Gaming Is a Darn Serious Business , Zygna secures $15 million in funding Source: Gaming Is a Darn Serious Business , Zygna secures $15 million in fun

Zynga-The game studio specializing in making games for social networking sites has recently secured a funding of $15 million in venture capital. The company has been on a roll ever since it introduced games for Facebook. What started with Mafia wars turned into a rage with its another sticky offering- Farmville. To gauge an idea of the popularity of the game, FarmVille application boasts of a mind boggling 65,387,640 monthly active users.
Mind you , this is not the first time that Zynga has secured a big ticket funding. They raised $29 million during 2008 and the total funding according to Crunchbase stands at $54 million. To me, that looks like loads of cash for a gaming company. Zynga seems to have stumbled upon a cash cow with its association with Facebook and enticing users to play it games.
What is interesting to note here is the revenue model which has taken a lot of flak during recent times and one of its new game Fishville was taken off for this very reason. The gaming apps lure the users to sign up for confusing offers and misleading advertisements in lieu of virtual cash and rewards.Even with all the skepticism surrounding the revenue model , Zynga is definitely doing good to attract a lot of venture capital.
To put things into perspective, Internet Gaming in general is a seemingly a brilliant business idea. Everyone likes to have a little fun and the best part about games of any sort is the sense of competition they create. This in itself leads to a word-of-mouth publicity and creates the Viral factor for the product. However, not all gaming portals click and from my experience playing Farmville (yes, I am a culprit too) , it is the stickiness and the recall factor that seems to be working for Zynga .The games are no brainer and extremely simple to play is another factor which help them go viral.
Here are some of the striking features that Zynga games have in common

• All have a Neighborhood concept making the user invite others to create a community kind of thing.There are obvious rewards on offer for having more neighbors and this leads to automatic promotion of the game and more and more users signing up
• All the games keep up the Recall factor with handy notifications.If you have played Farmville , you would have noticed every single activity that happens with your farm. Eg: If someone helps you the farm , if someone adds you as a neighbor etc.
• They keep the Stickiness factor by constantly coming up with the so called Mystery elements at regular intervals.The additions are very minor but they are big on the surprise and uniqueness factor.

These are some of the aspects I discovered during the time I spent playing Farmville. The question that got triggered in my mind is ,

Can non-gaming products take a lesson from these apps and work on the Stickiness and Recall Quotient

I have encountered innumerable start-ups that start with a bang and a lot of offering during their betas , but then stop offering new value additions.A few internet based forums/apps miss out on increasing the recall factor by not creating any notification mechanisms.

Games like Farmville and Mafia wars may not be high on the intellectual aspect but then they do offer a lot of fine learning points to analyze and absorb in other areas.

Do you think Gaming apps will continue to attract the user and the Venture Capitalists alike? Zynga sure seems to be doing it just right

Fishville Tips – When To Get More Fish To Grow

Have you read my first post about Fishville Tips and Tricks? You can visit the link here and have it read first before reading this post.
This time I would be sharing how I was able to level up fast and how I unlocked those extra tank and what level you are going to get more fish to grow.
At first you are just entitled to one tank and 15 fish to grow. When you reach level 4, you will get 30 fish to grow. At Level 10, you will unlock the second tank and with your first tank, you can raise 50 fish already while in your second tank, you will get additional 15 fish to grow.
Now, when you reach level 13, your second tank will be upgraded and can hold now 30 fish. And when you reach level 19, your second tank will be upgraded again and can hold 50 fish already. So, you will be able to raise 100 fish all in all.
Here’s the thing since I can grow 100 fish already, what I am doing is that, on my first tank, I am raising those fish that has a shorter time to grow, like the fast fish, while on my second tank, I choose those fish that has a longer time to grow like the Blue Damsel and Scooter Blenny and sell them when they reach age 4. I am using this strategy simply to level up fast and earn more money. Daily I have 50 fish to sell while waiting for my other 50 fish to mature. I will be getting more than double experience points and coins when those fish matures and ready to sell. As I have said on my previous posts, the longer waiting time for the fish to mature the higher the value and experience points you get. I will be posting the corresponding experience points per fish based on their age level on my next post.
It helps me to level up fast by doing this strategy. Now, I was able to unlock the 3rd tank and I have additional 15 fish to grow. You can unlock the 3rd tank when you reach level 20. However, if you have the Sand Dollar, you can already purchase the 3rd tank even if you are not yet on level 20.
Did I use Fishville Cheats here to reach this far? No, I did not. I don’t have Fishville Cheats to share yet, however, if I found one, I will be sharing it here so stay tuned.
Happy Fishing!!!