Zynga Closes Street Racing, Fans Go Bad Crazy!
One of the best things about casual online gaming is that so much of it unexplored territory for content creators to explore. Developers jump at the opportunity to find new ways of entertaining, engage, and connect these new audiences players. But this unexplored area of gaming is a double-edged sword. There are a ton of mistakes to be made as well, such as what happens when a game shuts down. Hardcore MMO players have already experienced this at least once of twice before, but casuals who are new to the idea may not take it too well when the game that they've sunk hundreds of hours and/or dollars into ceases to function. Correction, make that "they will not take it too well and collectively lose their minds."
Zynga, the makers of FarmVille, recently announced the closing Street Racing, one of their not so popular casual titles, on August 2nd. In an annoyingly cute announcement, players are suggested that "if you liked Street Racing, try out FrontierVille..." Whatever connection that Zynga had in mind when they tried to connect the two totally unrelated games has been lost on every one ranging from industry professionals to casual gamers. Almost immediately after the announcement petitions to keep Street Racing up and running popped up, complete with player threats to never play a game by Zynga ever again. Over at Develop, things turned ugly when fans started a comment war on articles about Zynga.
While people have a right to be a little miffed when an online game shuts its doors, especially if it still has a sizable/vocal audience that has invested real money into it like this, the situation here begs the question: When is it okay for an MMO to close its doors? What could have Zynga done to avoid spurring fans into frenzy of anger? Hopefully this is just the growing pains of casual gaming and will serve as an example of not to do for Zynga and others to follow going forward.
[Ownership row as Zynga abolishes game] Develop
Game-Boy
Posted to MMOs, Video Games on 29 July 2010
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: bad crazy, facebook games, frontierville, mmos, street racing, zynga
When I heard the rumor of using real names and surnames for online games I thought it was a good thing. Maybe, that decreases the nasty comments, and the racists/homophobic/antisemitic insults but after reading some of the comments related with Zinga's decision... I realize I was wrong.
Satibo