Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) design director Wright Bagwell and creative director Michael McCarthy represented the company during the 2013 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and talked about “Farmville 2 Post-Mortem: What Grew Wild and What Withered.”
The two executives emphasized that the integration of GPU acceleration in Farmville 2 helped increased retention and acceleration.
Bagwell and McCarthy discussed the different aspects on how the design team at Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) decided and chose what elements needed to be included in the development of Farmville 2. The creative and design directors also talked about the failed aspects of the game
According to McCarthy, Farmville 2 received a lot of media attention because of the 3D graphics; however, he pointed out that the most important part of the game is the integration of GPU acceleration using Flash 11 and Unity. He explained that the GPU acceleration allowed the game to run smoothly on different types of computers.
He emphasized that GPU acceleration is the most important aspect of the game because 80 percent of Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA)’s revenues were generated from players who were happy with their games that runs smoothly at 15 frames per second or faster. He said, GPU acceleration increases the retention of players and monetization.
In addition, the design and creative directors of the online gaming company said that Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) design team developed Farmville 2 to with an objective to retain its players for a long period just like the original Farmville, which is still running since its introduction four years ago.
According to McCarthy, Farmville 2 is successful despite the fact that it is no longer the number one game on Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). He said that Farmville 2 still has 8.5 million active users every day. During the fourth quarter of 2012, Farmville 2’s revenue and bookings were higher than expected.
Right now, the number one online game on the social network giants’ website is Candy Crush Saga.
Meanwhile, Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) signed 40 partners and launched 27 web and mobile games under its Zynga Partners program. According to the company, the program has a strong momentum and the game Playdemic’s Village Life is starting to gain some success. In addition, the company said it is working side by side with its game developer partners to create better games.
