According to The Game Business, the social game developer, Frank Gibeau, of Zynga, the R-star parent company, described in an interview the recent court decision to cancel all information and payment restrictions from Apple in App Store, United States, as “a profound change in the platform”. He also indicated that as a result of the ruling, the company was “very active” in the field of direct consumer orientation.
Gibeau also stated that, despite the failure of Star Wars Hunter and the fact that the server had to be shut down shortly thereafter, Zynga hoped to launch another well-known mobile shooting game as soon as possible. With regard to the insufficiency of value derived by developers from App Store’s recommendations and from the entire apple ecosystem, Gibeau states: “In the early stages, obtaining the recommended location of App Store is a gifted opportunity to generate natural flows, and you can build hot games by acquiring recommended locations and using the application shop’s product promotion. But now it’s no longer applicable.” As a result, when you look at the marketing and value generated from these projects, it has completely shrunk. So the question is, how much value did I get when I paid these costs (30% of the apple store)? They are no longer balanced.” With regard to the Court’s recent decision (the lifting of all information and payment restrictions in US App Store), Gibeau stated: “I think it is a good thing that we can invest more actively in business, reach new audiences and create more value for players. The concept of being able to establish direct relationships with players, better serve them and provide them with more value is enormous.”
“So this is not just to gain more profits from the platform through direct distribution. We can do better customer relationship management, we can build better communities and we can get a clearer picture of what happens in the game, because, while we have a lot of telemetry, sometimes you just want to ask a question directly about the situation. This is a major change for the mobile game, and it’s something we’ve been actively pursuing.” In the interview, Gibeau spoke about the reasons why Star Wars: Galactic Hunter failed. The shooting game, developed by the CSR studio Natural Motion, has a long development cycle but does not gain real market attention and is closed one year after its launch.
“We built a great technological base and developed an interesting game with an excellent core cycle,” Gibeau said. “The problem is that this game is not a viable business. We cannot generate enough natural installation through Star Wars’ IP and fail to achieve long-term user viscosity.” Nevertheless, Gibeau suggests that Zynga is now “considering another idea in this category” and will use another IP. “Sometimes the first attempt fails,” he adds. “But there is still value in it. You’ll learn about the market, you’ll know about your team… The action shooting game on a mobile platform is a very large and growing category in which we would like to participate.” “Now we have a technological foundation for an imaginary engine, with some good leaders in engineering, development and design… What is needed now is to draw lessons from Star Wars: Hunters and apply them to another attempt on another IP.”
