Game maker Zynga is setting the ground for being independent and building its own platform whereby players can have a direct relationship with Zynga whether on the Web or the mobile. This was declared by Zynga’s founder and CEO, Mark Pincus, at the ‘Zynga Unleashed’ event at San Francisco on Tuesday. Titled ‘Project Z’, this also indicates that Zynga wants to break free from social networks like Facebook and Google+ and build its own online community.
Talking at the event, Pincus said, “We can give you a whole sandbox and create a new social experience around the games and not just in the games.” With project Z, Zynga will still be connected with the social media sites but will not be tied by their rules and regulations like limitations on the number of notifications sent. This also implies that Zynga would have its own credit system separate from Facebook’s. Gamers could buy Zynga money instead of getting Facebook credits.
Zynga Direct is the company’s new direct-to-consumer platform for connecting individuals who want to play games together. Zynga Direct will be a network of gamers that will exist independently of Facebook, though it will rely on Facebook Connect for sign-up.
There has always been a sense of stress between Zynga and Facebook. Both companies earn their revenue by bringing people together via updates, apps and play, and, thereby extracting revenues from the public through ads or online sales.
The more Zynga can free itself from Facebook without distancing itself from the medium that connects its users together, the more money and reputation it can keep for itself. Zynga Direct will let users create their own game identities. Gamers can play Zynga games on Facebook using a pseudonym and not their real name. However, since the user would be logging in with Facebook Connect, at some point they both will have to be linked, at least initially. Later, a user would be able to use their ZTag to log into Zynga games they play on Facebook as well as off it.
As it is building its user-base on different platforms – Facebook, Google+, iOS, it becomes crucial for the company to have its own network of users and decide which of its platform partners it is going to continue paying. To quote an instance, at present, an in-app purchase on a iPad Facebook game will generate a bill from both Facebook and Apple. Zynga might look to reduce the number of companies it has to pay and it is easy to cut out the social platform than the operating system.
At the event, Zynga also launched a series of new games including CastleVille, Zynga Bingo, Hidden Chronicles and Mafia Wars 2. It is not yet clear in which social media site these games will be launched or whether they will be exclusively for Project Z.
Pincus also said that Zynga’s network and tools will be opened to non-Zynga developers. Zynga has a strong user-base and impressive analytics about users interact and it also has a team of strong social and game developers but all of this could be improved upon if third-party developers could enter the network.
Facebook became a powerhouse, partly because it opened its platform to developers like Zynga and now, the gaming company could become a platform itself and invite outside developers on its platform. This could truly turn out to be Zynga’s master gameplan along with its IPO for which it filed its documents in July.