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David Barnes
April 19th, 7:03am
1 comment
Costik on How to Compete With Zynga -- Be Uncloneable
Costik is a game design expert. His solution for competing with Zynga? Innovative game design -- make it hard to clone your game... The lesson for people considering joining this market: Under no circumstances launch with a game that can be quickly and easily cloned by Zynga and Playdom, e.g., a social network RPG which they can copy by reskinning their existing RPG software. Go instead for something that will force them to use take their scarce engineering talent off other projects and build something from scratch if they want to clone you; and have a marketing plan to hit critical mass with your game before they can respond, so that you wind up in the #1 slot in your particular niche, instead of being relegated to #3 or lower by their clone
Do I agree? Not sure. I think Zynga can clone pretty much anything quickly. It seems to me that the best way to compete with Zynga is to take a proven game design idea, and skin it for a niche market that isn't big enough for Zynga to go after. Once a company is highly capitalized and set up to produce blockbusters, it loses the ability to explore small but profitable niches. To compete with Zynga and other big players, find profitable crevices that are too small for them to fit into. Just don't think you'll find a blockbuster game idea that Zynga hasn't spotted yet. Even if you're right, they'll clone and outspend you before you can say Jack Robinson. Costik's full article: http://playthisthing.com/playdom-raises-43m-and-lessons-new-entrants
