If you are familiar with social networking, especially with facebook, then you have already got introduced with Farm Ville, a social game that can be played on social networking website Facebook. You can become a farmer, plant seeds, grow trees, raise livestock and many other things, but not really rather virtually. The game was launched in June last year, and it became the most popular game application in Facebook. The number of players and fans are amazing – 75.2 and 18.1 million respectively, within six months of its launch.
These large numbers of players help the developer Zynga earn much revenue in a very short time. Thus it shows another way to earn money without spending billions of dollars like google or amazon.
Recently Brian Reynolds, chief game designer for Zynga shed a little light about the money making process. Developing a social game costs only $100,000 to $300,000 and 3-5 percent of the player pay money for virtual goods in the game or sign up for advertising ‘offers’ that generate cash for the developer. If each person generates a penny a day, then an average of $3.65 is generated per year per person. Now, multiply the number of people who play the games, like 31 million people that play farmville, according to the figure stated by Brian and you will get a big amount $113 million a year. You may subtract an amount of $4 million as the salaries of a team of 40 designers and developer who are engaged in developing and continuous update and maintenance. Now what amount do you have in your hand?
The game developers get thrilled with the speech of Reynolds because Reynolds did not mention the amount of pennies paid by the players. If the players spend two pennies per day, then it would be a 200 million dollar per year. But they can presume this with a look to the present value, the amount is not so small, it’s a $3-billion company.
Although developing game is not easy and small task, the developers are interested in developing facebook and other social networking application. Because social networking websites have already got a big amount of users that indicates millions of dollars are being spent per day only by the facebook users. Perhaps it is also an opportunity for the Bangladeshi techi users, it requires a group effort only and lots of enthusiasm.