace back to poor management, NOT to mobile/multi-platform games. Pincus should quit lying to himself and actually read some customer feedback once in awhile. And he should REALLY quit lying to the stockholders stuck with Zynga stock.

Although I really don't feel all THAT sorry for y'all, actually .... got to research and see what people who actually use the product are saying before you jump on those IPOs, guys!!!  I could have told you it was a bad investment .... oh hey... I did, actually.