Tag: ZYNGA

You have to hand it to Lady Gaga; she's pretty tapped into tech. Her latest venture is a partnership with Zynga, in which she's donating $1.5 million for earthquake relief via its in-game funding drives. The partnership is not particularly surprising on either end. Gaga has been making the tech rounds recently, and Zynga has long been savvy about using its games as a platform for ...

Zynga, my favorite social game factory, has just unleashed its latest hellion from the company's bubbling cauldron of misery and profit. The deftly named 'RewardVille' isn't so much a game as an incentive program, with which Facebook fiends already hooked on 'FarmVille' and 'CityVille' can get addicted to other Zynga games. The reward? More digital ducks. Basically, you play Zynga games and ...

Perpetually baby-faced Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga and god of 'Farmville,' is now worth $1 billion, all thanks to your stupid virtual corn. "Blame only yourselves," I said when 'CityVille' grew even larger than your digital homesteads, as you merrily stuffed Facebook Credits into his gaping pockets. Now the company is valued between $7 and $9 billion, and Pincus' Bieber hair has found its way into ...

Zynga, the social gaming company behind 'FarmVille' and 'Mafia Wars,' might be worth up to $9 billion. According to the Wall Street Journal, Zynga is currently in discussions with potential investors about raising approximately $250 million in fresh capital. Sources close to the discussions say that the new deal would place the company's value at between $7 and $9 billion, though a final decision ...

Is it just us, or did 2010 seem like an abnormally long year? Of course, it was no longer than any other year in history. But, from a tech perspective, at least, this year saw more seismic changes and game-altering developments than any other in recent memory. From Android to Zuckerberg, 'FarmVille' to Foursquare, iPad to iPhone 4, 2010 certainly wasn't short on memorable moments. Here are 15 ...

You jerks. We told you not to do it, but you went and signed up anyway. In fact, it seems like you ignored us with great gusto, because Zynga's new money-pit 'CityVille' has just surpassed the number of users of its old money-pit, 'FarmVille.' It took less than a month for this simulacrum of real life within a Precious Moments-themed casino of broken dreams to reach 16.8 million daily active users ...

Mark Pincus admits that his ego is larger than a tycoon's. "I want to create something that will matter in a hundred years," the CEO of Zynga and creator of time-suck games like 'FarmVille,' said on Nightline last night. Parading his innocently vainglorious vision of the Internet and gaming, Pincus dismissed worries about the millions of users who funnel real money into unreal products as part of ...

Artificial intelligence and dynamic difficulty adjustment bestow impatient gamers with the ability to progress through levels without personally accomplishing (or playing) anything. Tapping into that short attention span demographic, the manufacturers of 'Angry Birds' now hope to capitalize on helpless and obsessed players with a new Deus Ex Machina device. Disguised as an 'Angry Birds' ...

Those of you... okay, those of us who rushed to the nearest Gamestop (or just got online) to throw $60 at 'StarCraft II' the day it dropped are not the future of the video game industry. According to a recent report from NPD Group, one in five Americans over the age of six has played games on a social network within the last 90 days, while spending less than the average on video games overall. Of ...

Here at Switched, we try our best to refrain from taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. But, when said misfortune involves a game as odious as 'Mafia Wars,' we really can't help ourselves. This is Zynga, after all, the same game producer that unleashed the pestilence of 'FarmVille' upon the world -- and made untold millions in the process. Forgive us, then, if we couldn't hold back a smile ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2010/08/04/the-farmville-ruse-how-zyngas-creation-ruins-gaming-and-stea/'; FarmVille is a very smart game. It was developed by Zynga, the company founded by serial entrepreneur Mark Pincus, which is on track to pull in $500-million dollars in revenue this year. As of July, FarmVille was hosting the digital homesteads of 61 million users. But you probably ...

In the biggest digital migration since folks moved down on the farm, millions of "pioneers" have hitched their covered wagons and moved West in search of new online lives. According to USA Today, since its June 9th launch, 20 million gamers have played 'FrontierVille.' Now, that number pales in comparison to Zynga's other most popular social-networking game -- 'FarmVille,' with its 62 million ...

As far as agriculture goes, FarmVille's pretty environmentally friendly. After all, everything "grown" on a computer screen is about as local as it gets. And the only thing a user could possibly waste, besides money, is an entire social life. Soon, however, the game's agrarian community will have a whole new way to raise pretend plants... and hemorrhage even more cash. As the New York Times ...

Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines.... A Wikileaks spokesperson has responded to a rumor that the site may soon close its proverbial doors, saying in a typically tactful fashion that "the "bull#### campaign" will soon be addressed because, "[there] is no substance to the allegation." [From: The Next Web] The lawsuit concerning Apple and AT&T exclusivity has just ...

Share Readers, our passion is the Internet. In fact, we're probably online -- posting, commenting, tweeting, Facebooking -- more than you. And yet, despite our deft Web skillz, we still can't really wrap our minds around the concept of virtual currency and goods. Paying hard-earned, real-life dollars to send your friend a tiny digital duck just makes no sense to us -- and yet, it's been quite a ...