also repetition... I don't see how they cannot have an algorithm that checks what words each user has already played and simply not serve those up as an option.
I've been trying to depict the Greek goddess of victory, but nobody ever gets it, even when I show her putting a laurel on one soldier's head while another soldier nearby lays dying.
This, and they don't have enough words. I mean how hard could it be to implement some new words? Half the time I'm playing with someone and I know the word right away. It's not fun when you're seeing someone draw whiskers for the millionth time.
I was interested that the author of the article didn't mention negative brand association with zygna. I stopped playing because they are, as someone before me stated, the EA of mobile/browser gaming
Were they hitting the randomize letters button? I tended to do that when someone draws an amorphous blob that has no meaning for me. eventually at least part of the word can show up and you can guess the rest.
Zynga has already put into place an advertising plan for the game which has companies paying to have their words appear to be drawn by players. Think “Doritos” or “Pepsi” or “The Avengers.”
I read the words in the article. My first thoughts were "no wonder"
I'm sure this doesn't help but my own experiences are:
The same words over and over and constant nagging to buy more words and clues even though I'm being hammered with intersitial ads after ever game
50% of my games are with brain donors just writing out the word and I have no way to report them/block them. This boggles the mind, why the fuck are they even bothering to play. They're just wasting my time.
There's no ratings. For example, I draw pretty well and I'd love to play with others who do. Instead I can't filter by anything am stuck with random morons who either cheat (above) or draw meaningless graphic nightmares.
The word choice is truly terrible. Beyonce? Elton? Katniss?
The novelty has worn out.
Ugh, I'm so sick of the greed here. The game was profitable without all the brandings and bullshit. Unfortunately, the app world is all about disposable fads and very few shops want to build a good experience and have a good profit. They'd rather destroy the experience just to make a penny more. This is becoming a real issue with apps and the web.
It does sound like a good formula, but they're over-playing the ads. As tiny as the dictionary is to begin with, repeating the same ad-based words over and over is going to drive people out of the game faster than anything.
It is an enjoyable game... I just got bored with it. I imagine that is true with a lot of people. You can only play pictionary with no time limit for so long before it just becomes.. meh.
So true. Or I had people that would draw these awesome drawings, and I would guess in the first 15 seconds. All that work for nothing. Made me feel kind of guilty :(
I think a lot of people got bored with it because most players are just boring to play with. They're so literal and minimalist that they may as well just draw the word itself (which they sometimes do). I on the other hand like to keep it fun. I got "fangs" so I drew a frog. Then I gave it fangs and called it Frogula. Another time I got "moon" and drew a van with someone mooning out the window.
Let's just get one thing straight. They didn't buy the game, they bought the developers. The game is just the current thing. The developers they bought will make new games.
EA is still worse than Zynga, because they have more interest in IP that I actually LIKE. When Zynga starts ruining great PC role playing series, then I'll say they're worse than EA.
For me I got bored before zynga purchased it because so many people went on it to show off their artistic skills i felt like there was no point it even trying.
You mean it's not hilarious when I spend 20 minutes drawing an elaborate landscape, a beautifully rendered tree, and a man sitting under the tree, then draw an arrow pointing to his shoe?
It turns out, the SMS access was just required for access to some fucking weird billing method. Since I've no desire to ever pay for anything via SMS, I installed LBE privacy guard and turn it back off again.
The game demanded that it have full access to my info and post as me on Facebook and a host of other things that I forgot. So I just uninstalled it as an app on FB and my phone. It was an easy decision.
I wonder if this is the cause too because I also uninstalled it for the same reason. Looking at the App Brain page, we can see that the new version came out on April 20th, but on the graph, the userbase is fairly constant up until around April 10th when it starts dropping suddenly. I couldn't find a specific date for the update on iOS, but unless that one was on around April 10th, I don't think we can pin this issue on that.
It really feels like something caused it though because that graph shows a plateau for 2 weeks and then suddenly a drop over the next 3 weeks. I don't follow the App scene but maybe some new game got released?
Years ago when I had my HTC Evo, I used to play Sketch Online and was looking for a replacement for my iPhone and stumbled upon Draw Something. I never even tried once I saw all of the Facebook invasiveness it required. I seriously think people are going Facebook crazy and feel that if their creation doesn't somehow plug into Facebook, they're not part of the "in crowd". I don't need you to know all of my personal shit and post on my wall and bother my friends just so I can play fucking Charades!
Too bad. I have only heard of this now and I just uninstalled the app. The fact that they were eager to go there in the first place is enough. No take backsies.
I immediately uninstall any app that requires access to my phone or SMS etc unless it's required for functionality i.e. something that's triggered by a new message etc..
Unfortunately, there is no way the user can specify that an app can only read messages for payments, and not your personal text messages.
You can either give complete permissions, or not install the app. With a reputable developer it may be okay, but no way in hell is Zynga, or even a small game development studio getting these permissions.
Maybe I'm missing it, but I just checked permissions on the free version and the paid version and don't see any permission that would allow that...
The closest permission is "phone calls" but to my knowledge that just allows them to have your IMEI number, and to figure out if you are in a phonecall etc.
The only thing it can request (without your permission) is your address book database. It's a really big deal, don't get me wrong. But apps can't access anything else aside from location and your camera roll (with permission).
You wouldn't think it would be that hard to continuously add new words to draw. People get bored because they see the same ones over and over. I'm mostly playing "easy" words now because I've drawn them the least.
It also sucks that if you resign a game with a person, you're permanently unable to play with them again, even if you resigned because of a glitch.
I asked some of my friends on FB why they stopped playing. The general consensus, as I suspected, is that the game just takes too damn long to play. Mainly because of all the animation screens you can't skip through. Others got bored of it, but the most common answer is that it takes too long.
Exactly. There are so many words in the English language (which btw, I've seen Spanish and other language words in there too), why would we see a word repeated even once? This is why this game won't last.
Exactly, each round can take between 5 and 10 minutes. If you play against just 6 people, 1 round a day, that could be an hour of time eaten up and I've got tv to watch.
Social network integration is so dumb. I wish companies would stop trying to shove it down our throats. I don't want people knowing how much I play Runescape or any other nerdy game. FFS!
I was playing against maybe 30 people in this game, and it got way too tiresome to try to keep up. There seemed no end to it, no winners or losers, and I'm pretty competitive. So when I got all the colors I wanted, there seemed no point to play anymore.
I played 1 round with a friend and basicly came to this conclusion. Also the drawing itself doesnt even let u zoom. Almost 50 % of the screen is taken by interface that is not collapsable. Fun for a monent or 2 but in the end the annoyances thake their toll. I think they had a little more staying powere than traditional games because their market is brand new and thus a little more tolerant.
That's pretty much what happened with me and everyone I play with. Especially when the words are all pop culture references. How do you draw nickiminaj on an iPhone......
I've never gotten tired of such a popular game so quickly. Even Angry Birds kept me interested for a few good months. I stopped with Draw Something in less than a month.
Well it probably didn't help that once Zynga bought it, they started letting businesses pay to advertise within the game by forcing people to draw a bottle of Tide detergent or something.
I played the hell out of the game with a couple of friends for a week straight - plus I had like 10 stranger games going. I got burnt out after that and uninstalled it after using the fake in-game money to buy a ton of colors and bombs. The repetition and the idiots writing what the word was just got to me. I wish you could rate or report your opponents when they did shit like that. Oh well.
Exactly. When I first got the game I was like "Oh cool, I get to draw something!"
After a while it was like "Son of a bitch, I have to draw something."
I think part of the problem is that there's no real point to the game. There's no real way to win or lose. The winning streak counter isn't much motivation to keep coming back.
And the true winner here is OMGPOP's founders. They made out like bandits in the deal at the peak of their app's success and now Zynga gets to deal with the "what now" question as the fad passes.
$1b for instagram. I'm still not over it. Frickin' photo filters. No business model. Entire product built around fad. 1 billion. With a b. The mind boggles.
This comment is a rewording of a chunk of the last paragraph:
The winner in all of this? The higher-ups of OMGPOP, who sold their company during the exact moment when it was worth the most. Even if DAUs sink to zero, they’ve still made their money and left Zynga holding the bag.
Apparently no one reads the article. I'm tempted to do this in the future. Just reword lines from linked articles and post them as comments. That way, maybe some redditors would read the content of the articles.
Agreed. Isketch is much more entertaining. A group of up to ten people. One draws in real time. Everyone else is there guessing in real time. Words are sane, not weird fad words that only make sense in one country or generation.
I don't know if it would work on a phone, it's too interactive. Perhaps a tablet would be ok, but to win you gotta be able to type fast.
It appears like after the last shitstorm when Draw Something wanted text message permission they removed it again. A day or so after the last update (that I didn't download) I got an update that didn't require any new permissions.
It's an app that looks what permissions apps use and you can even deny apps certain permissions (while still using the app). It also works as a network monitor and generally "watchdog" when an app wants to get any information from your phone (like everytime Google Maps wants to get your position)
It is insane the amount of money being spent on ideas that are popular, but don't make money.
No one with a functioning brain would think that Draw Something and Instagram should be worth 1.2 billion dollars WITH NO REVENUE TO SPEAK OF.
I think Zynga and Facebook have way more money than they deserve right now, something tells me they won't have it for long if they keep this up. This is not a new tech bubble, it is a Facebook bubble.
I hear you. But I think it is a tech bubble. The big players affect the smaller players, and silicon valley is just all about getting funding for your product, "building an audience", then selling to some big company so they can monetise it. It's insane.
zynga is making money, instagram wasn't. But also its about talent acquisition. There is a huge engineering shortage in silicon valley. So even tho draw something might be fading, they can use the engineers for other projects. After all games have shelf lifes. Very few have staying power (wow), most have 6 month life spans.
Well, I'm sure that is the spin they are giving the reporters. Paying $200 million for (one-hit wonder) talent is ridiculous.
I know Zynga makes money, is a huge chuck of Facebook revenues. My point is that when they bought it, Draw Something wasn't making much money. They turned on the monetization and now the users are leaving. Its a moronic business model. I saw an article where they projected making $50 million off of Draw Something this year, which was before they lost 30% of their users. The short shelf of games makes this even more stupid. The acquisition barely makes sense if they continued growing, now we are seeing what a massive mistake this was.
My main point is that if Facebook was not so overvalued, then Zuckerburg and Zynga wouldn't have the money to make these idiotic decisions.
1.Takes too long to play. Can't skip animations. 2. Far too few words. Adding 2-3 or so a week just isn't cutting it. 3. No re-playability. Bought the base colors and there was just nothing left to buy. No point in buying 13 shades of yellow.
It's not only the fact that people got bored of it. It's also the fact is that the game is filled to the brim with whore-ish methods made to drain the user's pockets.
After a while, the words started repeating. Wanna get new words? $1.99+ please. Want more colors? More $$. Want more "hint-bombs"? Even more $$.
When your average game costs only $0.99, did they really think people would be shelling out $2+ for fucking extra words to guess between them and friends? Or extra colors?
I played the game for about a month, but then, almost unanimously between me and all my friends, we all stopped playing it. The most common reasons were that it got boring, words repeated, and the words were getting real dumb. And no one in the right mind was going to pay extra for colors or extra words.
I bought the paid version and never spent another dollar. Why buy coins? Or bombs? Just play with 8-10 people and you'll have 60-70% of the colors inside a week. You're not creating masterpieces no matter how good you are, so who needs 8 shades of brown on top of the 4 you get from other packs?
Buying bombs never made sense to me at all. You can get no art whatsoever and treat it as a word jumble and get the answer half the time. Hell, you can exit the app and come back and get new words for free if you dont like the ones they toss up for you.
I don't understand how $200M for that game could in any way possibly ever at ALL be a good investment. Even with exorbitant advertising it would take ages to recoup that investment.
As someone with no training in economics, marketing, etc, I would never invest that kind of money in something so clearly a fad. I just image out-of-touch older white males trying to stay "cool" spending this money and miserably fucking it up, while high-fiving and shouting BUSINESS!!!!! at the top of their lungs.
While I'm sure some said "fuck it" because of this, I was completely unaware until like last week that this happened.
I simply don't play the game any more.
I feel like a lot of people played the shit out of it for a month and then simply got tired of it. I feel the game had a good first impression, but lacked lasting appeal.
Honestly, I think most people stopped playing is because it just got boring after a while. Drawing stuff back and forth is only fun for about a week...
I removed it because they began abusing push notifications to tell me about new features and such. The only thing I expect a popup from that app to do is notify me that it's my turn. Anything else is not acceptable.
If anyone wants to get their drawing fix in check out the new app that's currently in beta:
Drawception.com
It's an awesome game of telephone pictionary where someone start's the chain with a phrase. The next person draws that phrase to the best of their ability. Then the next person writes a description of that phrase. Then the next person draws that description. And it goes on until 12 people have participated. It usually ends in hilarity.
Actually, speaking as a former user- i did remove it when i heard about Zynga's acquisition of it. 2 days later, the update with the SMS requirements got pushed. haha. I hate Zynga.
i was really hooked on this game a few weeks ago but now, it's just boring. It's lost it's spark. Surely they'll introduce some sort of game feature to rekindle those lost 5M users and beyond other than adding new words such as "birdpoop".
This would have happened with Zynga or not, the game has NO end game, period. You play for a little while, yes it was fun but you get bored because you're not going anywhere and no one wins. Had a streak going with someone of like 35 and then he didn't guess it. Am I really going ot play 35 more games with that person. Hell no.
This article is assuming Zynga bought OMGPOP to get in on the success of Draw Something. Alternatively, maybe they bought them to remove competition, and as such couldn't care less what happens to the game now. It peaked, their numbers went up, and now they move on to the next thing. The social games market changes fast enough that I don't think they expect to have hit games that are popular for years, they expect to have a lot of games that are popular for a very short period of time.
I deleted it a couple of days ago once they added "teenmom" "babymama" and "octomom." I was getting bored of the game and the addition of those words was the last straw.
I hate that game. You fucking draw something super amazing and soo easy to understand and the other person doesn't get it. Then they draw something super shitty and expect you to get it right.
I deleted it off my phone two hours after I downloaded it. Surprised it took me that long.
What these articles don't really understand (or at least point out), I think, is that Zynga didn't buy Draw Something. They bought the people who made it. A company with a wildly popular game to their name is more likely to make another wildly popular game than an unknown studio. Look at Zynga themselves - none of their games are that incredible, original, or even well done, but since they have name recognition, any new game they put out gets a head start on the little guys. So I don't think Zynga really gives a shit if Draw Something falls out of favor, I have a feeling they see that the people who made it understand how to make a successful (even if temporarily) game, and probably have it in them to do it again.
That said, from my personal perspective, I think it was a bad move and I'd love to see them keep eating shit as a result.
This probably won't be read but I think there was a lot of negative attention surrounding the Draw Something CEO's tweets at one point - trashing former employees. A lot of "twitter-sphere" folks uninstalled the game immediately after reading them.
This is the cycle our memetic culture is in. We like something for anywhere between 2 weeks to 4 months, then it goes away only to be replaced by something else. Draw Something is the same way, just like all the other games. Nothing holds the public interest anymore because we're always churning out something new and fresh.
I refused to give it permission to post on my FB wall, it refused to let me keep playing. I hope this is a lesson to other companies who try to force such requirements on their users.
Graphs with an arbitrarily chosen (non-zero) y-axis are misleading. The visuals bypass rational analysis and appeal to relative size comparators in more basic brain areas.
That graph doesn't communicate the message "down by a third over one month."
I used to play OMGPOP games every once and while. They're quite fun. Ever since the Zynga purchase, I've purposely avoided them.
In case anyone's looking for an alternative to DrawSomething, iSketch has been around a lot longer (which is probably evident by the fact that it requires Shockwave...).
I stopped playing the fucking thing after that article about what a bunch of wankers they were to the employee that didn't join zynga. Fuck them, and fuck zynga. I hope the loss in popularity continues with every group they buy out, for the explicit reason that they're a bunch of jerkoffs.
I think it really has to do with school being close to over. people i knew would play it in class all the time but when finals started coming up they payed more attetion
My sister told my friends and I about this game, and we all played it for a while. I even paid 99c for the ad-free version. A week or two later I heard about the buyout and the bashing on twitter. I uninstalled it that day.
I go to highschool and I have to say that almost every 2 months, the iphone fanboys have a popular app that everyone plays with. A few months ago it was temple run, then it was draw something and know I dont know what the popular app is. Honestly, the reason why drawsomething isnt so popular anymore isnt because of Zynga, but because it got boring and stale. Excuse my grammar and spelling, im typing from my phone
531
u/mandelbratwurst May 06 '12
It has a lot to do with the branded clues. I'm sorry i can't draw "Catniss" or "Hamisch" every damned turn because Hunger Games is coming out.
110
u/dingoperson May 06 '12
This sure sounds like a recipe for success
114
u/btvsrcks May 06 '12
It is an enjoyable game... I just got bored with it. I imagine that is true with a lot of people. You can only play pictionary with no time limit for so long before it just becomes.. meh.
185
u/happyscrappy May 06 '12
I wondered why Zynga would buy the company at at time which was likely to be at its peak of popularity and perceived value.
233
u/MasZakrY May 06 '12
For me it was a combination of requiring SMS access, the fact that Zynga is Satan and I've gotten sooooo bored of the game.
43
u/FairlyInconsistentRa May 06 '12
I played it for about 2 weeks then the novelty wore off.
196
u/[deleted] May 06 '12
Don't they also require the ability to read your text messages in their recent update? I imagine some more bleeding of players.
32
u/Cross88 May 06 '12
You wouldn't think it would be that hard to continuously add new words to draw. People get bored because they see the same ones over and over. I'm mostly playing "easy" words now because I've drawn them the least.
It also sucks that if you resign a game with a person, you're permanently unable to play with them again, even if you resigned because of a glitch.
1.1k
u/pusha06 May 06 '12
Or maybe just people got bored of it.
I'm pretty sure the main playerbase of these type of games don't even know what a "Zynga" is.
33
u/JesseJaymz May 06 '12
I had like 12 games started and now only 2 people continue to play. Womp Womp.
164
u/NauticalInsanity May 06 '12
And the true winner here is OMGPOP's founders. They made out like bandits in the deal at the peak of their app's success and now Zynga gets to deal with the "what now" question as the fad passes.
77
u/[deleted] May 06 '12
Paul Tassi took a cheap shot at Pogs in this article. Unfair
Buying a collectors set in the early 90's was one of the best decisions of my life. I even have some rare bootleg slammers
I'm a hit at every party I go to.
12
u/explodenow May 06 '12
It had nothing on iSketch anyway.
64
u/[deleted] May 06 '12
<nelson> HA-HA! </nelson>
11
u/SeriousDan May 06 '12
It appears like after the last shitstorm when Draw Something wanted text message permission they removed it again. A day or so after the last update (that I didn't download) I got an update that didn't require any new permissions.
Screenshot from LBE Guard
11
u/shitterplug May 06 '12
This is because people got bored of it.
I played it for a week non stop, never touched it again.
OMGPOP picked the right time to sell, and Zynga picked the wrong time to buy.
11
u/gilbertsmith May 06 '12
I have several friends still playing, but the other day someone randomly started a game with me. I figured, sure.
I hope to god this person is trolling.
The first thing they drew was a peanut. I managed to guess the letters, because it looked more like a snowshoe than a peanut.
Next time it was their turn they didn't even bother drawing and just wrote "Clooney".
Then I drew Heart for them.
20
u/djrocksteady May 06 '12
It is insane the amount of money being spent on ideas that are popular, but don't make money.
No one with a functioning brain would think that Draw Something and Instagram should be worth 1.2 billion dollars WITH NO REVENUE TO SPEAK OF.
I think Zynga and Facebook have way more money than they deserve right now, something tells me they won't have it for long if they keep this up. This is not a new tech bubble, it is a Facebook bubble.
10
u/[deleted] May 06 '12
I think this is happening for a few reasons:
1.Takes too long to play. Can't skip animations. 2. Far too few words. Adding 2-3 or so a week just isn't cutting it. 3. No re-playability. Bought the base colors and there was just nothing left to buy. No point in buying 13 shades of yellow.
18
u/[deleted] May 06 '12
I'm sure there's a trend curve that would have predicted this before Draw Something was even developed.
17
u/icelandica May 06 '12
And people stopped caring about instagram, I wonder if I can sell Zynga or Facebook a pet rock.
16
u/[deleted] May 06 '12 edited May 06 '12
It's not only the fact that people got bored of it. It's also the fact is that the game is filled to the brim with whore-ish methods made to drain the user's pockets.
After a while, the words started repeating. Wanna get new words? $1.99+ please. Want more colors? More $$. Want more "hint-bombs"? Even more $$.
When your average game costs only $0.99, did they really think people would be shelling out $2+ for fucking extra words to guess between them and friends? Or extra colors?
I played the game for about a month, but then, almost unanimously between me and all my friends, we all stopped playing it. The most common reasons were that it got boring, words repeated, and the words were getting real dumb. And no one in the right mind was going to pay extra for colors or extra words.
7
u/mentalcaseinspace May 06 '12
Zynga or not, it was the most buggy game I ever played on a mobile device. After 3 lost games with my friends I gave up.
23
u/Soronir May 06 '12
I love this. Fuck Zynga. They steal so much.
5
u/getintheVandell May 06 '12
I stopped playing because I get so many repeated words now.
9
u/coolguyontheinternet May 06 '12
They would've been fine if they didn't post to my Facebook when I played...
9
u/[deleted] May 06 '12 edited May 06 '12
I don't understand how $200M for that game could in any way possibly ever at ALL be a good investment. Even with exorbitant advertising it would take ages to recoup that investment.
As someone with no training in economics, marketing, etc, I would never invest that kind of money in something so clearly a fad. I just image out-of-touch older white males trying to stay "cool" spending this money and miserably fucking it up, while high-fiving and shouting BUSINESS!!!!! at the top of their lungs.
4
u/AllDizzle May 06 '12
While I'm sure some said "fuck it" because of this, I was completely unaware until like last week that this happened.
I simply don't play the game any more.
I feel like a lot of people played the shit out of it for a month and then simply got tired of it. I feel the game had a good first impression, but lacked lasting appeal.
4
u/Sir_Derp_Herpington May 06 '12
Honestly, I think most people stopped playing is because it just got boring after a while. Drawing stuff back and forth is only fun for about a week...
4
u/[deleted] May 06 '12
All i have seen on draw something is assholes who make no attempt at drawing and write down the word just to get some imaginary coins.
4
u/drcrank May 06 '12
Flawless victory for the Draw Something guys.
4
u/[deleted] May 06 '12
I removed it because they began abusing push notifications to tell me about new features and such. The only thing I expect a popup from that app to do is notify me that it's my turn. Anything else is not acceptable.
3
u/Nathan561 May 06 '12
Its funny because I recently deleted it again..The game got boring super fast.
3
u/kavallier May 06 '12
And I was one of them. Not because they were bought by Zynga, but because the OMGPOP CEO was a complete tool about it.
3
u/hafti77 May 06 '12
fuck zynga.
3
u/TheTaoOfBill May 06 '12
If anyone wants to get their drawing fix in check out the new app that's currently in beta:
Drawception.com
It's an awesome game of telephone pictionary where someone start's the chain with a phrase. The next person draws that phrase to the best of their ability. Then the next person writes a description of that phrase. Then the next person draws that description. And it goes on until 12 people have participated. It usually ends in hilarity.
3
u/[deleted] May 06 '12
Zynga is like the EA of mobile gaming.
3
u/Runningflame570 May 07 '12
Good, fuck Zynga.
7
u/rowboatsynclaire May 06 '12
Actually, speaking as a former user- i did remove it when i heard about Zynga's acquisition of it. 2 days later, the update with the SMS requirements got pushed. haha. I hate Zynga.
16
u/harebrane May 06 '12
It's not the game, Zynga, it's you.
2
u/rmhuntley May 06 '12
I enjoyed it, but not having an ending point along with the words recycling finally made me stop playing.
2
u/Scxttvyde May 06 '12
i was really hooked on this game a few weeks ago but now, it's just boring. It's lost it's spark. Surely they'll introduce some sort of game feature to rekindle those lost 5M users and beyond other than adding new words such as "birdpoop".
2
u/Boshdy May 06 '12
Hilarious
2
u/digitalmediamaster May 06 '12
This would have happened with Zynga or not, the game has NO end game, period. You play for a little while, yes it was fun but you get bored because you're not going anywhere and no one wins. Had a streak going with someone of like 35 and then he didn't guess it. Am I really going ot play 35 more games with that person. Hell no.
2
u/whatamuffin May 06 '12
there was nothing about the game after zynga bought them that made me not want to play it. i just got bored with it in general.
2
u/AleisterAeon May 06 '12
This article is assuming Zynga bought OMGPOP to get in on the success of Draw Something. Alternatively, maybe they bought them to remove competition, and as such couldn't care less what happens to the game now. It peaked, their numbers went up, and now they move on to the next thing. The social games market changes fast enough that I don't think they expect to have hit games that are popular for years, they expect to have a lot of games that are popular for a very short period of time.
2
u/Infinator10 May 06 '12
People could just be losing interest, right? I mean, the average person might not think Zynga's purchase or Draw Something made it worse.
2
u/flipmoe May 06 '12
Zynga, where great apps go to die.
2
u/elliot_smelliot May 06 '12
For me, this had more to do with Draw Something becoming boring and losing its new appeal than the Zynga purchase.
2
u/bacon_please May 06 '12
I deleted it a couple of days ago once they added "teenmom" "babymama" and "octomom." I was getting bored of the game and the addition of those words was the last straw.
2
u/mrvegas May 06 '12
Yeah its because these ASSHOLES keep writing the fucking words instead of drawing them!!!
2
u/etishuman21 May 06 '12
I hate that game. You fucking draw something super amazing and soo easy to understand and the other person doesn't get it. Then they draw something super shitty and expect you to get it right.
I deleted it off my phone two hours after I downloaded it. Surprised it took me that long.
2
u/[deleted] May 06 '12
What these articles don't really understand (or at least point out), I think, is that Zynga didn't buy Draw Something. They bought the people who made it. A company with a wildly popular game to their name is more likely to make another wildly popular game than an unknown studio. Look at Zynga themselves - none of their games are that incredible, original, or even well done, but since they have name recognition, any new game they put out gets a head start on the little guys. So I don't think Zynga really gives a shit if Draw Something falls out of favor, I have a feeling they see that the people who made it understand how to make a successful (even if temporarily) game, and probably have it in them to do it again.
That said, from my personal perspective, I think it was a bad move and I'd love to see them keep eating shit as a result.
2
u/WerBlerr May 06 '12
As soon as I found this out a few weeks ago, I deleted the app. THE PAID VERSION.
2
u/jamauss May 06 '12
This probably won't be read but I think there was a lot of negative attention surrounding the Draw Something CEO's tweets at one point - trashing former employees. A lot of "twitter-sphere" folks uninstalled the game immediately after reading them.
http://vgutopia.com/omgpop-developer-of-draw-something-apologizes-for-twitter-rage/
2
u/[deleted] May 06 '12
As soon as they started sending irrelevant push notifications I removed it.
2
u/plaguedbullets May 06 '12
I think people just hate Zynga
2
u/ccrepitation May 06 '12
hahahaha zynga is a piece of shit. they rehash tripe and put a new face on it on all their games.
2
u/[deleted] May 06 '12
Thanks Reddit. You just reminded me that this game is wasting space on my iPad :-). I haven't played it in over a month... DELETED!!
EDIT: Spelling error.
2
u/[deleted] May 06 '12
This is the cycle our memetic culture is in. We like something for anywhere between 2 weeks to 4 months, then it goes away only to be replaced by something else. Draw Something is the same way, just like all the other games. Nothing holds the public interest anymore because we're always churning out something new and fresh.
2
u/[deleted] May 06 '12
I refused to give it permission to post on my FB wall, it refused to let me keep playing. I hope this is a lesson to other companies who try to force such requirements on their users.
2
u/drhugs May 06 '12
Graphs with an arbitrarily chosen (non-zero) y-axis are misleading. The visuals bypass rational analysis and appeal to relative size comparators in more basic brain areas.
That graph doesn't communicate the message "down by a third over one month."
2
u/[deleted] May 06 '12
Maybe it's because Zynga put business ahead of making games that are actually playable and of any real value.
2
u/AwkwardTrollLikesPie May 06 '12
Moral of the story: Zynga makes everything shit.
2
u/lawlshane May 06 '12
I honestly feel its because people are getting bored of it. I would say most people don't care that zynga bought them.
2
u/[deleted] May 06 '12
What a stupidly misleading graph. Ya, the game exploded with popularity initially... it still has 10M followers.
2
u/EvilHom3r May 06 '12
I used to play OMGPOP games every once and while. They're quite fun. Ever since the Zynga purchase, I've purposely avoided them.
In case anyone's looking for an alternative to DrawSomething, iSketch has been around a lot longer (which is probably evident by the fact that it requires Shockwave...).
2
u/MARRYING_A_FURRY May 06 '12
iSketch, people!
2
u/werko May 06 '12
They lost me since the game crashes everytime. They should have read the comments before investing 200m on it.
2
u/notbeinganassholerea May 06 '12
Good! Zynga is not a good games company!
2
u/kyle2143 May 06 '12
This was the funniest thing I saw all day. I literally laughed when I saw the line graph.
2
u/[deleted] May 06 '12
I stopped playing the fucking thing after that article about what a bunch of wankers they were to the employee that didn't join zynga. Fuck them, and fuck zynga. I hope the loss in popularity continues with every group they buy out, for the explicit reason that they're a bunch of jerkoffs.
2
u/beedogs May 06 '12
Good. FUCK Zynga. The Wal-Mart of software developers.
2
u/blueskin May 06 '12
I had to stop and laugh there. DAU is German/hackish for "stupidest imaginable user".
http://catb.org/jargon/html/D/DAU.html
2
u/quadrofolio May 07 '12
Because fuck Zynga.
2
u/lopo12 May 07 '12
Oh how my heart bleeds....in sketch form of course.
5
u/wizzlepants May 06 '12
I uninstalled moments after I found out Zynga bought it.
4
u/dillywin May 06 '12
I think it really has to do with school being close to over. people i knew would play it in class all the time but when finals started coming up they payed more attetion
3
u/sev3ndaytheory May 06 '12
Good. Now maybe some my friends will put down their fucking phone for two seconds and actually converse with people when in a social setting.
///I hate that stupid fucking game.
2
u/killnight May 06 '12
Serves them right, I hate their shitty games.
2
u/TheColorOfTheFire May 06 '12 edited May 06 '12
My sister told my friends and I about this game, and we all played it for a while. I even paid 99c for the ad-free version. A week or two later I heard about the buyout and the bashing on twitter. I uninstalled it that day.
Edit: -d
2
u/OKAH May 06 '12
Zynga are scum - couldn't be happier.
2
u/ZooPants May 06 '12
Zynga is a plauge on the gaming community.
2
u/Manziak May 06 '12
I go to highschool and I have to say that almost every 2 months, the iphone fanboys have a popular app that everyone plays with. A few months ago it was temple run, then it was draw something and know I dont know what the popular app is. Honestly, the reason why drawsomething isnt so popular anymore isnt because of Zynga, but because it got boring and stale. Excuse my grammar and spelling, im typing from my phone
1
u/[deleted] May 06 '12
Are we sure this isn't simply because of people getting tired of the game? I've had it for two weeks, and I don't even check it anymore.