Why can’t social games keep engagement? Zynga clearly suffers from that problem, but why not Blizzard Entertainment (makers of Starcraft, etc.)?
I see two distinct types of games currently in the market: those that force players against each other in competition, and those that encourage users to aim for achievements, prizes, and short-term winnings. While these two do sometimes overlap, there seems to be a distinct gap as to which tactic a product is trying to use.
Zynga’s games and other games on Facebook, such as Tetris Battle, Tetris Friends, etc. clearly fall into the former category. For example, in Tetris, players are charted on a leaderboard based on points earned–more play means more points earned means a higher level on the leaderboard. Such competition, while at first fun, becomes meaningless after a while–the earliest and engaged adopter will be at the top, and as Nassim mentioned below, accompanied by the ones who spent money to get up there. Contrast that to Codecademy, which gamifies learning code by awarding badges and achievements to users who complete modules (kind of like the Halo franchise). If you ask me, Zynga’s model does not retain users–they become disillusioned with the far-away goal and give up after they realize that the game mechanic is always the same. In comparison, the other model relies on short-term prizes, which I believe is what helped more successful games succeed.
I see a contrast between how these “social games” and “traditional games” are developed. Games such a Starcraft and World of Warcraft (WoW) have the same gameplay mechanic time after time, yet they still retain hordes (pun intended) of users. What makes them different from Zynga’s Farmville or Cityville or the Ville…? For me, it seems like the social interactions in those games is brought to a deeper level–instead of simply collaborating for clicks and competing on the leaderboard on a slightly superficial gameplay screen hosted on Facebook, players are immersed into a completely different environment that forces them to collaborate with other, random players in real time. The end goal in those games isn’t to be better than other players–that’s more of a short term one. The end is to develop a community of gamers that work together, compete together, and get to know each other. While Cow Clicker has fostered a few people who can say that happened to them, the underlying mechanic of the game was not built that way. It’s sort of like the difference between playing board games every day with a few friends and going on OA with them–the latter inherently forces you to develop deeper friendships with others.
Lastly, I also feel that gamification can really be used for temporary competitions and user engagement. People online notoriously have a short attention span (a recent study pointed out that if a video buffers for more than 5 seconds, most people will begin to leave), and cannot simply sustain the continued momentum that current “social games” try to build. Even already popular games, (ie. Starcraft, WoW) mainly retain their membership because they attract players with short individual games (Starcraft), or short individual campaign sequences that have achievable and realistic goals (WoW). I believe that having a model that requires users to come back and “do stuff” for an unspecified amount of time is inherently unsustainable, which would also explain Zynga’s inability to retain users after an initial popularity.
Social Gaming and Gamification can work well–they just need to be implemented in the right way.