14 DAY TRIAL // Doctor Ian Bogost, who is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has suggested that the Zynga strategy of repackaging old titles and adding minimal improvements might not be a wrong one of the video game market when taking into account the inherent scarcity of very good titles.
Speaking to Gamasutra, Bogost stated, “Games like go, chess, and StarCraft. These games are sublime, but they are also scarce -- as perhaps they should be. Everyone should not be fated to search for the unicorn.”
The professor is known for having created a game called Cow Clicker, which was designed as a way of revealing and criticizing the way social game companies like Zynga use repetitive mechanics to get gamers hooked on limited experiences.
Cow Clicker managed to attract some earnest players who took it as a new social game with a legitimate premise.
Bogost added, “Zynga has received a lot of flack for antipathy toward game design, favoring the 'borrowing' of existing designs, to put it kindly. Indeed, the company's overall corporate strategy has been one of trying to outrace itself, launching new games or acquiring new game studios and shifting players to new games as old ones atrophy.”
The academic talked about Words with Friends and its follow-up, called Matching With Friends, saying that the second title shows some design innovation even if it operates within the constraints of the match-three genre.
Zynga has recently hit a tough patch, with falling share price and a number of high-profile executives and developers announcing that they are leaving the company.
The social game creator is also seeking to separate much of its business from Facebook by launching its own game site portal, which allows players to connect with other gamers without revealing personal information. Blizzard is at the moment working on the Heart of the Swarm expansion for Starcraft II.