*insert name of a distant relative* has invited you to play FarmVille.
If you were on Facebook a decade ago a message like that might look familiar as FarmVille — and many other games — were everywhere on Facebook. At its peak FarmVille, which was an extremely simple farming simulation game, had more than 84 million people playing it each month, which for context is roughly similar to the number of people that are estimated to play tennis (87 million) globally.
Built directly on top of the Facebook platform, Facebook games were a serious moneymaker for a number of companies in the early 2010s. The biggest of which was Zynga, which was responsible for FarmVille, Zynga Poker, Mafia Wars and many other titles which helped it grow its revenue from $18 million in revenue in 2008 to almost $1.3 billion... just 4 years later.
Easy come, easy go
As quickly as Zynga ascended to greatness, it descended to relative obscurity. Competition from other games, and the increasingly "pay to play" nature of the games themselves, saw players disappear — and never return. In 2 short years Zynga's revenue had halved, and although it took another 6 years to happen, eventually the original FarmVille was shut down.
Facebook games may have mostly gone extinct, but Zynga has lived on, and since 2016 has had something of a resurgence. Under new leadership the company has thrived in the mobile games market with interesting titles like Empires & Puzzles, Wonka's World of Candy, Game Of Thrones Slots Casino (?) and — of course — FarmVille 2.
This week the Zynga boss came out and said that he thinks Zynga can make an extra $1bn in revenue from making games playable for different platforms, like consoles. Platforms might change, but simple addictive games don't ever seem to die.
